A New Home for the Dunn Family: Day 105

Betsy & Linus watch Sesame Street all the time. At the beginning of each episode they have "the Word on the Street." Well, today in construction land, the Word on the Street is Frustration!

I found myself feeling really frustrated with the house building process this evening. I really shouldn't be too surprised at feeling this way. Instead, I should be surprised that I didn't feel this way sooner! Why am I feeling frustrated? Good question. In a nutshell, major construction delays (4 weeks of downtime since early October) have prevented several key things from getting finished this fall, and we are still a few weeks from getting the house sealed-up. Before the house is sealed-up for the winter, we still need to:

Frame front porch & garage gable
Finish shingling roof
Apply housewrap
Install windows, doors & siding

These delays have created a bunch of not-so-fun problems. Unforunately, the solutions to these problems either cost a lot of extra money and/or delay us from moving into our house until next April! In other words, a "whole lotta badness". Here's a brief rundown:

Masonry work for the front porch, basement walkout & chimney can't be done until next spring due to cold weather

Have to somehow winterize the exposed areas & chimney until next spring

Natural gas service is not stubbed into the house yet

Cost $4/ft to install BEFORE November 1st
Costs $8/ft to install AFTER November 1st

PLUS $480/day to rent Frost Burners (Avg 3-6 days!!!)

Options to remedy include paying 10x the cost to stub in the gas now vs. waiting until April when the prices to back down

Geothermal unit can't be used during construction or it will void the waranty

Means we have to find another way to heat the house this winter so the workers can keep working!
Only option I've heard so far is to Buy/install a used natural gas furnace to use during construction. Awesome! (Can you say bye-bye construction budget?)

Boulder retaining walls still haven't been installed

They are going to try to work on this tomorrow, but if the ground is too hard, they might have to wait until next spring

Cabinetmaker can't measure for cabinets because interior walls haven't been fully framed in yet
HVAC & Plumbing rough-in can't happen until after interior walls are framed
Electric can't begin until HVAC & plumbing are roughed in

UGH!!! New house construction = Not Cool right now. I'm sure anyone who has built a house will tell me similar stories. Oh well. We'll just keep truckin' right along!

Here are some of the latest pics: