More Good News

Each day seems to bring some more good news. Bernie from Clarke County Plumbing and Tom from Creager Electrical both were on-site this week and have worked on the final details. For Bernie's part, he's been attaching the bathroom fixtures (hanging the toilets on the wall, attaching the bath and shower faucets, etc.). Tom's been completing the circuits for a host of indoor and outdoor lighting and electrical connections. If all goes well, Bernie will finish the plumbing on Thursday, and have a final inspection on Friday. Tom will finish early next week and have a final inspection then. Jeff Gunther from Grove Construction was back on-site today to finish installing the beautiful cedar siding on the West side of the house, and the final trim piece on the East side of the house. Andreas snapped this picture of Jeff before the sun went down, just before Jeff installed the last few pieces.

Jeff installing cedar on the West side of the house.

Meanwhile, Andreas and I have been busy with some tasks of our own. I joined the two pieces of the kitchen counter by the range, using a new Dewalt plate joiner toy (er, I mean tool), and Andreas sanded it and put two coats of Safecoat sealant on it, which we purchased from Amicus Green Building Center. Faceplates have been installed on most of the remaining outlets. The pipes around the hot water heater and the radiant floor system have been insulated. I still have to grout the master shower floor, and seal all of the grout in each of the bathrooms.

North side LED step lights and front door light.

South side LED step lights.

LED step lights into the basement.

Fuzzy picture (low light) of insulated water heater pipes.

Fuzzy picture (low light) of insulated radiant system pipes.

More ELFA in the master closet.

It's Starting to Feel Like a Real House

I've had this warm feeling while working on the house the last few days/evenings. Oh, that would be the radiant floor heating that's fully functional, at last! Tom, the electrician, slipped on some ice and wasn't able to come to work this past week. Given the DC area weather forecast, and temperatures projected in the teens, we felt it was mandatory that we hire another electrician to connect power to the hot water heater and connect the radiant system. Our contractor friend, Jeff Hopp, suggested we call a sub he has used with great success. Andreas called him (I'll get his name from Andreas and update this posting with that info) and he came the next day. Not only is he a licensed electrician, but he's a plumber and an HVAC guy too. So he was the right man for the radiant floor job. After the electrical connections were complete, and it was confirmed that the water heater was properly functioning, Andreas filled the radiant tubes with water and the system went live. Within a few hours, the temps went from the 40s into the 50s. By the next morning, it was very warm inside, in the low 60s. By Friday night, each room was at least 65 degrees. We thought it would take two full days to heat up all of the concrete thermal mass, but it took about a day. Working at the house today, with the sun out, I observed air temperatures in the 70s in all rooms that have southern exposure, and the living room thermostat showed a temperature of 78.3 degrees. What amazingly warm feeling to have radiant heat - at long last! Combined with the passive solar attributes, our house was toasty today.

The heat's not the only thing that's been accomplished in the last 10 days. Craig Smith has been working diligently and skillfully on the finish carpentry. The current project is to install Ipe thresholds. If you're not familiar with Ipe, it's an extremely hard wood that's exceptionally durable, suitable for wet and hot and dry locations, and is often used for decks. It was on sale at TW Perry, and we thought it would be ideal for the door thresholds, since that can be a harsh environment for wood.

TW Perry delivered the interior doors on Friday, so we'll work on sealing those with the Safecoat product we bought at Amicus Green Building Center. Andreas and I will install those ourselves, which should be a fun project. Craig Smith will install the three "normal" (hinged) doors early next week. Two of those go in the basement and the third is for the entry to the stairs into the basement. We're using pocket doors in as many places as possible, to save space and ensure a clean/modern look.

The Container Store is holding their annual ELFA shelving system sale this month, so we had an ELFA design for our master closet prepared, and I picked up the ELFA system for that closet last week. Today, I spent a couple of hours in the closet installing the system. I think it looks great, and it's a wonderfully functional closet organizing system. We have it in the condo, and really like it. Act soon to get 30% off ELFA at the Container Store.

Also today, I unpacked the Bosch dryer and the Samsung refrigerator from their crates. The Bosch dryer goes with the Bosch washing machine. Since it's a stackable system, I had to install an attachment to the washer, that the dryer is then affixed to. The end result looks really good.

The final work item today was to use my new toy...er, I mean tool...to join the two sections of the wheatboard countertop behind the range. I used my shiny new Dewalt plate joiner (sometimes called a biscuit joiner), inserted the biscuit and glue, then clamped the two pieces together. Tomorrow I'll take the clamp off, sand the seam, lightly sand the rest of the wheatboard, clean it with a barely damp cloth to get the dust off, and then apply the first coat of Safecoat no VOC sealant to it. I will do a light sanding and second coat tomorrow night, after we meet with our landscape architect, Erika, who will be reviewing our final draft landscape plan with us.

Countertop seam

It's always fun when friends stop by to visit while we're there working. Today, our friends Mike, Helen, Jeff, John, Helen, and Jeff stopped by. The first Helen brought delicious sandwiches from the Italian Store in Arlington. Yummy! It was great to have a lunch break and good conversation. But then it was back to work!

Where Has The Time Gone????

I spent over 24 hours during the last two days working on the house, but I don't seem to have much to show for it. A lot of time was spent running to different stores (and stuck in traffic between stores). A lot of little items were needed, like wood filler to cover the nail holes on the baseboard and casing, and some big items too, like the double bowl granite/composite kitchen sink.

We're still waiting for the plumber and the electrician to show up. The electrician said he'd call when he's back from visiting family. I'm guessing that'll be some time in 2010. The plumber was scheduled to come yesterday to connect the gas line to the hot water heater, install the heat trap, the temperature control valve, and the expansion tank. He didn't show up, but he sent his father. He puttered around for an hour or so, installed the heat trap, and then left for the day, saying they'd be back Tuesday or Wednesday.

It seems like we're so close to finishing, yet so far away. Hoping to get closer and closer to the "finishing" idea, we are moving forward with Access National Bank to get our ducks lined up for the conversion from construction loan to mortgage. The appraiser came today to measure and look around. He seems to be familiar with the neighborhood and with green construction. We're keeping our fingers crossed that the appraisal comes in the same, or higher, than it did last year at this time when we were working to obtain our construction loan. I'm taking it as a good sign that today's Washington Business Journal email news summary led off with a story about real estate prices climbing in the DC area. Hopefully our appraiser read that story!

The highlight of today was when Jason and Matt, two City of Falls Church officials, came to inspect the final grading. We passed that inspection! Thanks to Bob DeMarr and his crew for fixing the job Bartley didn't get right but still wanted to charge a premium for. Immediately after passing the inspection, I called Maryann Ogle from Terra Landscaping to schedule the gravel driveway/parking area and the permeable paver walkway installation. The weather forecast isn't great for the next few days, but Maryann will monitor the weather and send the crew as soon as there's good news in the forecast. Maryann pointed us in the right direction to schedule wood chip mulch delivery from the City, so we'll soon (hopefully) receive a truck load of mulch to scatter along the lot.

I spent some time today working on the master shower. Another challenge I dealt with was that the master bathroom shower pan wasn't poured properly. There should have been a slope to the drain, but it ended us more like small hills and valleys. That left lots of places for water to settle, instead of drain. I rented a grinder from Ace Tool Rental in Falls Church and spent a good bit of the afternoon grinding down the high spots, checking with the level, and ensuring the water now heads towards the drain. I poured water into the shower pan and it all went in the right direction. Yay!

After that task was successfully completed, I laid out the 1" x 1" tiles for the shower floor to find the best fit using the least number of tiles. When we ordered the tiles at Amicus, we thought it would take 21 of the 12" x 12" tile mats, but I was able to configure it using only 17. Since we had to buy a box, which contains 24, that leaves me with an extra 7 sq.ft. of beautiful carbon floor tile. Hmmmm, what can I tile with that?

Tomorrow I'll mix up some Thinset and install the floor tiles. The wall tiles will follow. Another one of my shopping stops today was to order a threshold/sill for the shower curb. Actually, on my way back from IKEA yesterday, I stopped at Community Forklift (kind of like Habitat for Humanity's ReStore) but they were closed. I was looking for a remnant of granite, Silestone or marble for the threshold. Since I couldn't get it at Community Forklift, I bought a remnant retail. The advantage of buying the remnant retail is that they will polish both edges for me. The likelihood of finding that at a second hand shop was pretty slim.

Here are some miscellaneous pics, as well as the long-overdue photos of the completed deck (well construction has been completed - we'll stain it and seal it in the Spring time).

Winter's Here

To celebrate Winter, Andreas installed the dampers in the fireplace, I replaced the broken stones with the replacements Wittus shipped to us, and I built a fire in our new Bodart & Gonay Optiplex Fireplace. It's a serious fireplace and it worked great!

Also, a special thanks to our neighbor, Jeff, who volunteered to help our neighbor/contractor Jeff Gunther with the deck railing construction. I came back from my shopping spree at IKEA (I bought a temporary vanity/sink for the basement bathroom) and Amicus Green Building Center (I picked up the floor tile for the master bath shower, the wheat board for the kitchen countertops, and a sealant for the wheat board) and found Jeff helping Jeff with our house construction. Wow!

As I was putting together the IKEA vanity, Jeff's wife Helen stopped by to visit. I proudly showed her the radiant floor system in the basement (which I still haven't photographed), the step lights, the new master bath tile, etc. It's fun to show off our accomplishments!

Progress Report

Slow going is all I can say. Andreas worked his tail off in the mud and rain to finish the trenching for the rainwater tank fresh water line to come back to the house. Here are some pictures of his boots, his exhausted face, and the end product.

The next day, the plumber was supposed to come to drill through the foundation to bring the rainwater tank line into the house, but it was raining where he lives (1.5 hours away) so he assumed it was raining where our house is (it wasn't; it was perfectly dry). So he didn't show up. Meanwhile, the banks of the trench caved in and Andreas had to re-dig all of the heavy, water-laden clay out of the trench. I showed up after he had finished and found a wet, unhappy, tired guy who worked hard all day. The plumber is scheduled to come again on Monday and Wednesday. But guess what - rain's in the forecast again, so he probably won't show up.

Meanwhile, the electrician was going to continue on the inside of the house, but he decided he doesn't work during Thanksgiving week. Must be nice.

I spent some time in the basement bathroom working on tile install. The 18" x 18" tiles will be great later on since there will be less grout to clean, but they sure are more difficult to install than the smaller format tiles I have had a lot of experience installing in the past. The new wet saw blade came in handy, but the drill bit I bought from Home Depot probably wouldn't cut through butter, let alone porcelain tile, so I have to find a better option for cutting holes in the tile tomorrow. I hope to finish tiling the basement bathroom tomorrow, then I can move to the guest bathroom upstairs. Here are some pics after I sealed the joints between the Durock sheets, and as I'm installing the tile (which came from Amicus Green Building Center).

We've also worked on other miscellaneous projects, like taping/mudding some drywall in the basement hallway, applying American Clay Earth Plaster around the doors and windows (about 1/4 of the way done with that) and confirming all the details to get the deck started next week.

Any recommendations on a finish carpenter for the trim work? I'm looking for referrals and would love if someone could start soon.

Amicus, American Clay, Rainwater Tanks, Woodpeckers

What a productive weekend working on the house! Yesterday was gloomy and misty, which provided a nice excuse to pick up our porcelain tile from Amicus Green Building Center. The owner, Jason, was there this weekend so we had a chance to visit with him and bounce ideas off of him. I may have written this before, but it's worth repeating -- before you go to Home Depot or Lowes, check out your local businesses -- especially those specializing in green products -- and support these companies. The knowledge base of the folks at Amicus, complimented by their exceptional customer service is great. But their variety of products and extremely competitive pricing is even better. We've really had great experiences working with Jason and his crew at Amicus, so pay them a visit when you need some supplies.

While picking up the tile, we also stocked up on American Clay Earth Plaster, since we ran out applying it in the guest bedroom and hallway. We had bought a relatively small amount initially, and now we needed more. So we picked up 10 bags of American Clay Loma for the base coat.

After we got to the house, we unloaded the tile and the 50 lb. bags of clay, and then I mixed up four buckets of clay for use this week. Andreas spent time digging a trench by the rainwater tanks for the freshwater pipe to come into the house. It's tough work and slow going.

We were on a tight schedule, since our friends Chris and Greg invited us over to dinner, so we couldn't work through the evening. (The dinner was wonderfully delicious, and it was great to have a fun, enjoyable evening off.)

Sunday was extremely productive. Andreas continued digging the trench and got the PVC piping for the rainwater tanks mostly set up. I worked inside on the American Clay installation. While applying the clay, I was listening to music on my iPod and heard a beat that wasn't consistent with the music. At first, I thought Andreas was attacking the dirt with his shovel. Then I had images of Woodpeckers flashing through my mind. I went to the North side to see if the woodpecker was back. No sign of it. But I head the noise again. I banged on the stucco and, sure enough, the woodpecker flew away from the back of the house. To make a long story short, we now have three holes in the stucco from that stupid woodpecker. It's not wood, there's nothing there for him, why is he doing this? I tried scaring him away, which seemed to work for the rest of today, at least.

Back to plastering -- I should tell you that we've had a change of heart with regard to the color for our walls. The drywall walls (i.e., the interior framed walls) will remain as bright white painted walls. The exterior walls (i.e., the compressed earth block walls) that I'm covering with American Clay, will just be tan -- the natural color of the clay -- which is called Snow Canyon. When I'm applying the plaster, it reminds me of chocolate icing my Mom used to put on cupcakes. When that dries, it turn much lighter and looks like a suede jacket. It's warm, inviting, and masculine. And it goes great with the stained concrete floors, the kitchen cabinets, and the white walls and ceiling. So rather than trying to lighten that clay through expensive additives, we're going to stick with the natural snow canyon look. The basement clay application will be lighter, though, since I already have a 50 lb bag of the final coat of plaster mixed with the white additive.

By the end of the evening, the application of American Clay was completed in the entire great room. Tomorrow night, I'll apply it in the master bathroom and start on the master bedroom. Hopefully by Wednesday the entire main level of the house will be covered in clay - in a good way. Then I can move on to bathroom tile installation!

IKEA's Cool, but American Clay's Cooler

Last week, Andreas and I spent two evenings starting to put together our kitchen cabinets from IKEA. I finished most of the cabinet building today. Originally, we planned to get some awesome eco-friendly cabinets from Amicus Green Building Center, but we'll save those for some time in the future when we have more money. For now, we're on an IKEA budget. I'm pleased with the quality of their cabinets. They are an extremely good value and they'll look great after we measure out the exact location for the cabinets and set them in place, add the plinth block to hide the adjustable cabinet feet, and put the "perfekt" finishing pieces on the ends and along the back of the island to give it a finished look. The big cabinet in the middle is where the sink will be and to the right of that is where the dishwasher will go.

Speaking of dishwashers, Lowe's was re-scheduled to deliver our new appliances tomorrow (Monday). But when I got off the plane returning home from Tampa last night (where I presented on business aviation to the Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association aviation summit), I had a voice mail from Lowe's stating they'd be at the house on Sunday to deliver the appliances. So I skipped church to ensure I was at the house for the delivery, and then got a call from the delivery driver telling me he was going to deliver the refrigerator. But what about the other appliances? Well, it seems they screwed it up a bit and didn't have everything together on one truck. So no delivery today - all the appliances now will come tomorrow. This will be their third attempt, so hopefully the third time is the charm.

Neighbors from across the street, Helen and Jeff, stopped by to visit and check on our progress. Falls Church is such a nice place and our neighbors are wonderful and enjoyable people. It was nice to visit with them.

After I finished putting the cabinets together, I loaded the truck with the cardboard from the IKEA flat-pack boxes and was about to head to the city recycling bin to drop the cardboard off. But I got a better offer! Sarah from next door invited me over to their place for some homemade soup her husband had prepared. I enjoyed a bowl of delicious soup with kale, potato, and sausage, as well as some yummy chicken barbecue. We visited for a while after I ate and I enjoyed watching their daughter, Ellie, play as only a careless toddler can do. To be so young with so few worries again.... :-)

With a full tummy, I went back to work and primed some of the exterior walls with the American Clay Sanded Primer. It is what it sounds like - primer with sand in it. I applied that to smooth areas of the walls (e.g., where the drywall met the earth block wall, the drywall installers feathered joint compound onto the earth block wall to ensure a smooth seam at the corner). The primer seals that joint compound and the sand gives it grit so the American Clay Earth Plaster sticks to it.

While plastering, I had another nice diversion when my sister, Jessica, called. We hadn't talked in a while so it was nice to catch up and hear about the good things happening in her life. I wrapped up plastering after I ran out of plaster in the one bucket I had carried upstairs. I'm taking Monday off, so I'll bring a second bucket up then and continue plastering the guest bedroom. Scheduled interruptions tomorrow will be the appliance delivery and Ferguson dropping off the toilet bowls, sinks, faucets, etc. And I'll drop that cardboard off for recycling, before it rains later this week.

Project Update

Sorry for the infrequent posts. Lest anyone think we've given up on the house, nothing could be further from the truth. We have been making progress, which is refreshing!

What's really great is that the passive solar design of the house and the TerraBrick wall construction with concrete floors as thermal masses really work! It's been sunny, but relatively cool, all week, and the nighttime temps have been in the 30s/40s. We've been working in the house very comfortably without coats/jackets or any supplemental heat -- just the sun during the day heating up the bricks/floor which emit the heat at night when it's cold outside.

Here's a quick snapshot of what we've been busy with:

• The main level interior walls are painted with American Pride paint from Amicus Green Building Center. One of the neighbor's children said we should paint the walls green, since it's a green house. Her sister insisted we should paint the house as tie-dye and get bean bag chairs for furniture. Also a cool idea. But we opted for white interior walls and ceilings to keep things bright.
• The Modern Fan Company ceiling fans arrived from YLighting yesterday, and the extensions arrived today, so we will install those next week when we install the recessed LED lights in the ceiling. We've been coordinating with Tom the electrician to schedule a time for him to install the outlets and light switches.
  
• The concrete floors have been stained (two coats) and sealed (two coats) and they look magnificent!
• The main level building envelop TerraBrick walls mostly have been prepped for American Clay Earth Plaster application. I need to finish that work in the guest bedroom, and then will be able to start applying the plaster - that should be a fun, but time-consuming, project.
• When Steve Clark's crew came for the drywall install, we told him the only rooms in the basement to get drywall were the bedroom and bathroom. We forgot about the ceiling over the stair landing and the hallway to the basement bathroom and bedroom. With German precision, Andreas cut the drywall and we screwed the drywall boards into the joists; now we need to tape, mud and paint that.
  
• We have been putting together our kitchen cabinets from IKEA after dinner each night this week. I know, they're not the greenest choice in the world, but they're better than many other options that are available to us. The decision to go with IKEA was budgetary, but the quality actually is pretty darn good. It just takes time to put the cabinets together, and the instructions are not the best.
  
• With the exception of some PVC piping we need to purchase yet, Andreas now has all of the parts required to finish the rainwater capture system installation. But since he'll be traveling for a bit for work, it'll be tough to get that done as quickly as we'd like.
  
• We're working through some deck installation questions and getting quotes for the deck. The quotes have been all across the board in cost and time to complete.
  

Lots of other small details are being tended to, such as meeting with potential subcontractors to get quotes to finish up certain projects, etc.

Shopping Spree

I'm back from my Association's annual meeting & convention, which was very successful. The weeks leading up to the Convention were busier than usual, so I wasn't able to post to the blog. Since I returned last Friday, I've been catching up on work, and working on the Erdhaus.

Shopping for fixtures for the house has been a high priority and a nice diversion from all the work we have yet to do. We ordered tile for the bathrooms and bought LED lights at Amicus Green Building Center in Kensington, MD. The master bathroom will have porcelain tile (12" x 24" horizontal) dark grey tile for the shower walls, and 1" x 1" black (color=carbon) porcelain tile for the shower floor. We selected 18" x 18" ceramic tile for the guest bathrooms. The upstairs color is cocoa and the downstairs color is a light tan. It's kind of funny - Andreas said I could pick the tile colors for the guest bathrooms, as long as I didn't pick tan or brown. As it turns out, we picked the tile colors together, and the ones we liked best were tan and brown. The LED lights were on close-out. Perm lighting is the manufacturer and they were acquired by another company. So the discontinued model was being offered by Amicus for a great price ($70 per 6" recessed light). Obviously they are energy efficient.

From YLighting, we ordered three ceiling fans - one for the living room, one for the guest bedroom, and one for the master bedroom. The ceiling fans are the Velo line by Modern Fan Company.


Tom, the electrician, is scheduled to start installing the interior light fixtures next week. We're holding off on exterior installations until the deck is built.

Another selection we have made is for the walkway to the house. Maryann from Terra Landcaping brought over some permeable pavers and marked out with orange marking paint where the walkway will be. While we have the pavers for the walkway, we're electing to go with a simple gravel driveway/parking area (until I win the lottery and can afford to put permeable pavers there instead).

In addition to having fun shopping, we've been working hard on the projects that we're responsible for. Andreas posted photos of the stained concrete floor. We cleared out the items that were in the great room, cleaned the floor there, and put two coats of stain in the great room. Well, Andreas did that and I helped a bit with the first coat of the soy-based stain. Andreas did the first coat of soy-based sealer on the floor today. The sealer will soak in and then we'll put a second coat on and allow it to dry overnight.


The floors look like a marble or granite counter top. The concrete soaks in the stain differently, so it gives texture and variations in color. The Acri-Soy stain and sealer also came from Amicus Green Building Center.

I took yesterday off from work to paint and my goal was to finish all the painting on the main level of the house. It took a bit of time to get set up, and I realized quickly that I first needed to get the shop vac out to clean up a lot of drywall dust that was in the clerestory area. Then it became clear to me that in order for the paint to look high quality, I needed to do a second coat of primer on the walls before applying the final coat of paint. So I applied the primer in the guest bedroom, guest bathroom, and guest hallway and I put the final coat of paint on the walls in the guest bedroom and hallway. I had finished the great room walls and the pantry last week (right after returning home from our Convention) so almost all the paining (oops, I meant to type painting) on the West side of the house is done (just the guest bathroom to finish). Then I can do the second coat of primer and then paint in the master bedroom, closet, and bathroom. I should be able to finish that this Saturday.

There were a lot of interruptions yesterday, which were welcome (painting gets old after a bit, so it's nice to have a break every now and then). Several people came by to look at various projects so they can prepare quotes for us. Another possible subcontractor called to set a time to look at connecting the radiant floor heating system. Lowes was supposed to deliver our appliances, but I called the night before to reschedule for some time in November since the lot is a mud pit. Even though they called later in the evening to confirm that the delivery was delayed, I got a call from the delivery folks stating my delivery was next on their list and they'd be at the house in 30-60 minutes. Oops. I explained the situation and they apologized, so it was a non-issue.

After Andreas finished his meetings at work yesterday, he came to the house and we installed some drywall on the basement ceiling together. We forgot to ask the drywall subcontractor to do a section of the ceiling at the stair landing and the hallway into the downstairs bedroom area. It took a few cuts of drywall and we installed the two sections together. I'll work on taping/mudding/sanding the drywall in the coming days.

While the inside is taking shape, we're hoping the weather will cooperate a bit so we can re-focus on the outside of the house. We started digging more trenches to finish the rainwater storage tank connections. Two trenches for overflow pipes and one trench to bring the water from the tanks to the house. (We've double-plumbed the toilets and hose bibs so they can run City water or rainwater.) Now if we ever again have a period of time without rain so the ground can dry out, we can finish the trenching, get the tanks connected, and then Bob DeMarr's crew can do the final grading.

Once the final grading is done, the subcontractors will install the rest of the cedar siding on the South and West sides of the house. Maryann's crew then can install the permeable paver walkways and we can lay truck loads of mulch over the clay soil to help stabilize the soil and make the lot look much, much nicer than it currently does. And then there's decking to be built, but that's a blog posting of its own - another expensive disaster we're trying to mitigate, compliments of Aaron/Cornerstone Building Services.

Each day's accomplishments brings us a step closer to moving in the house. It's important to recognize how far we've come, since it's easy to see how far we have yet to go.

Staining Cedar

There's a particular look we were going for with the cedar stain and I think we're achieving it! At Amicus Green Building Center in Kensington, MD, we purchased a "one coat only" stain that's made from plant oils. The color we chose is mahogany, which will give the beautiful orange-ish, red color we'd like for the cedar. This will be beautiful with the lighter color stucco below and the dark metal roof. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the cedar arrived on Friday. I had ordered the stain from Amicus a couple of weeks ago, it arrived, so I picked it up after work on Friday evening and I spent the weekend staining. I got most of the shiplap cedar siding done on three sides, and all of the cedar trim on one side. I only made it through a couple of the longer cedar fascia boards before running off to a friend's 60th birthday dinner. In any case, I made a lot of progress and Andreas is off tomorrow so he'll pick up where I left off - finishing the cedar fascia boards and the final side of the cedar shiplap siding. I have some more shiplap to stain for the outdoor shower, but there's not a big rush to get than completed since I'll build that fencing around the shower at my leisure. Here are some pics of the stain and the wood - both finished and unfinished.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel....

....was a close-out sale at Amicus Green Building Center in Kensington, MD.

We spent many hours on Friday searching for energy-efficient lighting at Dominion Electric in Arlington, VA and at IKEA in College Park, MD. With the exception of IKEA, contemporary-styled energy efficient lighting is not easy to come by -- at least not on a budget. In particular, we were shopping for recessed LED lights and LED "step lights" to go on the exterior of the house, in the interior hallways, and lighting the stairs into the basement. We received preliminary pricing from Dominion on several products -- none were the LED lighting we had hoped for as that was all too expensive or the sales rep felt the light would not be bright enough. They had none of the product in stock, it all would be special order, so we had to take her word for it. We had compared prices on-line, letting the Dominion rep know that we were "educated" customers and while we'd like to give our business to a local company, we are very cost conscious. By the end of the day on Friday, we were exhausted and feeling like we were compromising on design and, to some extent, energy efficiency, in order to accommodate our budget constraints. But we had narrowed down our choices and we were prepared to move forward with those options. Dominion offered us a contractor's discount and the pricing on the lights were more competitive than what we could find on-line. Stay tuned for more on the lighting.

Before meeting a friend for dinner, we went to the lot to sweep and tidy things up. Andreas also wanted to ensure the contractors who are doing the CEB walls plugged the extension cord back into the sump pump, since the weather forecast overnight and on Saturday morning was for thunderstorms, high winds, and heavy rain. There's one extension cord from the temporary power to the house and the crew has been using that instead of the generator to power their miter saw. It's a good thing we went to the lot -- we discovered that they not only didn't plug the cord back in, but they took the extension cord with them when they left for the weekend. I ran to Home Depot to buy a new extension cord while Andreas swept the dust from the basement.

As predicted, Saturday morning was wet and rainy in DC. We stopped by the lot to ensure the sump pump did it's magic (it did!) and the only water in the basement was what was dripping through the first floor decking. (We can't wait until the house is under roof!) From there, we went to Amicus Green Building Center since they were offering free workshops on sustainable landscape/gardening practices, which featured their own in-house expert and a representative from the National Wildlife Federation. The classes were interesting, Andreas won a door prize (The Best of Backyard Habitat - from the Animal Planet) and we spent much of the afternoon speaking with the owner of Amicus about various needs we had. Well, as it turned out, he had many FANTASTIC lighting options, including the exact step lights we wanted -- and they were LED!!! Even better, they were on close-out sale, substantially less money than the list price, and almost 40% lower than the non-LED, less desirable option we settled on at Dominion. We bought most of what they had left in stock. Amicus also stocks LED recessed lights, which we'll buy there, as they were at a very attractive price as compared to Dominion.

All in all it was a wonderful Easter weekend!