Every one of my estimates of when our new house will be completed has been laughably optimistic. At first it was going to be by the end of last summer. Then it was going to be the end of November. And then it was the end of February. Now it’s the end of May. The difference now is that the buyers of our old house have a one-year lease on a house that ends at the end of May. Our neighbor, the real estate broker who handles the rental of that house, told me there would be no problem extending their lease, but I’m treating it as a hard deadline.

The last inspection (way, way back in December) found issues with framing and plumbing testing. The framing repairs have been completed. The well guy and the electrician have temporarily powered the well pump so the plumber can pressure test the supply lines. The plumber came out last week and fixed a couple of leaks. I, however, have not managed to repair leaks in the work I have done.

We have double water filters in our current house for sediment from the well. I assume the new well’s water will also have sediment, so I connected a pair of filters for the new house, one for coarse sediment and one for fine sediment. They are connected with a glued PVC section that is attached to threaded fittings on the filter housings. The first time we pressurized the system, my connections leaked. So I hacksawed them apart and replaced them. This time I used Teflon tape as the plumber and some online resources recommended. It still leaked. So I cut the connection again and used the next recommended method, a non-hardening thread sealer. It still leaked. The next time I used thread sealer and tightened the fittings more. When I pressurized the system Wednesday, it still leaked. The filters I installed in our current house have never had a leak. I have concluded that the problem is not me or the way I make the connection, it’s the filter housings themselves. So the next step is to replace the filter housings with a different manufacturer.

On top of that, there are now three leaks in the rest of the water supply lines. The plumber is supposed to work on those on Thursday. The filter connections are going to have to wait. I may simply remove the filter housings and tell the inspector that the branch to the filters is for future use.

Prioritizing has become an important issue for me. There is a lot of work to be done, by me and by contractors. The work that can delay house completion is the work that has to be done first. Other work that can be done later, has to be done later, even if it is necessary work. This is basically critical path analysis. In the case of home construction, some things can proceed in parallel, but a lot has to be done serially; that is, one thing must be done before the next can be done. Identifying those tasks is the important thing right now.

Leah looks at the current state of the house in dismay; there is so much to be done, and she doesn’t see how it’s all going to get done in time. I am aware of all that needs to be done, but I look only at what needs to be done right now. She worries, but I think. If I allowed myself to think about everything that needs to be done, I would probably be paralyzed.

As it is, virtually every waking moment that I’m not doing something else, I am thinking about what needs to be done right now and how I’m going to do it. I go over every step in my head, picturing what I’m going to do. If I did this for a living, I would already know each step and how to do it, so I wouldn’t obsess over it, but this is only the second time I have built a house, so it’s not routine for me.

Right now, the critical path leads to drywall, because so many things depend on having drywall up. Everything I do now is something that has to be done before drywall can be installed. I started out thinking that was just installing insulation, but, of course, that was far too simple. Here’s what had to be done prior to drywall, or at least what I can think of now:

1. Put reinforcing blocks behind the shower and tub surrounds to prevent flexing of the fiberglass material.
2. Install wood in the walls around the toilets so that grab bars can be mounted.
3. Install hurricane ties on the rafters, ceiling joists and wall top plates.
4. Seal all the holes drilled in the top and bottom wall plates by the electrician and plumber to keep unconditioned air from leaking in.
5. Install vent channels against the roof to let fresh air come in through the soffit vents and not get blocked by insulation.
6. Install insulation dams at each rafter vent and where the part of the attic over the house meets the front porch and the garage so that the blown-in insulation isn’t blown out into areas that don’t need insulation.
7. Install a blower in the attic to blow hot air from the wood-burning stove in the living room to our bedroom.
8. Frame an opening in the hall ceiling to mount the whole-house fan.
9. Frame an access opening in the garage ceiling.
10. Insulate the walls.
11. Cut and fit rounded supports for drywall around the arches over the front windows.

Some of this has been done. Here’s the blower mounted in the attic. The heating and air conditioning contractor is going to install the ductwork, but I’m not sure when.

The blower is the black object you can just see to the right of the center of the image. It’s resting on a platform suspended from rafters. The shiny tube hanging down in the picture is for the bathroom exhaust vent.

When I was building the blower support shelf in the attic, I saw this little bird.

He (or she)is perched just below the ridge beam. It was dark with some white on its breast. Someone more familiar with birds may be able to identify this one. If I had to make a guess, I would say it was a swift. It flitted around, chirping every so often. It went back and forth in the attic over the house, occasionally darting into the attic over the garage. Its behavior reminded me of the hummingbirds that trap themselves in our garage. Later, however, I saw either this bird or one just like it flying towards an open window from the outside. It swerved away when it saw me. I have noticed bird droppings in the house. I’m sure it’s great shelter and it provides lots of potential nesting sites, but, of course, I can’t allow that. Once the drywall is up, there won’t be any access to the attic.

I have put the blocking in the walls to mount grab bars in the bathrooms, and the reinforcing blocks around the tub and shower. I mentioned that earlier. I have sealed almost all the holes in the top and bottom wall plates, but still need to catch a few more. I put in the roof vent channels a couple of weeks ago (injuring my shoulder in the process). I put in some of the insulation dams, but still need to do it between the garage and the rest of the house. And I finished framing for the whole-house fan.

I have been working on insulation for some time now, but on Wednesday I decided to start on the rafter ties. I managed to get about 75 percent of the house done Wednesday, but there is still more to do in the garage than I’ve already done in the house.

This picture shows several of the critical path tasks.

These stud bays have fiberglass insulation bats installed. You can see the black vent channels against the roof, and the insulation dams beneath them (they’re attached with nails that have a red plastic collar). I used expanding foam to seal around the dams. You can also see the rafter ties. In this case, I couldn’t get metal brackets that would normally connect the rafters with the top plate (the horizontal boards that rest on top of the wall studs) because the rafters are too far above the top plate. I ended up using rafter ties to connect the top plate with the ceiling joists, and then flat plates to connect the joists to the rafters.

Hurricane ties are intended to help prevent the roof from blowing off the house in a severe storm. Around here we don’t get the kind of wind that does that very often like they do in coastal areas that are subject to hurricanes, so they aren’t required. But I think they’re a good idea, just in case.

I expect to finish the rafter ties on Thursday. I hope to finish the insulation by the end of the weekend, but that may be optimistic. I’ve already done the easy part. That was putting whole bats into stud bays that are the nominal 16 inches on-center and eight feet high. Now I have to cut and fit a different-sized piece in every other bay, and there are a lot of those.

Also, because of the way the house was framed, there are some wall cavities that I can’t reach to insulate. These isolated cavities are located where interior walls meet exterior walls. I have had to cut out pieces of a stud, stuff in insulation, and then screw another stud to the pieces. There are six of these isolated cavities. I have done three of them. I can do two more, but the remaining cavity is blocked by too much framing. There is a gap that I can see through, so I am going to just spray as much insulating foam as I can into that cavity.

I’m afraid those rounded drywall supports over the arched windows on the front of the house are going to be a problem, but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

The plan now is for the drywall hanger to meet me at the house on Saturday. He can work up his estimate then and tell me when he can start. I hope it’s soon, but that depends not only on his schedule, but mine as well. In another in my long series of laughably optimistic estimates, I had been kind of planning to get the next building inspection by the end of this week. That is obviously not going to happen. But I can’t start drywall until I pass that inspection.

We are near a point of convergence on the house. Most of what we need for a reinspection of our framing and plumbing is complete or nearly complete.

I have been working on things that need to be done and that the inspector said we can do before we get the inspection and start drywalling. We decided for various reasons to use acrylic-fiberglass shower and tub surrounds. Those need to be braced so that they don’t give when you push against them. I did some of that Sunday afternoon. This is the shower enclosure. I have put in around 15 2×4 braces for the shower.

The tub will have even more bracing, but I couldn’t work on that on Sunday because I ran out of screws to attach the tub enclosure to the studs.

I have been planning to put some 2-by material behind the drywall around the toilets for installation of grab bars. I intended to do that on Sunday, but I discovered two studs with significant crooks right where I needed to put the grab-bar anchor material. One stud was about an inch proud of the rest of the studs on the master bathroom wall. I think drywall can hide some variation, but not that much. There was also another stud standing proud of the wall next to the toilet in the guest bathroom, so I couldn’t work on either toilet. Those go on the list of work for the framer.

I have also been working on insulation. It’s an itchy business.

I plan to put another type of insulation on at least one of the master bathroom walls. That wall separates the bathroom from the living room. The insulation will be sound insulation. Regular fiberglass insulation does virtually nothing to stop sound transmission. Right now it looks like the sound-deadening insulation for that one wall will cost more than the thermal insulation for the entire house. But I think you can understand why we might want sound-deadening insulation between the bathroom and the living room.

I have an additional task (I call it a “task” rather than a “problem.”) that needs to be done prior to drywall. We have equal-leg arches over the living room and bedroom windows on the front of the house. You can see most of one in the photo above. I have to cut plywood in an arch that matches the window so that the area around the arches can be insulated and drywalled. I have been thinking about this problem task, but I haven’t reached a conclusion yet.

The electrician has completed all the wiring that will be hidden behind drywall. The only thing standing in the way of completing the insulation (aside from my own procrastination) is the plumbing inspection. At least I can insulate every stud cavity that doesn’t contain plumbing.

The rim boards that will be used to reinforce the floor joists are supposed to be at the lumberyard Monday. The framer has been waiting for that. With a good crew, all of the framing work on my list should be completed in a day.

The electrician and the well installer came out last week, and we now have temporary power to the well pump. The plumber has been waiting for that so he can check the supply lines. We already know of one leak. Whoever put the PEX line to the pressure tank forgot to cinch a clamp, so when the well guy and I powered up the pump, the connection leaked. The line from the pressure tank to the rest of the house was shut off, so I don’t know if there are other leaks. There are certainly plenty of places for them. I think the plumber can complete any work he needs to do in a day, assuming there are not too many leaks (an assumption I’m not willing to make at this point).

Once the framing and plumbing pass inspection, we will be free to proceed with drywall. Of course, I need to finish insulating the walls before that happens. I hope all of this, including the inspection, is done by the end of the week. Leah suggested that I may be expecting too much.

When we bought out new wood-burning stove a month ago, we left it at the store, thinking we would pick it up when it was ready to install at the house. A month later, we aren’t close to that point, so I decided to bring it home Friday.

Here it is in the bed of the pickup. That’s Chloe walking at the right side of the truck.

It had been strapped down for the hour drive back from the stove store, but at 300+ pounds, it is unlikely that it would have moved much on the trip.

Prior to this point, after trying to push the stove to lift one side, I had spent considerable time contemplating the problem of how to unload it by myself. I knew I couldn’t count on Chloe for any help. I briefly considered using my hand truck, but the lifting platform on the hand truck wouldn’t have provided sufficient support for the stove pallet. Besides, there was really no way I could have tilted the stove and hand truck back far enough to balance the stove over the wheels. And even if I could have done that, it was have been too unstable on the narrow hand truck. I didn’t even want to think about controlling 300 pounds as it rolled down the ramp.

So I decided to simply drag the stove out of the bed. In the photo above you can see the chain I connected to a winch, which was hooked to the trailer hitch on our little Kawasaki Mule. I used a big pry bar (which you can barely see above on the right side of the bed) to life the pallet and slide a couple of pieces of plastic “boards” under it. The winch pulled the stove towards the loading ramp to the point that I could push it myself. Then I made the fortunate decision to tie a safety rope on the stove to control its descent down the ramp. Here it is resting at the bottom of the ramp. I used plywood covers for the ramp.

This looks worse that it actually was, but it might have been a different story if I had not tied if off. About halfway down the stove tried to turn sideways. My safety rope caught it so I could guide it down. As you can see, the plastic boards came out from under the pallet.

I was able to walk the stove the rest of the way down until it was flat on the concrete. Then I pried it up to slip the plastic boards under the pallet again and pushed it into the garage. And here it is, not quite all the way in.

As of now it’s safely tucked in behind the Mule in the garage, where it will stay until it’s time to install it. I’ll use my trailer to haul it to the new house. It will be much (much!) easier to load and unload from the trailer.

I have before me a report from the engineer who inspected the damage to our floor framing caused by the plumber. The repair solution is not as bad as I feared. It consists basically of gluing and nailing a piece of 2×4 to each section of a joist that has been damaged.

The engineer didn’t confine himself to inspecting only the damage to the I-joists. He also looked at the floor as a whole with respect to the load it’s carrying, and he found another problem. This time the problem is the responsibility of the floor plan designer — me. There is a load-bearing wall on the main floor that is offset by a few inches from a load-carrying beam in the basement. The beam in the basement should have been placed directly beneath the upstairs wall. The engineer’s analysis indicated a potential eventual failure of the I joists because of the offset load. The framer doesn’t really think it would cause a problem, but, once the engineer puts it in writing, it has to be fixed.

I’m not a details kind of person, but when it comes to things like building a house, I do sweat the details. I should have seen this problem in the floor plan, and, if not then, during construction. But I didn’t. Fortunately this fix is also fairly simple, but it involves 23 joists.

I could do all the repair work, but I plan to let the framer do it. They will almost certainly be   much faster than I would be.

We also had the well pump installed last week. That will allow the water supply lines to be tested for the inspector’s approval, as soon as we can figure out how to get 220 volts to the well.

I am now in the process of insulating and doing some other things that have to be done before drywall can be installed. Part of that process involved climbing an eight-foot step ladder to work on the garage ceiling, which is about 11 feet high. Last Friday, when I was doing that, I managed to kick the ladder out from under myself, leaving me hanging from a rafter. The drop was not far — four or five feet — but it was onto a concrete floor with several boards lying directly beneath me. I was worried about my knees, but there was no choice but to drop. When I let go of the rafter, I hit the boards and fell backwards. I must have put my arm out as I fell, because I ended up with a sore shoulder. I’m afraid it’s a torn rotator cuff. If so, it will be the second time a step ladder has caused a rotator cuff tear. The previous time was a few years ago when I was staining a post on the lower deck of our current house. I fell from the first step and hit my left shoulder in just the right way to cause a clean tear that left my arm useless. This time my arm hurts when I do certain things, but I can still work with it.

The surgeon who repaired my first tear used to live across the street from Leah’s parents. He’s a nice guy and he did a great job on my left shoulder. The only evidence of his surgery is three small dimples arrayed around my left shoulder, plus a usable arm. I hope I don’t have to give him the opportunity to show his skills on my right shoulder. In any event, I can’t do anything about it until we finish the house. I can’t afford to take a month or two off from the work that still needs to be done on both the new house and the old house.