The Missing Plumber

Currently it is 50 degrees outside, and inside it is 65. We have no heat on the first floor of the house. Chaim thinks that Rakeesh the plumber is a sadist. He was suppose to return to finish the job three weeks ago, before my mother came to visit. She has come and gone and still we have pipes dangling out of the walls dripping water into takeout containers, not connected to anything. Rakeesh teases our GC and tells him he will be over at 3pm, and never shows up; never calls and never shows up. He has pulled this stunt at least 3 times. At first we were sympathetic, "oh he must be very busy, " now I think," he better have a good excuse, like gotten into an accident for him to blow us off!"

I think he damaged his testicles, and that's why he has not returned.

Moving

Exactly three months and one day after we closed on our house, Chaim and I finally moved upstairs to our new bedroom. Actually we moved only our mattress (placed back on the floor) and hung up our ketubah on the wall. From our spot on the floor, the ceilings seemed cathedral-like and we yelled to hear our voices echo off the bare walls.

It is now October and the weather has been unusual. One day it is 85 degrees and the next day torrential rain storms with a hurricane warning, and later still the evening dips down in the low 40's. Chaim had a brilliant goofy idea of installing a spigot onto our gutter downspout so that it would be easy to collect rain water. Instead he sits outside in the downpour, with a funnel filling our many seltzer bottles. Rakeesh and his guys have yet to come back and reinstall our radiators, thus we have no heat. We also don't know if our furnace works since the shiny blue machine in the garage has not been hooked up to anything. We hope that he will come back before we can see our breaths inside.

Today, Frankie and his guys are supposed to come back to finish up the electrical work. The list is long, and we are still waiting for the ceiling fan dimmer switches to arrive by Fed-Ex. He will definitely be coming back at another date.

Since the last post we have had Kevin and Fabio (Fernando) come to Stucco the parapet. I was joking about putting in some Doric columns outside, covering the brick, and when I came back upstairs to see how they were doing, he had carved out two pilasters out of 3 inch styrofoam. The process was done in a few steps. On top of the plywood walls, a pink plastic was nailed on. Then on top of that, one inch white styrofoam, made of the same material as coffee cups, gets screwed on with big plastic washers. Then they apply a white fiberglass mesh, similar to what you use to tape drywall joints. Then the first coat of stucco goes on. This step took about 10 hours to do. The next day a different group of guys came back and applied the top coat of stucco on to finish it off. Kevin came back a few days later by himself to caulk the joints.
Smith also came over one day to help paint the final coat of primer on the kitchen area where Diego finally finished mudding.
One of the days I was teaching, the roofer came and cut two holes in our roof and installed some mushroom vents. He also applied a layer of the silver coating to improve the surface of the roof.
The days I was not at school, I hung our closet doors and finished off the bedroom with baseboard molding. I used clear pine and didn't route any edges, so all the simple 90 degrees angles makes our bedroom looking a bit like a Shaker room.