Paul & Victoria's Future Skypark Home
Week #32 (continued):
Friday, September 1st had Alberto & Rudy on the roof placing the last of the roof tiles (and fixing several broken ones). They still need to get the ridge caps on which they will do next week. After that, there is very little left for them to do as we await the steel guys to construct, powdercoat then install our tower handrails...
At this point, with the house nearly complete, it is VERY hard to take pictures of things completed ;-)
Here is Alberto & Rudy sitting under the now-working misters and having a 'cold-one' after spending a hot day roofing the back of the house :-)
Week #33:
I hope you all had a nice Labor Day weekend! Victoria & I spent the weekend at the house. She started unloading dry foods into the cupboards, and I flew 3 roundtrips to John Wayne (SNA) airport in 2 days ;-)
Tuesday, September 5th had Alberto & Rudy putting up the last two ceiling fans and had us waiting for the tower handrails...
The house is 99.9% complete and only lacks some ridge caps for the roof and the final (color) deck coat for the patio on top of the garage. I don't see this happening (along with 'Certificate of Occupancy') for 2 more weeks at best :-(
Wednesday found me arriving to an empty house...no Alberto, Bryan or Rudy.... They are on their other jobsite now, full-time. I worked on the short, 10' white PVC fence on the western front-side of the house.
Thursday, I finished up the white fence, so the only way now to walk from the front to the back of the house is to walk along the east driveway.
I also put our new address plaque on the house, custom sand-cast by Bryson Wagner, owner of Bryson's Stuff. I was searching the internet for a plaque when I came across his website which had what I was looking for... except it had a picture of a Velocity aircraft. If I could provide a silohuette, he'd put the RV on the plaque.
I found a picture I liked, enlarged it, cut it out with an exacto knife, Magic-markered it black, recopied, scanned and sent it to him. Check out the beautiful results!
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You can e-mail Bryson or call him directly at 717.248.1240. Thank you Bryson!
Another RV-6A moved into our hangar last weekend so now have 3 RVs in the hangar, something I've only dreamed about until now! The helicopter is still out of town for it's annual condition inspection.
Friday, Saturday & Sunday had me working around the house cleaning, painting and 'tinkering' with this & that while Victoria was on a 3-day cruise with a group of lady-quilters ;-)
Week #34:
Monday, September 11th had the carpet installers here with me giving rides to some friends visiting from Salt Lake City. They'd flown here in a Cessna 172 in about 7 hours so I pushed the power in to show them my total time to Salt Lake City: 3 hours 15 minutes. Still waiting on tower rails and probably will for the rest of the week :-(
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday...no rails...just hung out at the house doing whatever...we are still in the 'Hurry up and wait' mode... Window coverings were installed Thursday.
Alberto, Bryan & Rudy were here for a day; they finished up the roof caps, installed the tower A/C and rolled the patio on top of the garage with the final (rubber floor) color-coat.
I started painting the underside of the tower balcony.
Saturday and Sunday, Victoria continued with putting kitchen things away in the cabinets, and I continued with painting the underside of the tower balcony. I'll paint the last of the red steel after the rails have been welded on, and we decided to have the rails powdercoated white.
Week #35:
Monday, September 18th had us at the house around noontime. We had some visitors stop by while I was doing some light touch-up painting in all the rooms. There was some GREAT news today too;
The inspector will be out Tuesday so we could see SCE connect power this week. We are crossing our fingers ;-)
Tuesday, We got green! As in, a green sticker that gives Southern California Edison the go-ahead to hook-up power to the house!!!!! Bryan had to connect the hangar power wires at the electrical box before the inspector arrived so my hangar is no longer hot-wired to the street (i.e. can't open hangar door to get planes out...) Before he did that, I pulled planes from the hangar, and parked one next to a helicopter on my neighbor's ramp.
After the inspector left, I installed the lights on the fans in the great room and then relaxed on the patio.
Wednesday, I set up an appointment for natural gas hook-up for a week from Friday, and I'm hoping for electric hook-up tomorrow or Friday. The flashing for the double chimney should also be completed this week. Dave Jones of Precision Welding called to let me know the rails would be powdercoated today and that he should start installation tomorrow. Rails for the tower and flashing are the last two items on the to-do list prior to final inspection sign-off...
Thursday the chimney guy was here, took some measurements then left. The power folks also called asking for some information and to let us know they would be out next week to connect power :-( The steel guys didn't make it here but called to say they would be here tomorrow :-) As bored as I was, I worked in the house garage on my hands and knees scrubbing the cement floor clean with water and scrub pads...
Friday, we spent the morning loading up my friend's (borrowed) Suburban with trailer and arrived to the house finding many rails in the driveway as Precision Welding started the installation ;-)
Check out Friday's progress;
There was only one 'error' in the construction...do you see it in the picture with the ladder in it? See Monday's pictures if you don't ;-)
Saturday and Sunday had me packing up 21 years worth of stuff that was in my garage, and I hauled it all to the hangar late Sunday...that was a long day!
Week #36:
Monday, September 25th had the steel guys back with me installing the last chimney cap. We are expecting power and gas hook-us this week. The crew had already made the repair for Friday's mis-measurement with the missing piece already back at the powedercoat shop.
The steel crew spent the day cutting-in the 90 degree elbows. They hope to start running stainless steel cable tomorrow.
The patio fireplace also got it's glass doors, the master closet got carpet and we bought door mats :-)
Victoria is getting her master bathroom decorated quite nicely ;-)
Tuesday, the steel crew continued with the tower handrails, and I was there watching, cleaning up, just hanging out...
Wednesday, the 'gas man' came and connected our natural gas to the house (with meter. LOTS of progress on the handrails too! It was a very tedious job 'stringing' all that stainless-steel wire and fittings, which in the following pictures, is not yet pulled tight. Neil & Jessie plan to finish up Thursday morning, and we called for final inspection for Friday morning. By the way, Neil (with the bandana) is a single/multi-engine airplane and helicopter pilot ;-)
With John Manduca's 'baby' backhoe, we worked on digging the new home for our 10 year old Tortoise, 'Henry' who we've raised since he was 3 weeks old :-) I'll finish that up on Thursday as well using Henry himself for a final 'fit-check' before he goes to hibernation.
Thursday, our contractor John Forrest was in from Missouri and fixed a couple of electrical issues we had (like porch lights staying on 24/7). It was good to see him back in the house he and his crew built :-)
The steel crew was here finishing/tightening up the stainless steel cables on the tower.
It was also a big day for POWER as the power company was there at 5pm connecting permanent power to the house panel!
WE GOT FINALED TODAY - FRIDAY (9/29/2006)!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kern County Inspector Bill was here and finaled both the house and hangar, yippeeee!
After 8 months of watching our house being built, we were issued our 'Certificate of Occupancy'. We then drove back to Lancaster for the final load of emptying our 'old' home. We unloaded the trailer (near midnight) then spent our first night there Friday. The dogs were obviously worn out after all that moving :-)
Saturday kept us busy emptying boxes and getting some furniture into the house. Saturday was also exactly one year since we delivered our plans to Kern County 'plan-check' for approval to build our skypark home...
Back to August or continue to October.
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