EIFS and Window Framing Progress

It's wonderful to stop by the lot after a long day at work and see that some progress was made on the house! I had a big smile on my face tonight. It was starting to get dark, so the pictures aren't the best, but they show the EIFS scratch coat that is being applied to the Compressed Earth Blocks and a few shots to show the new, corrected framing for the windows.

We've been struggling to get a plumber out to the lot to do the rough in plumbing and arrange for the sewer/water hook up with the street. The plumber we plan(ned) to use (that's still TBD depending how some open issues get resolved) was unavailable for an extended period of time, so we tried to get quotes from three other companies. One provided a high quote with no supporting detail. Despite multiple requests, they never provided any detail so, for all we know, they just picked a number out of the air. Two other companies came by and promised quotes quickly. Despite multiple follow-up phone calls, and even paging one of them after hours, not a single return call or quote has come our way. Last I checked we were in a recession of biblical proportions and people were desperate work. Guess that's not true for plumbers. Or it is true and none of them are good business people. Any thoughts on that readers?

The EIFS crew dropped their scaffolding off on Friday, the extruded foam board arrived today, and they applied their scratch coat to three sides of the house - West, North and East. They have only enough scaffolding for those sides, so they'll get to the Southern side later this week as they work their way around the house. Tomorrow they'll apply the foam board and the two coats of synthetic stucco follow.

The framers came back late this afternoon to complete what they couldn't last week because of the thunderstorms. They completed the framing so the 22 clerestory windows can be installed when they arrive. Our Construction Manager has left multiple messages for Jay at Quality Window and Door to get a status report on the windows, so Aaron can schedule the crew to come to install them. The new/correct windows supposedly were ordered on May 28 and would take 4-6 weeks for delivery. So that means late this week or sometime within the next two weeks we should receive those. It sure would be nice to get that status report. Maybe Jay's related to the plumbers? Just kidding - he probably is waiting to return Aaron's call until he has an update from the factory.

And maybe the best news of the day - the sump pump was plugged in tonight when I checked, and the basement was drying out nicely.