What else can go wrong?

**WARNING. This post talks about and contains images of creepy crawlies.**

This is what our driveway looks like. It's green and glorious. Walking down the driveway puts a bounce in my step and a smile on my face. 

Or at least it used to. 

Until these guys showed up:

source

The Tent Caterpillar. *Cue dramatic music here*

Every 10 years or so there is an infestation of Tent Caterpillars in forested areas. The last one in this area was about 10 years ago. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out what that means... 

Yup, our newest challenge is an infestation of worms. They are everywhere. Here are some shots of our yard. All of the dark patches on the tree trunks and tree branches are masses of worms. Gross.

These pictures don't even begin to show the the amount of worms that there are. All of our trees (and we have a lot) look like that. There are so many worms in our yard that if it's not windy you can hear them. It sounds like you are standing in a giant bowl of Rice Krispies. I am going to do you all a favour and not talk about what that noise really is. You can thank me later. 

Tent Caterpillars only live for about a week or two. They start out really small, maybe a 1/4 of an inch long and really skinny. They spend those two weeks eating leaves off of trees. They eat until they are about an inch long, chubby, and hairy. 

Just to show you what kind of damage they do, the tree on the right in this photo used to be green and leafy. The caterpillars cleaned it right off. Oh and did I mention that their favourite kind of tree is Aspen? Guess what 90% of trees are? We have the best luck sometimes.

Now, if you are like me and you aren't from Northern Canada or some other heavily forested area you are probably wondering how these caterpillars are affecting our house building. When I first noticed that we had an unusual amount of worms in the yard I just thought it was gross, until The Husband explained the situation to me.

Once the worms are fat and full from eating all of my trees, they cocoon. Where's their favourite place to cocoon you ask? Yup, it's houses. *more dramatic music*

If you haven't noticed I haven't done any updates on the exterior of the house since December. That's because nothing has happened on the outside. It sill looks like this (minus the snow):

The plywood is still exposed and the soffits (area under the roof overhang) aren't installed so our house is essentially open to the attic. Not enough that a bird or a squirrel could get in, but a worm wouldn't have a problem.

Our first concern was that the worms would crawl up the side of the house and cocoon in the attic. Our second concern is that they would just cocoon on the side of the house. Neither one of these are good. I am not even sure what we would do if they went in the attic. If they cocoon on the outside of the house we'd have to hose them down or scrape off the house. Seeing as our house is just the unfinished plywood either one of these options could damage our house.

We had to come up with a new game plan and switch around our schedule. We had to get this house papered (all houses are wrapped in a waterproof, breathable paper to keep moisture out) ASAP. So that's what we've been working on. Our house now looks like this:

The Husband and I wrapped and taped the first layer around the house. We need a third person to run the forklift to do the next roll and someone who is willing to work on the forklift deck (AKA not me). We have some guys lined up to help us with this, they are just finishing up a project and hopefully they can come help us out a bit.

We have also been sprayed the trees that we can reach as well as the bottom of the house and the ground around the house in an effort to keep the worms away.

In order to get this work done we had to mess with our schedule that was actually on time and falling perfectly in place. I know that everyone says that construction has it's challenges and that you should expect delays but every. single. time. we start seeing good progress and things start to come together we are thrown another curve ball. What are the chances that a worm infestation that occurs once every decade is going to happen on the year that we need to build a house?

Not So Disappointing Anymore...

Last week was disappointing. We had all of our trades lined up to work but only one of them showed. This week was a little bit better. Of all the trades we had lined up to come (5) only one didn't show up.

Yay for progress!!

Our electrician showed up on Tuesday (Monday was a holiday here) and finished what we needed him to do. The drywall mudders showed up everyday but Thursday. They are even coming on Sunday (holy crap). Our plumber showed up a day early and did everything we needed him to do. Our heating/mechanical guy showed up and is done everything we needed him to do. The planets must have been aligned perfectly.

Our sewer guy didn't show up but it's still kind of muddy for him to be working in the yard anyways.

We are actually on schedule, we might even be a bit ahead right now. The drywallers think that they'll be done mudding the upstairs earlier than expected and our basement is expected to get boarded right on time. We should be right on schedule for painting.

I think this is the longest we have ever stayed on schedule.

Interior Lighting

Out of all of the decisions that we have had to make for this house I am having the hardest time with the lighting. I can't seem to make a decision. For every fixture that I like there are at least 10,000 ugly ones. There is soo much selection that I am not even sure where to start. The Husband and I had originally selected the Urban Ice collection from Kichler. Here is the 5 light chandelier from that collection (there are also coordinating pieces available):

I still like the fixture but I am not sure that it really goes with our house. I think something a bit simpler is more out style. I also like the idea of picking out individual fixtures for each room, as opposed to using pieces from a matching collection. Now I just need to make a decision. For the more common areas like the Foyer, Mudroom, Laundry, Hallways, etc. we are just going to choose a simple flush mount ceiling light, so I am not too particular about those. The Husband wants to do a ceiling fan in our Master Bedroom. In some other areas, like the family room, we are using pot lights. That leaves the Dining Room, the Kitchen Island, the Spare Bedroom, all 3 bathrooms and possibly our walk in closet. That's 7 fixtures, it shouldn't be that hard, right?

We live in the middle of nowhere so we haven't spent a ton of time looking at lights. Most of my shopping has just been done online. Before we make our final decisions we want to make a trip into the city to see some fixtures in person. Here is what I have in mind so far:

Kitchen and Dining Room Lighting

Kitchen, Dining Room

We are wired for three pendants above the kitchen island. I wanted pendants that were on the larger size, I am not a fan of the mini pendant. At the same time I didn't want the pendants to take away from the kitchen or to block the views of the kitchen so that all you saw was pendant. I love this industrial style pendant from West Elm, I think it fits my criteria perfectly. So much so that I've already ordered it. It's on backorder until the end of June so hopefully it comes in on time. 

I love the look of drum pendants in the Dining Room so that's what I am thinking we will go with. I love how crisp the white shade looks, and I think it will go really nicely with our darker wall color and white trim. 

Spare Bedroom

I would like a flush mount drum pendant in the spare room. I don't love this one but it's the best one I've found so far that. 

Lower Bath Lighting

The floor in the Lower Bath is unfinished concrete so I want to go for a bit of a industrial or rustic look. I am really liking this fixture from Kichler. 

Main and Master Bath

I am having the hardest time with the other two bathroom fixtures. I don't like the double or triple wall scone style that is typically found in bathrooms and there doesn't seem to be a lot of other options available. So far this is the best one I've found. Hopefully we'll see it in person and I'll like it even more or I'll find something I like even better. 

Flush Mount ceiling Light

I am thinking some really simple and low profile for the flush mount ceiling lights in the common areas. 

So that's that. I still need to pick out a couple of wall sconces. I really don't like wall sconces but somehow The Husband snuck a couple in and now I need to pick them out. Bah.  

Long Weekend Wrap Up

We didn't get as much done over the long weekend and we thought we would. I think we set our sights a little bit too high knowing that we had an extra day to work.

On Friday we set out to finish laying the subfloor over the concrete in the family room. We got about 90% done and ran out of materials. In order to lay the subfloor level on top of the concrete you use levelling strips to make up for any imperfections in the concrete. Our concrete is way less than perfect because we ran out of levelling strips about 4 times. This project is still not done. We have one board and a half still to lay but we ran out of levelling strips again. We're planning on getting some more tomorrow so we should be done with this floor soon.

On Saturday we worked on finishing up some small details on the framing in the basement and The Husband built the stairs for the basement. I apologize for the bad photo. We have this fancy light in the basement, it's only one light bulb but it lights up the whole basement. Great for working down there, not so great for photos.

Sunday we decided to take some time for ourselves and go out for brunch. It was delicious but the restaurant had the weirdest brunch buffet I have seen. It had the typical breakfast items, and a salad bar, and then a chinese and seafood section. Very weird for a chain restaurant. Anyways, we couldn't possibly go anywhere without a trip to the hardware store. We had a few materials and supplies to pick up and I got some plants. 

I wanted to plant some larger pots that can eventually go on the front steps of the house when we move in. My plans was to plant them now so that they have time to fill in and look good later on. For the time being they are classing up the front of our trailer. 

Now that I have these home I think I should have got bigger pots if I want them to work on the front step of the house. We'll see how it goes when we move them, I can always use them on the deck or something instead. 

I planted 5 plants per pot. A big leaf (honestly, that's what the tag says), a Creeping Jenny, a Strawflower, and a white flower and yellow flower (I can't remember the names of those ones right now, I'll try to add an update later). 

I also did a small tomato garden. I have two different varieties of a full sized tomato and a baby roma. I also did a basil plant in there too. 

I can't wait until next summer when our yard isn't a construction site and I can landscape and plant a real garden with more than just tomatoes. 

Well That Was Disappointing.

Last week we had a few people lined up to come in and do their thing. We were all excited and expected to see some good progress. Sounds great, right?

Well nobody showed up. (Hence my lack of posting last week)

Ok that's a bit of a lie. the mudders and tapers showed up on Friday but I am not sure what they did all day because everything in the house looks the same. The sewer guy and the water meter guy were both no-shows.

They have been rescheduled to come this week. Today is a holiday so no workers today which means a 4 day work week. We have 4 days for 6 guys (or crews depending on what we're talking about here) to show up. I am not holding my breath.

If by some miracle they all show up here's what will be done on the house:

- More drywall mudding and taping. This is going to take until the end of the month at least.
- Basement electrical work will be done
- Basement plumbing will be done (or least up to the point that we can drywall down there)
- Water meter and pressure tank installed (Hello water! and shower!!)
- Sewer work
- Basement ductwork
- Basement drywall hopefully started

The Husband and I are working on prepping the garage slab this week too so that our mechanical guy can run the in-floor heating in there sooner rather than later. The slab prep is the only thing I can guarantee that we'll see some progress on. Well that and the electrical work, I love our electrician. I need to bake him a cake. He's awesome.

If any of the rough-in work (electrical, mechanical, plumbing) is delayed this week it's going to cause us a pretty big headache. If we can get the RIs done by the end of this week the drywallers can board the basement and keeping mudding the whole house all at once so that we don't have all the upper floors done and then wait for them to come back and finish the basement later on. If we end up doing the basement later we can still continue on with the upper floors. It would just be so much easier to be done with drywall in the house and then we/our painter can paint (we haven't decided what's what with the painting yet) the whole house at once.

Let's all cross our fingers and hope that everyone shows up this week!

Weekend Wrap Up

So after The Husband's meeting with our concrete guy we decided to skip the concrete staining. He confirmed what TH and I had already suspected, that the staining was going to add weeks to our already delayed schedule. This wasn't something that TH and I were willing to wait over. Especially considering the fact that we didn't really like the stains we had selected to sample. TH also learned at his meeting that we can purchase tinted sealants that we can apply later on down the road. I am not sure I want a color, I am fine with the concrete color, it just needs to be sealed. Whichever way we choose to go can be decided later on so we chose to keep moving ahead with the basement.

This weekend we tackled the framing in the basement. We are only finishing part of the basement, a bathroom and my gym. The rest of the basement will remain unfinished and closed off from the finished part.

Gym walls in progress

Bathroom walls in progress

The basement walls are completed I just don't have any pictures of the finished product. Framed walls are pretty hard to comprehend in photos anyways, or at least I find them to be.

I know it might seem a bit weird that all of our upper levels are drywalled but our basement wasn't even framed yet but that's what happens when you build over winter. The ground was too frozen for the plumber to do his ground works when we were working on the framing of the rest of the house. This delayed when we could pour our slab, which then delayed when we could frame the walls in the basement.  We were planning on just moving ahead with the upper levels (the main living spaces) and then drywall the basement when we do the garage but the drywaller wanted to do the whole house at once to save setup time on his end. We moved the basement walls up on the schedule hoping to satisfy the drywaller but all of our trades are on vacation this week, scheduling fail. We'll have to see how things play out in the next couple of weeks, it might end up still working out with the drywallers schedule. If not we're just out a bit more $$. Not the end of the world.

We did get some other trades lined up for the week. The water meter and water pressure tank are going to be installed later on this week. That sounds so boring but it is one step closer to having running water. Seriously, I am jealous of all you who can just walk to a faucet and turn the tap on and having a never ending supply of water ( I am going to assume that's all of you).

Our sewer guy (hey, every house needs one) is coming later on this week to finish hooking up our sceptic tank and sewer mound.

The crew is still on schedule to start mudding and taping the drywall in the house.

We met with our painter, who isn't coming this week but, is really flexible and is able to come as a soon as we need him to and it will only take 2 days to do our prime and first coat. Yay for something happening quickly! Then we'll be able to move onto cabinet install. (sooooo excited about this. We picked up samples of our cabinet doors the other day and they look amazing.)

Now for the bad news. We had heard that booking tile setters can be challenging here so we called 4-6 weeks in advance. We contacted the 2 best tile setters in town and they are both busy for at least 2 or 3 months. No bueno. (Hey, those Spanish classes paid off after all!) So right now it's looking like we are going to attempt to do our tile work on our own. It looks so easy on TV. Right? Right?

I kid, I kid. We really are going to attempt to do our own tile, just with a bit more guidance than from the crew on Holmes on Holmes. If it works out with my parent's schedule (who knew retired people would be so busy?!) they are going to come and help us out. My dad is really handy and has experience tiling and one of tile setters that is too busy to do our house offered to teach us Tiling 101 for Dummies. Hopefully with all of their knowledge combined we can lay down some decent looking tile.

Lots happening on the house building front this week! I think once we get the house painted, things are going to start moving really quickly. Or at least that's what I am telling myself....

Concrete Staining

We are only going to finish part of our basement to start off with. The finished part will have my gym, a bathroom, and a hallway. The unfinished part has a mechanical room, an open space that might eventually be our office, and a bedroom. Because of how we will likely use this space we don't want to a finished flooring, like carpet, downstairs so we have been planning on staining and sealing the concrete floor in the basement. Earlier this week our concrete guy came by and did some color samples for us.

The colors we chose to sample (from left to right) were Cocoa Brown, Sumatra Brown, Nutty Brown, and Black Diamond. We thought that the Black Diamond looked like the concrete was burnt, and the Sumatra Brown looked like we were trying to cover up a crime scene. Those two colors were out. That left us with Nutty Brown and Cocoa Brown. We both preferred the Nutty Brown but it is a bit on the dark side and there is no natural light in the basement so we felt it would look even darker downstairs. That leaves us with Cocoa Brown (the one on the very left). I like the color but I am not sure that there is enough color difference between that and the concrete to justify the extra cost. We are now contemplating just sealing the concrete or maybe just painting the floor in the bathroom. Skipping the staining also means that we could get to work on the basement even sooner. 

The Husband has a meeting set up with our concrete guy and they are going to discuss our options and the schedule but for now it looks like we are going to skip the staining and figure out our concrete finish  later. 

Concrete stain color samples