Oct 14 Apparently our appeal judge can't read. We pointed out obvious lies in the village testimony and were flabbergasted when the judge parrotted these back to us in his opinion. Of course the village hack says the village was in the right - what a suprise. His 'opinion' and our request for rehearing based on provable lies is in our legal update. The house isn't done yet.... While we are mostly moved in, a few lingering items remain. Our subzero was abused by an incompetent door installer, requiring an entirely new freezer door. That door finally showed up but was defective - too much foam in it and the door wouldnt fit. So we are in the queue again for another door. Solar PV is being installed and we should be done by next week.
Sep 21 We are nearly complete, but not complete. Our Certificate of Occupancy happened mid August after our HVAC systems went in. We are still waiting on our Refrigerator doors to get installed and our Solar.permitting for solar is as irritating as the house permit was. We will start updates on a new page in the spring when we start planting.
July 16 We have our final electrical inspection scheduled for monday. We are told that we will fail the first pass because that's what inspectors do here. The electricians found a circuit that never had its power feed run from the panel so had to chop big holes out of our garage walls to run the wire.
July 7 We are nearing the finish line. Most of the work has been the electricians and the plumbers making everything we've installed actually work. Today was a big deal because our condensers arrived. Pat was here all day getting our punch list fixed and installing these units. Once the electricians get here we should be able to possibly run them! Now that these have arrived they are off the critical path and the electricians will be the last guys we have to wait on before we get our occupancy permit.
June 19 Our project drags on - yet another week without our electricians. We can't finish getting the appliances installed until the electricians come back and so far they have become very unresponsive
June 13 Water! We finally turned on the water in the house today. So far the leaks have been minor and manageable. And we also had the last granite piece installed - the Kitchen Island
June 10 We've gotten the cabinets done - at least to 98%. There are a couple drawer tweaks to make, the refrigerator and dishwasher panels to install but its great to be able to say they are basically finished!
June 7 We've had a real acceleration so far this week, we got our gas line in, the electricians are quickly knocking out the rest of our work and we got the porch granite today.
June 3 This was another slow week. Contractors aren't showing up like they once did. We are waiting on gas, plumbing, electric, countertops, hvac, vacuum - that's the short list but there is more. At least we got our office countertops installed today - they look great and the rumor is that we'll have our kitchen and porch counters early next week
May 24 We are getting close to finishing. There is going to be a lot more touch up work than we had anticipated, but the house is nearing a point where we can consider moving in. HVAC has been delayed to mid June which will be, we hope, the last item needed before we can get our Occupancy permit. The theatre cabinets are going in and while not perfect, they are very good and we've figured out how to work around them being a couple inches too short. The acoustic wall they are planning to build on site
May 17 we've had a couple cabinet issues. Gorky and team are working to fix them but we'll see a week or more delay on the house. The really tough one is that they forgot our downdraft, so it doesn't fit. We have to tear the island cabinets apart, shift them 2 inches south and 2 inches east and then put it all back together. That starts tomorrow.
May 13 Our final electric connection is done and the mechanical and electrical final work has started
May 5 They have started the plastering in the living room. This is the work in progress on the fireplace
April 29 Cabinets are going in!
April 24 Nothing has slowed down. We are getting electrical done, the meter socket is installed, the tile is done, grout in progress and our spiral staircase went up this week! The casita cabinets were also installed and we measured the casita for granite in the workbench area - no appliances so we are not offending the local government.
April 14 initial painting is done, the tile is going quickly and cabinet installs have started. And we're getting the inter-building runs in.
April 6 Rick Williams Work is finished. Rick and his small crew did all of the adobe work in the living room. It came out great and Sta-Rite plaster is already in putting the brown and scratch coat on. That's Carlos that is laying flagstone on the fireplace hearth. We are getting very close to being done here. The framers still need to build a frame for the last 6 ft of the fireplace.
April 4 Today Sta-Rite stucco finished the exterior of the house and rv garage and the scaffolding started coming down! They have done a fantastic job, we couldnt be happier with Al and his crew.
March 29 Painting has started. They did the casita first so we can get the tile layers started this weekend
March 23 Rick is back working on finishing the adobe and building the fireplace - he'll be doing a bit of both - the fireplace needs time to cure so it can't be built all at once
March 20 inside the sheetrockers are mudding the seams while outdoors we got our final color coat started, the stone veneer around the garages has gone on and the front porch flagstone was installed. The grout is still wet and you can see how the wood stain has been cleaned, but the final coat is not yet on.
March 16 bad painter Best strikes again. Hired to paint the house they are now claiming the canales aren't included. My mistake for not listing every single item they are expected to finish on the project. Definitely on the bottom of the contractor pile next to A Dwelling - nickel and diming us after screwing up the stain.
March 13 Our Sheet rock is done, the paint repair in the kitchen and living room is done and the brown coat is done.
March 6 We had a huge group of people on the lot this week. Our sole toilet was overwhelmed ;( The sheet rockers came out in force - they throw alot of people at the job to get it done quickly. We had our porch door installed, brown coat with no crack mesh started this week, the electricians were in the barn, we had most of the rv garage doors put on, the painters continued to fix the paint and the framers were back to finish framing our front door and install the RV garage replacement windows.
Feb 27 We're starting sheet rock on Feb 28 tomorrow! The paint has emerged as a major issue because it went on wrong. So far the painter is standing behind their work and is fixing their work but we can't help but be incredibly stressed about this.
Feb 24 We finally got our front door today. We've had a difficult time with the painters. So far they are working through the problems but it is a very labor intensive repair. We have had our patience challenged and we're looking at a pretty tough schedule problem along with the problems with the finish. Stay tuned as we hopefully get through this.
Feb 16 We started interior finish work today while the stucco continues outside. We got the first pass of redwood stain on all our exposed wood.
