Not Quite Finished

Daniel (tile installer) got some help on Friday but they did not quite finish laying the sunroom tile floor. They left some color chips for T to select the grout color which they will apply on Monday. T says she is very happy with the way it is looking. She also needs to select the specific tiles she wants on the hearth. Looks like we are going to have quite a few tiles left over.

I mentioned to Mike that we have guests arriving in a couple of weeks. He said he would try to have the deck around the hot tub installed so we can use the tub, as we are sure everyone will be anxious to sit in a hot tub in the middle of August. When John delivered the hot tub several weeks ago, he said that when we were ready to commission the tub to call him and he would come out for the initial fill and chemical treatment. Today, I called and talked with Bobbe. She said when we were within a couple of days of being ready to fill to call again and schedule with John. She said it would only take an hour or so for John to do what he needed to do.

Tile Started

Today, Daniel (tile installer) arrived and actually got started laying tile around 10:30 am. Earlier, he laid out a one-half overlap and a one-third overlap for us to evaluate. T had a long night and was not up when Mike and I discussed the options with Daniel. The bottom line was that we agreed we would go with a one-third overlap with a stair-step arrangement. Daniel had gotten the first course down when T arose. I related our discussion to her and she quickly went down to take a look. Her decision was to got to the one-half overlap. Lucky for me, Daniel did not have to undo anything to go that direction. He expected to have some help today that did not materialize. Someone is expected to help him tomorrow. He predicted he would not be finished until Monday of next week. It looks good so far.

No other activity today. Mike said that we was hopeful we would be ready to begin installation of the bar by the middle of next week.

Sadly, we received a letter from our landscaper today informing us that they are withdrawing from our project. The letter was full of false statements, trying to justify their actions, but the bottom line is that they were unwilling to honor the common sense conditions we had insisted upon for their installation activities. Those conditions were to not to block our neighbors driveways and to stay within our property lines. Too bad. It will set back our landscaping schedule, but it will not prevent our ultimate achievement.

Tiled Tomorrow

The tile guys showed today and applied the anti-fracture membrane on the sunroom floor. They also moved all the tiles from the garage to the sunroom. We are expecting them to install the tile tomorrow.

We were relieved to see the roofers/guttering people show up today to install the flashing around the hot tub bay. We have been waiting literally months to get this installed. Sadly, we see they did not finish the job. There is at least one section is still missing. Don't know if they ran out of material or ran out of time. While we have paid the entire bill due for the roofing job (still not completed), we have not been given an invoice for the guttering.

Jerry and his painting crew were back today working on the final exterior coat on both the garage and sunroom. Not sure if they finished.

Jaime (masonry) stopped by to pick up their gear. One of the five brick pallets had also been removed. Not sure when the other four are going to be hauled off. We complimented him on the stone work on the chimney breast.

As expected, Josh (solar) was here early and spent the morning investigating the PV system. I went down around 10:30 am to talk with them but they had departed without speaking to us. I guess we will wait for them to contact us with their findings.

Stoned

The masonry guys returned and went to work. It was a pleasure to watch them. They arrived at 7:00 am and worked until almost 7:00 pm. We congratulated them as the were leaving. The mortar will cure and is expected to lighten to a buff color. Even if it doesn't lighten much, I like it! They did a nice job around the mantel.

Mike was here today and said the floor tile people (Gabe) will be here tomorrow. He said their first step will be to apply a coat to the concrete floor which will help prevent hairline cracks in the concrete from propagating through the porcelain tile. The tile installation itself may not be finished until Thursday. We discussed which direction the tiles will run. These are 12"x 24" tiles. Mike said Gabe's recommendation, based on the components of our sunroom, is to run the long edge of the tile perpendicular to the line between the hot tub and the fireplace. He also said that, due to the excellent quality of the tiles, we could apply them with 1/2 overlap as opposed to the the 1/3 overlap suggested by the tile supply people. T was amendable to both these recommendations.

Mike also showed us his attempts to create a pattern for the south porch portico support (we are currently still using a 2"x 4"). His example was worth merit, but T gave him some further insights on what she wanted. The challenge is to be able to cut her vision out of a 16"x 4" beam. That is the largest beam available. Mike thought IT COULD WORK!

The painters were also here today applying the final satin coat to the exterior brown trim. Looks good.

A up close view of the new Red Maple.

Stoned Tomorrow

The masonry people showed up today and prepared to lay the stone on the chimney breast tomorrow. They installed expanded metal mesh, masked off the surrounding wood and started bringing the stone around from the front. They implied they would be able to finish tomorrow.

Mike and Nate started installing the Tiger wood on the connecting porch, but ran out of wood.

We received a note from Frank that they would not be working on the second AC unit this week due to the high temperatures (supposed to be 97F tomorrow, but a cool front is due in Wednesday).

We also got a note from Josh (solar). He confirmed that the inverter software used to mitigate shade was not activated on our inverters. He said that they will be out Wednesday to activate this feature and to "do a string map of the modules since we do not have one from the original install". I still find this strange that they did not document the original installation. I am hopeful they will find something wrong. We had our best peak performance on Saturday with a maximum of about 6.5 kW. This occurred around 2:30 pm (daylight savings time). The one inverter is still lagging the other by 0.5 kW, but it actually got up to 3.0 kW, which is a high for it. Still, the overall output is less than what we would expect.

No electrical, no roofing, no guttering, no landscaping today.