Birthday digger day!

My birthday gift to Eliot was "digger driver for a day." What I didn't think about when I gave that gift was that it means Dad is "shovel driver for a day."

It took Eliot a while to work out where the various controls were. After a near mishap, we asked our neighbor Russ for some tips, and he got Eliot off to a good start.

By the afternoon, Eliot was driving the tractor so close to the house that his hand wouldn't fit between tire and siding. I think he was showing off.

Christina came up with the other kids and some sandwiches.

There was one trillium left, and it had turned a gorgeous purple. Siobhan collected it.

Guinivere dabbed primer on nail heads.

Siggy carted around cinder blocks!

Unfortunately, the intended painting project never worked out because the only side of the house ready to paint was in full sun and the surface was super hot.

But we did get the foundation holes backfilled with the digger, and Eliot filled an old perc test hole, and we got trim onto two sides of the house. And a couple pretty solid sunburns.

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It is DONE!

The final inspection was today. This guy is Levi, the county inspector, and as you can see, we passed! He only had two questions for me. One was about the energy efficiency credits and the blower door test, for which I had the compensating paperwork for the low-flow faucets already prepared. The second was asking for a smoke detector outside the bedroom; I pointed up and he saw that we already had one tucked into the alcove. And that was that! I got up at 5am to be certain I'd be here before the inspector, and I was ... by about five hours. In that time, I took another truckload of tool buckets down to the storage container, then picked up all the floor protection in the great room and vacuumed and mopped. It's glowing! Then I went back down to the storage container to get a hammer so I could glue in 32 wood plugs to cover the screws for the french doors. I fought with installing the screens, but the frames are too big! The manufacturer said "yeah we don't even make th...

Odds and ends

I made progress on a bunch of little things today. I painted a fencepost in 12" segments and pounded it in at the property line, where the outdoor camera can see it. Now we can measure the snow accumulation. I worked on finishing up almost-complete receptacle branch circuits. The first one I worked on was a little mystery: all the receptacles were installed, but the power didn't reach past a certain point in the line. After some investigation with a wire tracer and watching through the videos we took before covering the walls, I worked out what had happened: two receptacles shared a stud bay, facing into opposite rooms. The plan had been to bring power up to one box, jump over to the other box, and continue back down to the crawlspace to the next box. We forgot the jumper. I couldn't fish a wire between the boxes myself, so that repair waits. Upstairs, installing two receptacles completed the branch. The bathroom vent hole in the tile backer board was a skosh too small. ...

Appliances and mirrors

In pursuit of being ready for final, I came up and installed the fridge and dishwasher with Jeff. We hung mirrors in the bathrooms.

Howell Cabin

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