May Day Update

It’s May 1 and the house has been under construction for about 3 ½ months. In some ways, the time has gone very fast. In other ways, it seems like we’ve been burning the midnight oil on this project forever. The house is now barely recognizable as the 1940’s Cape Cod it started out as and it’s less than 2 months until this project will be complete.

Here’s a summary of our amazing rocket-fast schedule:
End of Oct 07: First saw house
Nov- Dec: Design and drawings
Jan: Began construction
Mid June: Expected completion
Total- 8 months*

*This kind of aggressive schedule is not recommended if you need more than 5 or 6 hours of sleep at night.
The metal roofing was installed today, along with the gray corrugated siding on the east side.

All the sheet rocking, taping, mudding, sanding and priming happened last week. This week the doors were hung, including this pocket door at the shared bathroom.


The locally sourced and milled FSC red oak flooring is being installed in the kitchen. The floor will have to be stained and sealed and made ready for kitchen cabinets to be installed next Tuesday.

We still have a sand pit in the dining/living room, but not for long. The under slab ductwork was installed yesterday. Rigid insulation, 6 mil polyurethane sheeting and the piping for in-floor heating will be installed tomorrow and then the concrete slab will be poured and polished next week.
The subfloor was installed in the kids' bedrooms and will be ready for the FLOR carpet installation. The wood trim was installed at the windows and base.

The downside of this aggressive schedule (and contractors that work at blazing speed) is that we did not detail the window trim. We were surprised to find it all installed on Tuesday. The contractors did a great quality job- but with the window stool and apron, it wasn't exactly the clean look we envisioned. In hind sight, we should have had them install trim at one window for approval first. We may have ended up with the same solution, as it does look similar to the existing trim. In the end, we can't lose too much sleep over this one as it will be painted out white to match the white walls. Que sera, sera.