Tub

Paul met Bill in State College at 0730 to pick up the renovated clawfoot. Bill told us that the cast marks on the feet indicates this is a very old tub.  Even though the tub turned 90 degrees from the original plan, it's still good that we have the short one;  the bathroom door will just swing clear. 
Reading Swiss Family Robinson Wyss**** moral, natural history and physical science lessons for children; a Swiss family version of Robinson Crusoe which is referred to in the story.  Reading these old stories tests my vocabulary and proves the usefulness of the dictionary button on the Kindle.  It's curious that the 2 younger sons in this book are always referred to as the mother's while the 2 older, and presumably more useful, sons are the father's. How could they have come upon a kangaroo?  I thought they were only in Australia.  As a naturalist, I think Wyss fails, but as a moralist or philosopher he does OK.  Good story though if the reader keeps in mind the time in which it was written.

Front porch

The crew cranked up their electric heater in the house today. Just in time: the January thaw is over. It's 9 degrees and windy now.

Also today the tub restorer, Bill Bauer(280-1119), picked up the clawfoot tub to work his magic on it. It looks like we are spending a bit more on this than we would have on the new tub but we will gain character in the upstairs bathroom.

Week in review

We saw a lot of progress this week. The cold roof is on the whole front half of he house and the extended soffits are on the rear roof. One course of the plywood sheathing is on the rear as well. The roofers were here on Thursday doing some prep work installing the rubber fabric and the vapor barrier on all the sheathing on the front of the house. Kohl delivered the shingles; they are staged on the fork lift for potential work tomorrow (Saturday).

John and Jonas installed all the second floor windows, including bedroom and loft windows, the four dormer window, and one of the transom windows on the bump out today. Dwayne put in the electrical conduit between the garage and the basement of the house and the backup generator conduit from the side of the garage to the basement too. Tressler and Fedor did all the excavation work for the electrical conduit and they did the hookup to the septic lines too. They did a nice job covering up all the utility trenches, especially the generator conduit that ran across the driveway entrance to the garage—you cannot tell there was a trench across it on Wednesday. The tongue and groove flooring for the loft area was picked up and delivered  and is stacked inside the house in the great room.

On Monday we had Kevin from Whitehill Lighting out; he reviewed the interior lighting plan and didn’t see any major issues. He did mention that we would need some kind of lighting for the basement stairs (probably surface mounted wall sconces) and he pointed out that just inside the master suite there were two boxes in the cross beam and suggested that one of those was probably for a smoke detector. We have talked about some fixtures for the dining room, great room, and the lights for the rear entry, the stairs, and the loft area. We are closing in on those decisions. Dwayne suggested we go with a low voltage monorail system over the kitchen island and that will work as far as Kevin is concerned. Today we went with Bill to visit the Glick cabinetry shop and got them started on working up something for us in hickory. As we get closer to having all the interior walls roughed in over the next week or so, Glick will come out to make some measurements, particularly for the pantry, butler, and linen closet. All the cabinets will be in hickory, similar in style to our current kitchen, with a recessed flat panel style cabinet doors and simple round wood pulls.
Leslie met with Mike at Mike’s Appliances today and got more information on the stove/oven options for the kitchen island. To make the cabinets fit we need to know the dimensions of the appliances. The stove/oven in the island presents a major issue. To keep the space open we don't want to use an overhead vent, so we hope a downdraft style vent will work. There are still some decisions on that, but we are getting close to locking all that down.
Paul put down 4 new bales of hay on Tuesday, but with the excavation work and the fork lift moving over the thawing ground, we had a lot more mud showing, so he put down another 5 bales today. It isn’t covering all the mud, but it is holding it down quite a bit. Leslie found a farmer on Craigslist who is outside of Unionville and offers bales for $2 each. Paul can get 5 loaded up in his pickup with a roundtrip time of about 30 minutes.
We are headed out to Johnstown area tomorrow morning to Salvage Heaven. They say they have 2 small claw foot tubs in good condition so we’ll take the pickup and perhaps bring one back.
All-in-all it was a very productive week, even though short staffed. The crew was working in some pretty nasty conditions the last few days, especially with temperatures in the mid-teens and a heavy frost on Thursday morning, so we are sure they are looking forward to working indoors soon. We do appreciate all they are doing for us.