The contractual completion date of the project. If you looked at Week Sixteen, you'll notice that we don't have doors or electricity or plumbing or etc. The rain is the primary culprit. The new estimated date of completion is May 31, 2003.
Our long-time, close, personal friend Brian got into town on Monday. After an evening of wings and beer at Buffalo Brown's, Brian and I drove by the casa. We went up the alley, and Brian pulled into the yard by default. Unfortunately, the yard was a mud bog. The car got stuck. It was only Brian's years of experience driving in snow that got us out of the mud. He thought the house looked pretty cool, though, from what he saw.
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What can make Brittany shout at the computer?
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What can make Brian sleep all day? |
| Since the removal of the beam, the house has been slowly but surely sinking into what's left of the really big hole. With the heavy rain, the dirt is being slowly but surely washed out from under the foundation. We've been anxiously awaiting the backfill into this space. It happened this week. Mark ordered six yards of concrete, and eventually used four. He was trying to fill in about eight or eleven inches between the basement wall and the excavation. It wasn't happening from the sides of the house, so he cut a hole in the floor and pumped the concrete in through the hole. |
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| The only problem with the way this was poured is: it still
allows cats to get into the foundation area. Every time I come to the
house, I see Little Richard run in here from the west side of the house.
And speaking of cats, retaliatory measures have begun. |
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| Here are some cool shots of the cracks that started appearing after the recent rain. This is all going to come out and be redone with the remodeled kitchen, but it just goes to show that the beam had some effect on the structure. These showed up in the last week or two. | |
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Not a great shot. There's not much light down in the
basement, and flash coverage isn't great with the wide angle lens.
The ladder occupies the area where the stairs will be. The round thing at the base of the ladder is the macerating sump pump. We flush; it pumps. (It was cool. Ask This Old House put one of these in on Saturday's show so a guy could flush his toilet from the basement. They don't yet have a link to the segment, otherwise it would be here, too.) The big doorway leads into the wine cellar. Immediately to the left is a little niche area. Behind that is the master linen closet, and the master clothes closet. I was standing in the sitting room when I took the photograph. |
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Here's a shot of Leisa coming down the ladder to look at the closets. |
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Here's Leisa, in the closet, cheerfully unaware of the
photograph I took a few minutes ago, featured right above this one!
She's planning the location of closet rods and storage shelves. And dig the curly hair! |
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A Totally Fruity picture of me in the wine cellar, gesturing, in my best spokesmodel way, at the future location of the wine racks in the wine cellar. At least from this angle you can't see my back fat. |
| Shortly after these fruity photos of me were taken, the
pasted-on smile vanished from my face, only to be replaced with a scowl.
If my letter months ago to Doug Lingner could be likened to Shakespeare's, "cry
'havoc,' and let slip
the dogs of war," this week it was, "cry 'havoc,' and let slip
the kitties of war." After I
climbed back up the ladder, I pulled my mail out of the box, where I found
two letters from the City of Phoenix, one for me and one for Leisa.
Click here to view a scan of Leisa's letter. Mine is identical. I mentioned them to Mark and he brought a weed eater over and dealt with the issue. Justin burned out the motor of my weed eater several months ago, trying to deal with all of the grass in Leisa's back yard that grows up through the rock landscaping. And since I finally got the scanner working, here's something that I've been waiting since July to scan in. It's rated PG-13. Enjoy. And the line Antony utters immediately after, "cry 'havoc'," is, "That this foul deed shall smell above the earth." Updated for Willetta Street, it's, "these foul beasts shall smell above the earth." |
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