When I arrived, John was spreading tarps up on the roof. We're supposed to get some rain over the next few days, and the house is a bit leaky since we don't have roofing or windows installed yet.
I met up with Rob out front, and he pointed out a new addition as we went upstairs. Our skylight has been installed!
As we were standing in the master bath upstairs looking at the tub enclosure, John suddenly appeared in the window. I was a little startled since we were on the second floor, but if you look at the first photo, you'll see that there is a ladder going up to the roof from right next to this window (by the chimney). So instead of having to climb a ladder all the way from the ground, they can just climb out this window and up that short ladder. John tried to pretend that he had fallen off the roof and was hanging on for dear life, but the smile on his face kind of gives it away.
After we had resolved the tub issue -- our rectangular tub will work just fine -- there were a few other bathroom-related items to discuss. We spent some time with Paul looking up at the ceiling to figure out where to put the A/C register, exhaust fan, and solatube while working around the ductwork and plumbing. It's amazing to see how much stuff goes up there!Then Rob took me down to the basement to show me a few new things. The plumbers had just finished installing a heat recovery system on the plumbing drainpipe. Clean water in the copper coil collects heat from the grey water coming through the drainpipe and then goes to the water heater, resulting in less energy needed to heat the water to the desired temperature. So every time you take a shower, run the dishwasher, or do laundry, it recaptures the heat from the wastewater and uses it to make more hot water. Neat!
They had also started installing the piping for the radiant floor heat. This involved screwing lots of little flexible clips into the ceiling between the floor joists and clipping the pipe into place. Rob explained that this give the pipe room to expand and contract as the water inside it heats up. This is the big coil of piping they were installing. (I think that's our old storm door behind it.)
Then we went up to the kitchen to discuss where the solatubes and ceiling fan should go. I was concerned that if the blades of the ceiling fan were too close to the solatubes, it would create a strobe effect when the fan was on. One again, we had to work around the rafters, plumbing, and ductwork, but by positioning the two solatubes at the far ends of the kitchen, we ended up with plenty of space for a ceiling fan in the middle. While we were in the kitchen, I could feel the guys below drilling the clips into the plywood subfloor we were standing on. I asked Rob if there was any danger of them accidentally drilling all the way through, so he yelled downstairs to remind them that the kitchen floor had not been installed yet They said not to worry, but I stepped out of the kitchen just to be on the safe side. Then Rob yelled down that they had drilled through into my shoe and I was stuck to the floor. I played along and let out a loud "Ow!" and they all came running upstairs. They probably didn't think the joke was as funny as the rest of us did, but they seemed relieved to see that they had not actually drilled into my foot and did a quick inspection of the subfloor for any signs of screws poking through. Maybe they hadn't noticed what day it is...
As I was leaving Rob promised not to call me again today, since I had complained that I haven't been able to get much work done this week thanks to frequent phone calls from him, Marta, Dane, and Josh and daily trips to the house. He said if anything else came up, he was sure it could wait 'til tomorrow.
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