First, I think I've just about finished the to-do list for the sale of our house in Iowa! Oh, I will be thrilled when that is finalized. It will be so nice not to have to worry about a house at a distance. Our Realtor sent over the closing statement today, though I'm not sure if it was the final version or not. I was pleasantly surprised to find out we are going to get back a little more than we had counted on! The closing costs were not quite as high for some reason.
We actually sold the house for slightly more than we paid for it nearly five years ago, but with closing costs now and when we bought the house, we're not coming out ahead. But in this market, we're happy to have the house sold, and to not have the negative equity problems I've read about.
... Dave started looking a little more closely into his plan for the stairs, which are to bend around the soapstone stove we're going to use for heat (with electric baseboard backups). He had a plan all worked out, based on the setback distances he looked up for the stove we ordered. Then he noticed that there were actually specs for two different models listed, and out of curiosity he looked at the other one -- and wouldn't you know it, the setback distances are significantly more on the other model. Dave called the store where our stove is waiting for us to pick it up, and of course, we have the model with the greater setback distances. That means that unless we can figure out a way around it, the stove area is going to extend quite a ways farther into the dining room than we were figuring, which doesn't leave a whole lot of room for a walkway or the dining table itself.
Dave talked the problem over with the owner of the stove store, and they are pretty sure they can work out a plan to minimize the loss of space -- they'll need to use materials with a higher R-value, a specific kind of cement board, I think, below the tile that we're planning. The problem will be finding that cement board -- apparently few building supply stores carry it. Dave also plans to narrow the stairs a bit to conserve space. I don't mind that -- we can get by with a narrower passageway on the stairs, and with the railing along the north part of the second floor, above the stairs, I think we'll still be able to get furniture up there when we need to.
... And the excavating contractor called back to say the "locators" -- her general term for the guys who are supposed to come out and mark water, gas and electric lines -- are coming on Friday morning, and the excavators will come at some point after that when they can fit it in.
Dave did more work on installing the first-floor floor today. This center section is a bit of a pain -- first off, because the concrete slab is lower in the center, Dave had to crawl under the floor joists to nail in 1-by-2s so the insulation wouldn't fall through to the slab below them. Then, since this is an area that will eventually be covered by tile, the joists have to be closer together to provide more support. Not a huge deal by itself, but it means that every piece of insulation needs to be cut to fit the narrower space between joists. So that part of the floor is going a little more slowly.
I saw these blue clouds coming this evening, and though I was happy some rain was on its way (I can feel that way now that all the roofing is done, and I need to be watering the garden) I did have a slight panicky thought: What if it hails on our beautiful new skylights?You'd think I would have thought about this earlier. And I did, but only in the context that I know those windows are made of tempered glass, so if they do break, they won't create life-threatening shards for anyone below them. But they could still break, and I looked up the Velux warranty: "acts of God" are not covered. I did a little more searching online, and didn't find any specific info on how well skylights (and Velux skylights in particular) hold up to hail, but I did find a number of companies advertising that they fix skylights damaged by hail.
Sigh. I guess hail can damage any window (two at the church were cracked in the most recent hailstorm), so I shouldn't worry overly much about the skylights. Perhaps we can jerry-rig some kind of cover for them that we could throw up there when hail is predicted ... I'm sure Dave will be thrilled to climb on that steep roof when a thunderstorm is bearing down.
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