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Friday was moving day. We rented a U-Haul on Thursday afternoon, picked up two mattresses, two sofas, and loaded all the accumulated household goods and furniture that had been stored for the past year and dropped it off at the house. When we arrived, we were surprised to find a Christmas wreath adorned with red bow on the outdoor fireplace. Friends passing by on their way to relatives for Christmas had dropped it off along with a great housewarming gift. It was nice to have a touch of the season added to the newly finished house. We had just enough time to unload the truck and finish sealing the stone floors before heading back to Charlotte to celebrate the season with family and friends.
Now that the house is complete, its time to start bringing in the furniture that we've been collecting. In mid-November, we worked with a furniture maker in Todd, NC to make our own dining room table. We had contracted with Tom Sternal to construct one of our bathroom sinks and countertop and when we picked it up he invited us back to work in his shop and build our own table after admiring his many furniture "works of art". We took a long weekend and in a little more than a day drove off with an incredible poplar slab trestle table. We've been finishing it for the past few weeks during the warmer days and now its complete and ready to go.
The stone floors on the main floor are Pennsylvania blue stone. To give them a more rich finish, we started applying a sealer to the floors by Aquamix called Enrich and Seal. It not only gives them a darker finish but brings out the rich variegated browns, blues, and charcoal grays. Its a wipe on, wipe off process. You pour the liquid on fairly thick and after five minutes you wipe off the liquid that has not been absorbed into the stone. Check out the huge difference it makes.
Its been two months since I reported that we let our builder go and that we embarked on completing the house ourselves. Over that period of time, we have hired and met many interesting contractors, shopped online for unusual building materials, and learned how to do many new things(many of which have been blogged about already). In has all finally come together and I am extremely happy to report that on Friday, December 16, the inspector came and signed off on the final inspection of the house issuing a CO(certificate of occupancy). On Saturday, we fired up the hot water and radiant floor heat, as well as the water to the house, for the first time. We were a little unsure how long it would take the house to heat up with the radiant floor heat, but by Sunday morning, the house was very comfortable and the stone floors on the main level were quite toasty. Camping has never been so good!
This week was our annual Christmas tree farm trip and we had several friends up to check out the house. While showing them around, I forgot to take pics of this week's progress. There were quite a few things finished and/or started this week. The electrician was on site and finished up the lighting on the outside of the house, the screen porch panels were put into place all except a few that were awaiting trim to be painted, and the painter started staining and painting all the woodwork in the house. G&B Energy showed up to run the gas lines and bury the gas tank, but they left without completing it after hitting rock while digging the lines. They are due back this week with more powerful equipment to complete the job.
After collecting parts for about 4 weeks, we were able to install the hand rail this past weekend. It started out as a 20ft long 1 1/4" galvanized pipe. It was cut down to 14 ft for travel at the hardware store and the ends were painfully trimmed with a pipe cutter to the correct size of just under 13 feet. With the addition of returns and supports researched and bought online from Kee Klamp, it was a fairly easy installation. I would highly recommend the addition of an impact driver to your arsenal of power tools. Its an electric screw driver that is almost turbo charged and applies pressure at the same time it is driving the screw in. It was invaluable for driving screws into pipe for this project.
