A New Home for the Dunn Family: Day 241

Snow is in the air!

With another snowstorm bearing down, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas instead of the Major League Baseball Opener! Quite a bit has happened on the house in the past week, so let's get caught up!

Ron Leech & Sons - Masonry

Ron & his boys finished off the fireplace last weekend by placing the hearthstone, and they have moved outside! Unfortunately, with all of this wonderful MN weather, they had to build a temporary shelter to keep it warm enough for the mortar to set-up. They should have the walkout basement wall finished by the end of the day. Then they will start on the chimney. They'll finish up with the stone across the front of the house.

Easy does it!

Ain't she a beaut?

That's some tall scaffolding

Nothing like working under a tarp!

Ron applying a skim coat of mortar

This is the backing material on the wall behind the stone

Ron Leech & Son's newest employee!

Nice work Harry!

Quite literally the glue that holds it all together!

Hank (in the blue) has been helping out on our house as well

The finished product

Dave Gessel - The Tile Guy

Tile work is a fussy thing. It's not like picking out carpet (I'll take this one in blue!). First you pick the main tile. Then you pick the accent tile. Then you pick the tile pattern. Then you choose the grout. It's CRAZY! The choices just keep coming. Once you have everything picked out, then the real fun start. You have to make the tile pattern match with the space on the wall! I'm telling you, it's pure madness! Our master bathroom shower is a prime example. We wanted white subway tile & a stone mosaic for the floor. Easy enough. Until, we needed 4x4 tiles on the ceiling to make the grout line match up and bullnose tiles around the recessed shelf and more stone mosaic for the seat and just a bit of Cambria to set the glass walls onto! After all of that, the bathroom tile is coming along nicely. Dave & Gary have been doing a very nice job. They should have the master bath tile finished by tomorrow. Then it's on to the kid's bathroom. Finally, they need to grout all the bathrooms before they're done.

Wet saw for tile

Beadboard in the master bath

Dave & Gary

Master bath shower

Dave Kampsen & Kelly Kerfeld - The Siding Guys

When it comes time to pick a siding material there are a lot of choices. Vinyl, stucco, steel, cement board. All have advantages & disadvantages. We decided early on to go with steel siding. It is studier than vinyl, but it "breathes" better than cement board if water gets behind the siding. That's important with SIPs. Since the SIPs provide the house's structure, bad things happen if the panels get wet and can't dry out.

Initially, we found a nice barn red color through Quality Edge. If you remember, we even had Dave & Kelly put up a sample for us back in January.

Unfortunately, the siding was junk. We tried 3 separate shipments & they all had paint chipping off the edges even before they came out of the box. So...we went with Plan B: Charcoal Grey steel siding from EDCO. It looks great. Another bonus? The company is based in Hopkins, MN! Pretty cool.

Chad Weyer - Brother-in-Law & Electrician Extraordinaire

As I've mentioned several times before, Brian Boser with Kummet Electric is our electrician, and he has been awesome to work with. However, I owe a big thank you to my brother-in-law Chad. He helped me (aka did the work while I "supervised") pull the speaker wire for all of the in-wall speaker wire. He came back up this past weekend and helped me install the actual speakers. They look great! Thanks Chad!

Notice that concerned look on Chad's face?

While cutting hole for the centre speaker, we ran into some resistance. Hmm.. what could that be hiding behind the sheetrock? Oh, yeah. The vent pipe for the bathroom! Doh!