Days 36-40 The Devil is in the Details

What's wrong with this picture?

With any endeavor, it's the little things that matter.  One month into this project I know very intimately how true this saying is!

We picked a fantastic group of contractors to build our house.  They have all been easy to work with, extremely professional, and very skilled at what they do.  However with 10 different contractors, things are bound to fall between the cracks as the project rolls along.  The important thing is to catch little issues before they become BIG issues.  The picture above is a perfect example.  That is a picture of the ventilation system exhaust going through the concrete foundation.  As you can see, the floor truss just happens to perfectly block the opening.  When I saw this over the weekend, I got pretty anxious & started having visions of hacking apart the floor truss in order to get the ventilation in.  I called Tom, our general contractor, & Brian, our HVAC guy, on Monday morning.  They came right out to check out what needed to be done.  It turns out there was a mistake on the floor truss drawings that lead to the exhaust being put in the wrong spot.  The drawing showed the truss resting on top of the foundation, but the trusses actually hangs inside the foundation.  Oops!  Fortunately, there is just enough room between the wall & the truss to fit our exhaust piping.

There were two other minor hiccups last week.  The second issue involved our pantry.  It's the room framed-in on the right in the picture below.  See any major problems?  I'll give you a hint, it's what's not there that's the problem.

Holy no door Batman!

That’s right, NO DOOR!!!  Jamie agreed that it’s rather difficult to use a pantry with no door, so he very kindly offered to frame one in for me at no extra cost!

Standing proudly next to my door

 The third mistake involves a door that was put in (just in the wrong place).  When Extreme Panel converted our house plans to SIPs, they asked me if we could move the doorway you see on my right 6 inches to the side (to line up with the panels).  I said, "Sure.  no problem."  And it wasn't a problem, except that I forgot to tell Ron Leech before he laid the foundation block.  Fortunately, Ron came back out the next day and moved the block, so the garage walls could be put up on time.  For those keeping score at home, it's now Ron 2, Joel 1.  Thanks Ron!

FYI - Over the weekend, it rained for the first time since construction began. All the local farmers were very thankful. I’ll be honest though, I had been dreading this day from the moment we started building. There’s just something about your new house exposed to the elements that makes a person nervous.  Oh well, the sun came our & things dried out nicely.  More rain on the way later this week though!  :-(

Window well or Fox hole?  You decide!