A few momentus days

Wow...The pace has quickened but the road has also lengthened. The now infamous windows are now installed and no one died in the process and no windows were broken. To get a scope of the work here one must realize that these windows had to be installed at an elevation of about 12 feet, weighed in excess of 500 pounds, were unwieldy in the extreme (12feet x 9 feet), fragile and hugely expensive and also critical to the project since they are also energy generators. The long and short of it is that the whole BIG process - the installation of the major front 5 windows took about 3.5 hours and used the efforts of 9 men and 1 woman. Risk was ever present and all hands were watching for it. In one situation, the window that included two french doors and 2 casement windows as one unit, the margin of tolerance to slide the window into the building to then slide it onto the scaffolding was less than 1 inch....in a 12 foot span. Moreover, once slid onto the scaffolding with the efforts of said 9 men, the tolerance into the opening was 1/4 inch in the 12 foot span. That meant that the window basically had to be slid into the openning horizontally - no easy task when one is on scaffolding 12 feet above the ground with a window weighing over 500 pounds. At any rate, the take away is that contractors NOT associated with the specific work being assigned (Jason Parker, Randy Maddock from Brocks), friends (Alan Reed Erickson and Dan Cassidy), and the extrodinary efforts of Ryan Bilodeau (lead contractor / carpenter extrodinaire) and his CAPABLE assistants were instrumental in making all this happen without injury or other bad outcome. In addition, the site had gas contractors, gas stove installers, plumbers, the building inspector and of course, the owners (Karen and me) all in the same general space working intently. One of the interesting aspects that I personally have enjoyed is the HUGE amount of detail in combination with the comraderie of various contractors, sales personnel from local vendors, the Loewen vendor, architects, and regulatory agencies. Everyone seems turned on by this interesting project and is sharing information with me that I dearly need and use. The vast majority of this information is free and is often coached in the "if this were my house, I would".... While some is not what we want or can afford, MOST is "oh, yeah, good point". AND all this in the context of closing on our own house tomorrow morning, managing the costs, enjoying life, packing to move and building a consultancy and working as a nurse (Karen) and a consultant (that would be me). I also found out today that the drywall will take a lot longer than I expected and hence the road has lengthened somewhat. In addition the drywaller will be on vacation the first week of July so if he is not done by then, it will automatically mean a week delay. Here are some pictures, more come tomorrow. Matt

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