Oregon Living 2023 – Blog #4 – A Lot of Progress This Week!

 

Sunday, January 22^nd., 2023……  We’ve had off and on rain this last week. Yesterday, we had a few nice showers. But it’s supposed to be dry this week. John showed up this morning to finish up his roofing job. He has a 50-mile drive (from a little town north of us called Aurora) but he still was here before 8:00am. Sunday was the only day he had to finish up this small side job for Russ. He was here most of the day but when he left, we were thrilled with his job. Everything matches and it looks like it’s part of the roof. Meanwhile, we spent a cold dreary day here at home. Well, Cathye did go off to church but when she got back, she settled in under her blanket and rested for the day. She had stayed for the church potluck and brought me home a plate with lasagna, meatloaf, green salad, and potato salad and apple pie. So, needless to say, I was full and didn’t want dinner!

I am close to booking our shore excursions for the cruise. I will share more on that as we get closer to July. But we wanted to get everything booked because prices fluctuate and even went up since last month! Treasa and Bill are booking theirs as well this week. Tv until bedtime.     

Monday, January 23^rd., 2023…… No rain today. We are still going through cold temps this week though. It was 33° this morning when we took the dogs out! There was a little frost on the ground and some slick spots we had to avoid, but overall it was a nice crisp morning walk. I’m feeling back to normal and Cathye is dealing with the stomach issues but doing well too. The electricians showed up this morning. At 7:15am!  Both Russ and I had a conversation about romex vs conduit under the patio roof. He spoke to the guys and they said they can’t do romex due to ‘wet’ conditions and said the inspector would never pass it. Plus it would cost us again to have them undo it and use conduit. So, easy choice - conduit it is! They got to work, first walking through the job amongst themselves for a game plan, then went to work in the house garage, where they laid the conduit all the way from the circuit box

And down through to the crawl space.  Then they were outside on the deck drilling and running those lines both under the old deck and out into the new space.

Of course, I have complicated things because I want switches for certain items on the outside, others on the inside. On the wall to the outside where the patio deck lights are now, they had to remove one of my three-ways for the lights over the tv (which we didn’t use) which will now be the on-off switch for the security light way out on the end. The fan under the patio needs to be on a switch out there so that was also set up. Toward the latter part of the day, they crawled under the house and got the lines run for the spa and the rest of the lights. At the end of the day, they had the rough-in completed. They won’t come back until Russ gets farther along so they can use the deck to get up to the rafters and complete the job. I also have to get the spa set in place so they will have to come back again for that as well. Meanwhile, Russ and his guy have got all of the blocking in and are ready for the deck boards, which will be here on Wednesday.  I, for the most part, just hung around the house. Cathye had to make a trip over to Albany to go to the Social Security office to clear up an issue. Back last May, she went there and got her name changed and got a new social security card. But her last year’s statement came in last week and it was under McCracken. Turns out they messed it up. They told her for some reason that their systems didn’t talk to each other! Anyway, it’s fixed and we’re good to go.     

Tuesday, January 24^th., 2023…… Still really cold here!  Temps in the low thirties and no sunshine so it’s not warming up much during the day!  Cathye needed to go over to her old trailer park to drop off a note. When she ordered the stair lights through eBay, she missed that they would be delivered to her old address, so I wrote a note to ask that whoever may receive them gives us a call to pick up. She stayed and her and Judy (who lives in that park) went off to have lunch together. I stayed here and watched the deck progress. The guys finished up the starburst at the end of the deck. I think it looks awesome!

Tomorrow the decking will be delivered. Yaay!   

Wednesday, January 25^th., 2023…… We got up early and walked and fed the girls and then went off to Kevin’s for breakfast. He was closed so we went to Shari’s.  Not even close but it would do in a pinch!  After that, we came back and hung around the house. Cathye made a run to Walmart and I worked on my chandelier project for her office. I had already asked the electricians for some advice since this thing is super heavy. He looked at the box and made recommendations. So, I took off this morning to go get a mounting brace from Lowe’s. Problem is I can’t seem to get the old one out!  I’m thinking it’s screwed in between the ceiling rafters. So, now it will be Corey’s job to crawl up there and work with me to get it removed and the new one installed. Maybe next week.  I cleaned up the mess I made (we have blown-in insulation in the attic) and settled in to watch the Barrett-Jackson auction I have recorded. The guys ended the day after removing the old deck boards. Poor Rylee. She is so confused now because there is no floor out there! At the end of the day, the new Fiberon deck boards and three buckets of hidden fasteners were delivered and staged. Later, we had our favorite mac and cheese (from Costco) and watched tv until bedtime.        

Thursday, January 26^th., 2023…… The guys were here early and got to work. Today, they hope to add all of the additional floor joists to the old patio. Plus, they have another nice black metal feature to add to the other end of the roof truss. They had the ladder up ready to start that project, but, they shocked me when I saw they were adding structure all around the edges of the new deck!  I asked and was told it was because since we are doing a ‘picture frame’ wrap on all of the edges, he needed to support the area so he can nail and the fascia in.  Duuh!  The picture frame is called Expresso and is just like it sounds – dark brown. The main body will be a much lighter color called Tuscan Villa. The darker color will also be at the fascia all around the deck plus at the step down to the second deck level to make it easier to see. It will look good we think. But the best news was that he was ready to start laying the deck today!  I didn’t think it through but it made sense to do all of the picture frame edges first. That way they can just lay in the other colored deckboards in between. This is what they ended up with before it got time to go home for the day….

All of the metal columns will be wrapped with wood which will have a finished edge down to the deck. You can also see the electricians rough in for the receptacle that will be on that column.  Needless to say, we are thrilled to see all of the total progress at this point! I think tomorrow they will have the rest of the decking done – at least for the lower level. The inspector was called to do the final on the structure. That is the only thing on the permit because a permit is not required for the deck. He found a couple of things he wants Russ to address but also asked about the rough-in for the gas lines that were put in for the bbq and the fire pit.  They are out of scope of the permit but he can make a fuss if he wants to. Russ and he don’t get along so this could go south in a hurry!  We’ll address that later. Meanwhile, poor Rylee just can’t grasp the fact that she can’t be out on the porch right now!  She just stands or lays at the slider and looks out.

She even tried jumping down between the joists and had trouble turning around to jump back up into the house!  I can imagine her thinking, “Hey, get this done so I can go out on my porch again!” Hopefully, this will be over soon. Later, we fed the girls and then left to go meet Ron and Teri for dinner at Seeds. It’s nice to get out with another couple now and then and we made plans for more nights. Maybe game night next time! Back home and tv until bedtime.

Friday, January 27^th., 2023…… It rained a little last night. So, that means the temps go back up. Yeah, I know, that sounds crazy. But the rain clouds kind of work as an insulator to raise the ground temps up a bit. But that doesn’t work in the higher elevations where they are getting snow. As mentioned before, we are at around 340 ft. above sea level here so we won’t get it unless it’s under extreme conditions.  But the rains held off today and the guys were here and got going early. They made great progress…

and got all of this done by end of day!  It feels so good to get to this stage now that it looks like a deck finally!  Material for the upper deck got delivered late in the day, so they won’t get to that until next week but we did put out a piece of plywood up there so butthead can come and go again!  She’s happy!  She likes to sit out and survey her domain. Now she can do it from her new deck!

 

We decided to go down to Eugene to see 80 for Brady!  Even though he’s not my favorite player, we still love comedy. But it doesn’t come out until next week, so we had to put that on hold for now and so we just stayed home.

Saturday, January 28^th., 2023……  This morning we were up and had the dogs out and fed and decided to do a road trip down to Eugene for chicken fried steak at The Prairie Schooner. Russ had mentioned that he might come over for a few hours to work by himself but we didn’t expect he would. Turns out he did!  He got the section completed where the bbq will go. He has removed the bbq line and covered it with decking. He also did the same for the fire pit access.

Since he was gone when we got back from Eugene, we didn’t get his thinking but I think he’s hoping that when the inspector comes back, he will see that we removed everything and just sign off on the permit. Then we can reconnect the lines at the end of the job. We’ll talk on Monday. We settled in for the rest of the day and watched tv and kept warm. Soup for dinner and more tv until bedtime.