Water test passed - Erie county certified!

Great news!

Monday morning, the Erie County inspector came to take a water sample and inspect the total water system installation.

All good - passed!



By Tuesday (10/22/13) late afternoon, I received a call stating that the test results came back and we are good-to-go. By Thursday, we got the hard-copy in the mail. One more thing completed and checked off the "to-do" list...

Ceiling wood install started

The plan this weekend was to work on grading the lot and possibly plant some grass seed. However, the weather did not cooperate (too rainy and muddy) so we decided to defer the remaining site work until next year. This sucks.

Plan B

Since I had already prepared the ceiling wood a few weeks ago, we could proceed with this installation any time in any weather. Chris and Tim Arnold were the critical team members with the experience needed to get this rooling on Saturday afternoon.

Here are some photos of the progress over the weekend and into Monday afternoon.

Chris - the man with the plan

 

Big Tim - working the saw

 

 "Kudos" to Chris for making some serious custom cut-outs

By mid-day Monday, we are probably 85% done. Unfortunately, I need to buy a few more 12 foot boards since there are only a few left over and certainly not enough to finish the job.

Looking towards the back of the cottage 

 

Looking towards the front of the cottage

 

Huge thanks to Chris and Tim Arnold for making the ceiling happen. When you see this live, it really looks great.

 

Without fail, I still managed to mud more drywall for probably 4-6 hours. This really seems like a never ending process. I think I am now on the 7th, 5-gallon bucket of joint compound with probably 3 or 4 more to go.

 

Next steps, head back up in a few weeks and finish the ceiling! 



Ceiling wood prepared

Not the most exciting weekend on the island. Actually, kinda boring. The weather was nice heading up on Friday but slow rained the rest of the time. I seriously did not leave the cottage all weekend and missed any downtown activities that may have been underway.

Progress made...

• Water tank bleached
• Ceiling boards stained
• Co-axial cable 5-way splitter installed
• Some drywall mudding
• Quality time spent with island dog "Maddie"

Big thanks to neighbor George for bleaching my water tank, pumping out and then filling with fresh water - Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. This is a big accomplishment and one more step towards getting the final inspection completed by the county.

I did manage to stain 70 - 12 foot ceiling boards with clear poly urethane. This is just tedious, slow work. Then you need to accommodate for drying space and drying time. So, the whole process took about 10 hours of work over two 1/2 days. I built a drying rack last weekend that I used to stack 1/2 of the boards at a time. Here are some photos from Friday night with ~35 boards stained.

Ceiling boards drying after applying clear poly urethane 



I also worked on wiring up the co-axial cable splitter in the attic and connected it to the HD antenna. Still need to put co-axial connectors in most of the rooms, but I ran out of RG6 connectors.

Saturday afternoon, I started mudding a second coat to Neil's room and closet to cover the corner tape and screw holes. FYI - there is still a mountain of drywall mud work that needs to be done. I am somewhat burned-out on drywall mud for now. My new plan is to hit it hard in the Spring and make a push to get it done.

Probably the highlight of the weekend was that "Maddie" the island dog, came with me for the quick rainy weekend. She kept me proper company all weekend.

Next steps...

Planning to go back the weekend of Oct 18-20th to do the final grading of the property with Chris's borrowed tractor. This should be fun.