Paymaster progress

Great news all around. The roofers, who said they'd be here at the end of the month, came yesterday. They are installing a roof on the privy and, as a side job, putting a gutter on the Paymaster's Office. The building inspector doesn't care about the privy but he does care about that gutter, so I'm happy it's being taken care of. (Plus we get more compliments on the copper gutters than probably anything else.)

Mike has already framed out the whirlpool bath, and Dawn has lined up Ralph Steech to do the tile work. (He also did the bathroom floors in the mansion and the whirlpool surround in the Summer Kitchen.). He'll be here in about two weeks.

Mike has also taken care of the cabinet that we were so worried about. Instead of milling beaded board paneling to match the walls, he installed some one-bys and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. Matt got it painted before he went on vacation, so that cabinet is essentially finished. Now the hard part is building the kitchen cabinets to match, but Olde York Homes is already at work constructing those.

One decision we have to make is on the countertop. We had a large piece of granite left over from our kitchen island that would fit perfectly in the Paymaster's Office, but our contractor thinks it is too fancy and wants us to go with a plainer countertop. Normally I'd agree wholeheartedly, since Formica is a lot cheaper than granite, but in this case we already paid for the granite. Dawn is going to visit the granite guy to see if she can "trade" hers for a different piece, and make everyone happy.

Todd Auker, who restored all of the floors in the mansion, will be starting the Paymaster on Tuesday, and he's going to take care of the walls as well. (Since the walls are made of beaded board, it makes sense to have the floor guy work on them, right?) Not surprisingly, all of the contractors we picked are in high demand, and none more so than Todd, so we were surprised that he could fit us in his schedule so quickly.

However, Dawn had agreed to remove the linoleum off the floor before Todd came, expecting she'd have at least a week or two. Now she has four days, including the weekend. Plus the tar they used for linoleum back then is nasty stuff. Dawn has to literally spend hours on her hands and knees pushing a small putty knife along the floor, trying to get as much glue as possible without nicking the floor. It's slow, backbreaking work, and I'd love to help her but we only have one putty knife.

Darin at Village Glass is working on the windows, but we don't think we have enough old glass to finish them all. New glass would just stick out like a sore thumb -- wavy, wavy, wavy, clear, wavy, wavy -- but old glass is ridiculously expensive. (Small panes, I'm told, sell for as much as $40, and we have 6-8 per window!) If anyone knows of any glass sources (preferably dumpsters or houses slated for demolition), please let us know.

The mechanicals -- electric, plumbing, heating, and cooling -- are all roughed in, so the finish work won't take much time once everything else is ready. So the only real concern now for making our September 23rd deadline is the plasterer, as he hasn't confirmed a date yet. We're only putting plaster in the bathroom, and I'm not even sure why we're using plaster instead of just drywall. (I know our contractor is a purist, but it's just a bathroom!) But right now we're so far ahead of schedule, I'm not worried.

Watch those words come back to bite me...

Go Mike, go