Drywall

About a year and a half ago, I had some weird dizzy spells, and I underwent a whole series of tests and scans to try to figure out what was causing it. The results were inconclusive, but I suspect it may have been a reaction to the mold in our house, since I haven't noticed it since we moved out. One of the tests was a hearing test, and they did discover I had some slight hearing loss in my right ear. My doctor asked me to come back in for a follow-up hearing test this afternoon to see if anything had changed. I was curious to see how the drywall was coming along, so I parked by the house so I could peek inside before hopping on the Metro to go to my appointment.

The roof tile is all done, and it looks great! They still have to install the gutters and downspouts, but at least we won't have to worry about leaks -- which is a relief since we had a big thunderstorm last night and are likely to get a few more over the next couple days and weeks.
Inside, they had already made remarkable progress on the drywall. Rob explained that the purple drywall is water resistant for wet environments, which is why the master bathroom looks so colorful...The master bedroom has the regular white drywall. The rooms seem a bit smaller now that they have walls and ceilings. I've gotten into the habit of just walking through the walls (between the studs), so it may take me a while to get used to the new floor plan and being limited to using doorways to get from one room to another.Downstairs, the living room is starting to come back together.
And the arch is back!
Here's the kitchen. Those big holes in the ceiling are for the solatubes.
Down in the basement, Uncle Louis was installing our new high-efficiency boiler, which will heat the water for our radiant floor heat as well as some conventional radiators that will be added in the basement. Each floor can be controlled separately, so we'll be able to just heat the areas we are using. It was a bit smoky down there because Louis was using a blowtorch...
Louis and Rob were both very excited about this boiler. Rob described it as "The Lamborghini of Boilers" and did his best Vanna White impression to show me the energy guide label indicating that it is 94.5% efficient -- with 95.5% being the maximum.
Rob mentioned that Steve B. was going to be coming to the house for a meeting, but I had to get to my appointment, so I headed to the Metro. I left Rob picking up trash in the front yard while Jim supervised.
The hearing test went fine -- the doctor said I still had the same problem in my right ear, but it hadn't gotten any worse since the last test. And since I already had a CT scan and an MRI and neither one revealed any problems, she said it was pretty unlikely that the hearing loss was a symptom of a brain tumor or other unusual growth on the brain stem. Well, that was reassuring!

On my way back to the car, I stopped in at the house to see how things had progressed. Jim was installing the trim around the front door so the stucco guys could finish the area around it.
Inside, Rob was just wrapping up a tour of the house with an architect and a grad student from George Mason University's Environmental Sustainability program. That was the meeting Steve B. had at the house earlier, but he must have handed them off to Rob for a tour, since he had already left. Rob introduced me to them as the "end user" and they told me how impressed they were with the house, both in terms of the layout and the green aspects. That was nice to hear! They were interested in learning more about the history of our project, so I mentioned that I had this blog and offered to send the link. So, now they'll get to read about themselves! (Hi, Rich!)

While I was off taking my hearing test, they had installed purple drywall in the main level bathroom. (The uncovered areas will be tiled.)
And had finished most of the stairwell...
Rob said they should finish most of the drywall today, so I'll have to swing by tomorrow and check it out. Oh, and he also told me he needed to know the distance from my waist to the floor. That seemed a little odd until he followed up by asking if I did most of the ironing. Rob had ordered a built-in, fold-down ironing board for our laundry room, and needed to know how high to install it. I informed him that Josh actually irons far more than I do -- he wears dress shirts to work every day while I work from home and avoid buying clothes that need to be dry cleaned or ironed. I'm looking forward to seeing Josh's reaction when I tell him that Rob wants to know his measurements from the waist down...