The Hamilton Rd. Project!: Labor days

It was an extremely productive weekend in retrospect, but we didn't make a much flashy progress as we had initially thought possible. For the greater part of the past two weeks work has consisted mainly of either running lumber through a plainer, then a router, then a sander, to finally be varnished. Looking at the piles of finished trim lying about the house I think that about three quarters of it is made and sitting around waiting to be installed. I had hoped on getting a huge amount of it installed over the long weekend, but the loose ends I tried to tie up on Thursday night ended up spilling over into all day projects on Friday. Between the crew of Lynch, Doug, Amber and myself we ended up getting the kitchen counter bolted into place, the sink working, a dishwasher installed, a garbage disposal installed, the bathroom vanity installed, the bathroom sink hooked up, the shower and bathtub fixtures installed, and the hot water heater operating by Saturday morning. With those things out of the way the slow process of installing trim began.
To install it we start at the door frames and work backwards through a room until reaching another door frame. That means that the trim around all the doors needs to be in before the baseboard can be cut to size and tacked in. Most of Saturday was spent installing door casings as well as the exterior wood work. On average it took me about three hours to get all the casing for a door finished and it just so happened that the entry room we started in has more doors than all the other rooms of the house combined. By then end of the weekend though I had figured out a system that works for me and at least in my mind speeds up the carpentry. The goal by the end of this weekend is to have all the windows in the house done. It is one of the first points in the project where it really is starting to look like a house, which is certainly exciting for everyone involved with the project.