This past Sunday, my brother hosted a memorial service for our mother at his home in Minnesota. A more formal service will be held in Schenectady this spring. Angela spent the last few years of her life living in Minnetonka and it is little surprise that she made many friends during that short time. It was important to Mark and his family that they and her local community be given an opportunity to celebrate her life. On display throughout their home were many works of art created by her.
Kyle sent this image of his completed basement floor. The bathroom and kitchen cabinetry and tile work are remaining to be complete as well as the interior doors and trim. At some point, I hope to show some before and after photos. The transformation has been very dramatic.
Working with Tess, we have settled on a design theme for the siding on the River House. We will use a slate-colored vertical board and baton for the principal siding component with horizontal tongue and groove accents in warm red-toned wood material. Not fully illustrated is the masonry foundation at the base of the entire structure which will also cover the entire walkout basement wall. This rendering is missing the east wing roof but conveys the basic color/design scheme. It has been fun experimenting with the various possibilities for blocking and color combinations.
Visiting us from Seattle for the next few days is Tess, one of Jeanine’s dearest friends. We have hired her to help us with the interior design of the River House. She flew in on the red-eye this morning and we spent a good portion of the day selecting materials and reviewing design elements. We feel very fortunate to have someone with her expertise and artistic flair assisting us with the myriad choices to be made at this stage of the project.
Last night temperatures dipped to 10 below zero with high winds driving wind chill down below minus 30. I stopped by the River House this morning to make sure we did not have any downed trees or other damage. Fortunately, there was none but I will have to wait until temps rise above 32 to determine if our temporary water service survived. The Sudbury River was frozen solid except in front of our house where a natural spring enters the river from below. Future grandchildren, should we ever have any, will have to be warned about thin ice in this part of the river. I spent the afternoon with Kyle using a very heavy concrete grinder that we rented. It was necessary to flatten the floor in his basement after the subcontractors he hired to do the flooring installation made a totally unacceptable attempt to level the concrete. It will not be perfect but we were able to address the most egregious problems.
Work on the River House today was canceled because it was too cold. Plummeting temperatures did not stop Maya from her routine of walking to work, however. I am pleased to see that she seems to be dressed for the conditions. There is something about this photo that makes it very clear that it was insanely cold outside.
Ten of twenty-six windows were installed today. The crew doing this work does nothing but European-style window installation. Their experience and expertise were apparent at every turn. I spent half the day installing most of the ceiling boxes for the ventilation system covering both the first and second floors with only the basement remaining to be done. Each box will connect the tubes that carry air to and from the ERV (Energy Recovery Ventilator) with the supply and exhaust diffusers that spread air into or remove air from the rooms in which they are installed. During the remainder of the day, I worked on an idea for one of my consulting gigs which is beginning to show great promise. Regrettably, I am not at liberty to disclose any of the details.
Our German-made Schuco windows arrived on site today. Fitted with triple pane glass, even the small ones are extremely heavy. The large ones take four very strong people to move. The largest will probably require at least a dozen workers to install. It took the entire day just to move the windows into the house and to begin positioning them in the rooms to which they belong.
On the way to the construction site this morning, I was shocked to see an old friend lying dead on the side of Sudbury Road. Bruce, an extremely large male beaver, was a frequent visitor at the River House. When our site supervisor first saw him lounging on the ice he mistook him for a small black bear, which was an easy mistake to make given his massive size. His tail slap was loud enough to make you jump out of your shoes if you were close by and I think he enjoyed the reaction. Even though he did fell a favorite dead tree that was a popular and very photographic bird perch, I was very fond of Bruce and will miss him. When I returned from the site on the way to my annual physical, Bruce was gone. Perhaps animal control had picked him up but I am left to wonder if someone saw the potential for a magnificent beaver fur and seized the opportunity.
With our two geothermal bore holes completed and a 300-foot U-shaped pipe grouted into each, the next step is to connect the vertical loops to each other and then to the house. The crew excavated around the bore holes to a depth of 4 feet and cut off the steel casings at that depth. A similarly deep trench was made between boreholes and to the foundation of the house where the supply and return lines enter through two holes drilled through the foundation wall. The pipes from each bore hole are connected in parallel and then to the house from the midpoint of the parallel connection (to promote balance flow to each loop). A strip of metal tape was placed over the pipes so they could be located in the future and the trenches were backfilled concluding all the outside work for our geothermal heating and cooling system.
Nico spent the weekend in Denver putting on an amputee soccer clinic. Essential to building the US program are outreach programs such as this which bring young players into the sport. While in Colorado, he connected with his high school buddies Greg and Cray.
Maya ventured to the North country where she enjoyed skiing with friends despite her injured shoulder. MRI scans have since confirmed that she has a SLAP tear and torn rotator cuff. Her doctor has suggested an ultrasound-guided steroid injection at the tear to help her manage the discomfort. Unfortunately, such injuries do not heel with time and she will likely require surgery at some point in the future.
On the home front, Kyle and I completed the wiring for his basement renovation. All the lighting and all but 3 outlets worked as expected. It took a while to figure out that the drywallers had covered an outlet box leaving the following section of that circuit disconnected. We excavated the wall, found the box, and completed the installation of an outlet at that location. Presto, all remaining outlets became energized. On a less positive note, we discovered that the flooring installers had done a very poor job of leveling the concrete leaving behind several dips and high spots. With half the flooring already placed, it will be quite a lot more work to now remove it and address the hills and valleys.
We specified 10-foot wide garage doors on the new house so we could be more relaxed while parking than is the case with the 8-foot wide doors at the Road House. In addition to the fun of making the first ingress, I wanted to confirm that doors could be swung open to their full extent without hitting the walls. My car was very happy for the elbow room.
Kyle’s basement renovation project is in the home stretch. Drywalling and floor leveling have been completed. Kyle used contractors for these jobs as neither one of us was too keen on doing it ourselves. Both require specialized tools and benefit from considerable experience. This weekend we will work on installing the recessed ceiling lights, outlets, and switches. We will also get his garage door working again after the drywaller managed to disconnect the electrical circuit which feeds it.