Over the next two weeks we’ll be oozing into the new house.  The final coat of finish was applied to the floor yesterday and is curing as I write this; it will be ready for furniture later today.

A couple of little wrinkles: the floor looks wonderful – except for a 4-inch long “hair” stuck in the finish smack in the middle of the floor, right about the breakfast area.

Ugh.

I don’t know how they missed it.  It looks like a fiber from a brush; it can actually be seen from 20 feet away.

They’re going to have to come back and fix that.

And there’s a little problem with UV; the great room has a southwest exposure with a couple of large windows.  The light has already changed the color of the maple flooring, a normal process with nearly all woods – however, it’s obvious.  We can clearly see where we’d laid kraft and rosin paper down over the flooring to protect the wood from construction traffic and from chemicals like the mortar used on the fireplace.  I’m going to have to leave the floors bare for a while and hope the UV aging evens out over the next couple of weeks.

Little crappy stuff like this doesn’t generally cause heartburn for homebuyers purchasing already finished new construction; the general contractor or the builder’s representative deals with it before the house is shown and sold.  Most buyers acquiring a previously owned home don’t expect perfection, either; there’s generally little quirks they’ll accept and expect to change.

But in this case, I’m the general contractor, the builder’s rep in a brand spanking new house.  I get to fret over little cheesy details like this.  It’s what I’ve hated the most about designing and building our own home, having to deal with fussy little details that ordinarily would be somebody else’s problem.  It amazes me at this point, exactly how much most home buyers take for granted when they buy a new house; they don’t see all the little things the builder must address before they hand over the keys.  If we’d bought a spec home I know I would have had far fewer worries…

Over the next two weeks, I’ll be moving a room a day, boxing up the contents of a bathroom here, a bedroom there, leaving only the barest minimum in each room at the old house and populating the new house, while sorting and purging for both a yard sale on 13-MAY and donations to Salvation Army.  I need to call a painter to arrange for the old house to be gussied up; I need to call the realtor to set up an appointment for a walk-through after the paint job.  I guess you could say I’m transitioning off the new house project and moving on to the old house project.

I’ll try to post something periodically over this next couple of weeks, but I can’t make any guarantees.  Be sure to drop me a comment and let me know how things are going in your neck of the woods!

UPDATE -- Our Finish Contractor --

Also heard that he is improving; he'd had a shunt put in his artery controlling blood flow to his brain.  His blockage had been severe, causing part of the symptoms we'd seen.  He'd been suffering from a too typical scenario of high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis, culminating in stroke and permanent damage to brain tissue.  I've been told he's lost his ability to speak (must have affected Broca's area of the brain?) although his overall intellect remains intact.  He's also not expected to return to work, at least not in woodwork.

What a damned shame.  There are too few craftsmen who can do the caliber of work he does -- did.

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