News From the Groundhog

And the groundhog came up from his hole, turned his eyes toward the skies, capturing in view the early glare of the sun against shingled slope and brick façade, to the pile of broken cinder, wherein he turned and declared to all who would hear, "I have risen and I have seen, and therefore I proclaim: Six more weeks of rental." To which the builder replied, "Well, maybe seven or eight." And the clouds came, and the sleet and snow began to fall.

It occurs to me that it has been a couple of months since I last provided an update on Chase Manor 2.0. A great deal of progress has been made, to include the completion of the bricking, hanging drywall, stairways and rails, and trim work. There's a new garage floor (with a significant defect that'll need to be repaired), garage doors and openers, and built-in bookcases in the bonus room upstairs. The Hardieplank siding is finally up at the front door and on the backside where the deck will be, ready to be painted when it is warm enough to do so.

Interior painting is about to begin (hopefully), to be followed by flooring, cabinets, countertops, deck construction, low voltage finishing, bath fixtures and landscaping. We had hoped to be in by the one year anniversary, but that is no longer in the cards. If things go well the next few weeks, we may be able to get a certificate of occupancy by mid-March or so.

The garage exterior. The keystones are new - we didn't have those the first time.

We changed the column design in the great room / foyer / dining room from a cylindrical design to what you see here. Not entirely sure about it, but maybe it'll grow on me. One change not pictured, is that the trim at the top of the column was reduced in size, so that it is not quite as obnoxious as you see here.

The new fireplace mantle design. Lower than the first by about 6 inches or so.

And now to the bookcases. In the original house, the built-in bookcases spanned the length of the bonus room wall. Each set of shelves was painstakingly sanded and painted (by me), with the backpanel painted the wall color and the shelf faces painted the trim. This produced a wonderful effect that I really enjoyed. However, the new roof truss construction forced a change to a narrower cavity design to fit between the trusses. Given this constraint, we opted for fewer shelves across the wall, giving us the corners back and a little more wall space. Fewer books, to be sure, but we will now have a long basement wall for standalone bookshelves if we so desire. And yes, much to the painter's relief, these new shelves will be trim color, including the back panels. The additional wall space eliminates the need to paint the backpanels separately.

Below is a picture of the original bookcase wall design.

Yes, I was hung up on the bookcases. But I'm over it now. Really. (You believe that, right?)

Not much else to say at this point, other than we are very ready to have this finished. The sleet and snow mix have stopped now, leaving just the lightest of dustings on the ground and ice on the roads. Here's hoping the next two months fly by.