Rockin' and rollin' -- downhill

We've learned a few things about peacocks, one of which is that they like to eat flowers and leaves. (Also scorpions, but that doesn't help us much here.) Rachel (my landscape designer and friend) is not happy with Larry. Fortunately, it seems that orange caution ribbon fluttering in the breeze helps scare Larry away from the baby plants within its perimeter. So far, the plants that Rachel, her friend Marly and I put in the ground on Wednesday are all there, though some are missing a few tops.

Larry is still making himself comfortable, apparently not fazed by people or trucks -- though he doesn't get close enough to touch. We knew he liked the sandwich bread that had been tossed his way, but we thought he could use some healthy food -- and it turns out he likes carrots and celery tops, too.

The house is still a whirlwind of activity. The electricians have been placing and installing lights and switches, and the painters must be absolutely thrilled because the siders are FINALLY (almost) finished, so the painters are working on the exterior of the house.

We also have the concrete guys keeping busy, but precisely what they're doing depends on the weather. Of course, they can pour concrete when it's dry, and look what they've done so far:

Our front step. It started raining after it was poured yesterday, so the guys covered it with plastic.

The back walkway was poured yesterday as well; the plastic cover was removed today.

The downstairs patio went in today. No rain so far.

But when it's raining, the concrete guys make forms in preparation for pouring the concrete in dry weather -- and we've also convinced them to do some side jobs in their downtime. After all the grading, big machinery and dirt-moving involved in building this house, the dirt around our house was grooved and lumpy and frankly treacherous to walk on. Since the concrete guys already have graders on site for the concrete, they agreed to flatten out the lumps in the main areas of the yard, as well as move the boulders that we've purchased both for purpose (holding up a hill) and interest in our landscaping. The small and medium boulders were delivered today, and the large boulders will be delivered tomorrow (if they didn't arrive late today already).

We also purchased more decorative basalt stepping stones and some big slabs to create a bench in our memory garden. (We have quite a few family members, both human and animal, to remember in this garden.) These stones are more fragile, however, and wouldn't survive the standard delivery (which involves being dropped unceremoniously from a dump truck), so I picked them up from the landscape supply store and brought them in my car. My plan was to take them from my car to the barn (our exterior storage room) in the garden cart/wagon we purchased last weekend, which is pulled with a handle in the front, just like a regular wagon. As I loaded the cart, I realized how heavy it was becoming and made sure to limit the load to what I could pull -- less than half full. I maneuvered the cart around the Imagine Energy van (our HVAC guys) that had just pulled in and braced myself for taking it down the hill along the west side of the house and around the corner to the south side, where the barn is. I was aware that the weight of the rocks meant extra velocity for the cart, and tried to keep it slow as I headed down the hill. Unfortunately, my 120 pounds was no match for the cart's couple-hundred pounds and, despite my most frantic efforts, about three-quarters of the way down the hill the cart ran into me, knocked me down, and ran over me. One of our electricians watched the whole thing and shouted to see if I was hurt. Amazingly, there seemed to be no damage to anything but my pride. And I still had rocks to move. I unloaded the rocks into the barn and returned to my car for the next load. I tried to make this load a little lighter than the first load, but when I approached the top of the hill the PC Electric guy offered to take the cart down for me. It tried to run him over as well, but he managed to stay in control.

On my third load, one of the guys from Imagine Energy intercepted me at the top of the hill; he and his partner had watched my tumble while they were still sitting in their van, but by the time they got out I was already up and going again. He took this load down the hill and even helped me unload the rocks into the barn. And then I was down to one final load: the big ol' top to the memory bench. I had attempted to at least stand it up in the trunk well of my car, but I couldn't even budge it. He came over, examined the situation, and went to get his partner. Together they heaved it out of the car and onto the top of the wagon (it didn't fit inside). They pushed and pulled while I steered down to the barn, and they put it in the barn for me. Talk about going above and beyond! We have awesome subs!

The bench top with a few of the stepping stones behind it (and a 10-year-old for comparison).

More stepping stones and the bench legs.

In addition to saving me, the Imagine Energy guys also installed some HVAC stuff:

Actual mechanicals in the mechanicals room! And much more to come ...

We've been keeping busy doing less immediately visible things as well, such as returning to IKEA on Monday. We braved the Memorial Day crowds to order our master closet shelving configuration, some bookshelves and the rest of our pantry shelving. We have spent a crazy amount of money there and we're not done yet -- but at least we're finished with the big stuff.

We've also been talking to a screen guy about installing screens for our fancy-pants windows, and it's been pretty disheartening. Our windows aren't built for screens, so the screens have to be a separate unit. We don't want to screw them into the window drain pan for fear of compromising the water-tight integrity of the structure. The screen guy came up with some solutions, but at nearly $500/door and $250/window it's not realistic. We have some research to do!

Another curious issue with our doors is that, with the exception of the front door, they're actually windows that can function as doors, and as such they don't have handles on the outside. This could be challenging if we want to go outside and close the door behind us, as we do when it's hotter outside than inside. We may have a workaround for our downstairs family room door, but we might just have to get used to it with the rest of them.

An additional behind-the-scenes issue involved in building a new house, at least one that's not part of any formal development, is that you have to activate your mailing address. I inquired about this many months ago at our local post office and recently started actively chasing it down -- i.e., nagging the postmaster. To get the mailbox go-ahead, the postmaster has to go to the site and approve the mailbox placement. The post office prefers that mailboxes are in order of address, but all the other homes on our "street" (technically a private drive, since it's an easement through our properties) were built 15 years ago and the mailboxes have long been in place. After a couple of reminders from me and a change in postmasters, our new postmaster visited the site and realized that the only place in the existing crammed jumble of mailboxes was on the end. Out of order. And he agreed that that would just have to do. So now we just need to buy a mailbox, stick it on the post and let him know that it's ready.

We're down to the final stretch, and so much is happening at once, both with and without our immediate input. Some days I feel as if I'm having questions and requests for decisions coming at me from every direction, and when I start to feel overwhelmed I remember how grateful I am that we have Val to coordinate all the real stuff in this house-building project. He manages a constant flow of people and jobs on the site, and despite how busy it can be, it all works well together.

One of the final pieces of the house puzzle is our wood flooring, which can't go in until the subfloor has a sufficiently low moisture content. We're almost there, so it looks like the wood floor will go in next week, as well as the central vac. The following week we get shower doors and windows, railings and our asphalt driveway, and our master closet will be assembled. The week after that is our final inspection, and hopefully we'll start to move. The end is in sight!