House is almost ready for interior walls

As promised, a little bit of status on the new house in Falmouth. This picture was taken about 2 weeks ago when we were their for the 4th of July. As you can see, the roof and sidewall shingling has been completed. So you get a good feel for the texture of outside of the house.

If you look closely, you see that wires are hanging out of the light blocks on the garage. At this time, all the interior rough electrical is complete which is to say that all the ceiling lights, outlet boxes, switch boxes, etc. are installed and wire pulled to them. Tim (our electrician) also pulled data, video and speaker wire to various places we wanted, and gave me a nice set of empty conduits from the basement to the attic (we have a low ceiling attic over most of the upstairs) so that I can easily add stuff to the second floor in the future and connect it to all our infrastructure in the basement.

The heating/cooling folks finished up their rough work last week. That means all the duct work and the air handlers to drive it was installed. We are using a "hydro-air" that leverages a central boiler (in the basement) and delivers that hot water to remote units that use the water to heat the air. In our case, the second floor has two of these units and there is a third in the basement for the first floor. These air handlers also have A/C coils in them to cool the air in the summer and slightly fancy air filters.

Yesterday, the plumbing crew came in. We are using PEX for all the supply lines in the house and traditional PVC waste pipe. I am looking forward to the PEX since you run it like wire back to a central distribution panel (which has a cool, central system, nerd quality for me), it installs very quickly and it costs much less that copper. The two guys working the plumbing will most likely finish all the rough work (pipes to every location) in 3-4 days.

Once the plumbers are done, we should be ready for the framing, rough electrical and rough plumbing inspections. This is an important milestone because it means that the walls and ceilings can get insulated and covered with wallboard (in MA, we use "blue board" with "skim coat plaster" over the entire surface rather than drywall and seaming with joint compound). Once the walls are up, we will really get a feel for the space.

The one thing that has changed fairly significantly from the original plan is the covered part of the deck on the back. Everyone had a little bit of contribution to this change, but Dennis (our framer) had the main idea to reshape the roof over the screened area and extend the deck to create more usable space. As a bonus, the new roof line improves the look of the back of the house a lot. Melissa and I are really looking forward to enjoying that space. I will make sure to include pictures next time.

We have been making the final decisions on a lot of the interior bits. The kitchen and bathroom cabinets were just ordered. We have picked out the tile and wood flooring products for the first floor. The second floor will be wall-to-wall carpet except for the bathrooms. We expect to be back there sometime in late August to install flooring, install the kitchen cabinets, paint the walls in most of the rooms, etc.

People keep asking "When are you going to move?" and we are starting to sort that out. I expect we will be there by Thanksgiving and maybe as early as Halloween. But, we should get a better feel once the walls go up and we know the lead time on the interior elements (cabinets, trim, floors, etc.).

Abby Update at 11 Weeks

My sister posted a little video of her daughter Sarah and it made me realize that we should do that too. After all, many of you have never seen her, or haven't seen her in some time. This was a few weeks ago one morning after she got dressed. She was just starting to learn to smile, which she does all the time now.

She had a checkup this week and she is almost 13 lbs. Considering she was barely 6 lbs over 11 weeks ago when she was born, this boggles my mind. Instead of being in the 5th percentiles for size, weight, etc. she is now up in the 70s and 80s. Considering Melissa and I are 5'10" and 6'1" respectively, we expect she will be a tall girl once she catches up.

She started day care this week. She will be doing 4 days a week (Mon - Thurs) since Melissa is returning to work at a 30 hr load with Fridays off to take care of Abby. Surprisingly, she likes day care. I know that sounds weird because she is (only) 11 weeks old. I mean, how can you tell? All I can say is that I drop her off and pick her up and she is happy as a clam. She likes to look at the other kids, likes to play on the various play mats, etc. They have commented how easy and happy she is to care for. She has slept very well this week, including last night where she did 8+ hours. We are real excited about that development. With Abby at day care the past few days, Melissa has been doing projects around the house before returning to work next week. She finished painting the garage that my folks started when they came out. She fixed up and painted our stairwell, too. We are going to finish up the bathroom this weekend with new paint and baseboards.

So there we go. New pictures of the house will be up soon.

4th of July Parade, Cape Cod Style

In a somewhat growing tradition, the various elements of the Brown family converged on Cape Cod for the 4th of July. My sister and her family were up for the entire week leading up to the 4th. Melissa, Abby and I arrived on the 2nd, and my cousin Jeff and his family came down on the 4th and 5th. And, of course, my Mom and Dad were host to all of us.

Frankly, the weather was not fantastic this year. The 4th itself was very cool with random rain showers. On the morning of the 4th, we went into town to watch the Orleans 4th of July parade. We have done this a few years in a row now, and it is a great little town parade. Everyone gets out the old cars, or shines up their company vehicles (you will never see dump trucks so clean!). Many organizations create floats (some more fancy than others) and hand out candy and popsicles to the kids. One of my favorite parade groups this year brought their dogs and dressed them in lobster costumes.

Everyone had fun at the parade. My cousin Jeff and his wife Sadhna's kids Vrinda (pictured above with my sister Wendy) and Rohan (who got to sit on a float while the parade stalled for 20 minutes due to a minor accident further down the route) had a good time at their first Orleans 4th parade. Abby sat in her stroller and napped a lot. Sarah (my sister's daughter) seemed to remember this gig from last year and was ready to receive treats.

Later in the afternoon, we all went over to the Bay beach near my folks house. Eventually, all the kids were in the water. This included Abby, who got her toes in the water for the first time.

Next year, we will be well settled into our new house in Falmouth (about 45 minutes away). Hopefully, we will be able to get Mindy and her family to make it from Toronto, ON to the Cape for the 4th. Having all 4 of the Brown grandchildren and the our associated children all in one place at one time would be great. We were able to do this at Christmas this past year (Abby wasn't born yet, of course) and it was very nice.