Every Saga has a Finale: Garage Doors Installed!

My garage doors were installed today!

Talk about a long, drawn-out process... I had my foolish phase where I tried to go through Home Depot. After about 2 months of dealing with people who knew nothing, I wound up finding this guy through my trim carpenter. Not only did I get the same Clopay doors I was trying to get through HD with all the wind-loading and glass options I wanted, but I got them for about $700 cheaper!

There is a lot of steel on the back of these doors to withstand hurricane force winds. I went ahead and got the insulated door for the back garage as well since it was only $100 more. And I still came out ahead.

My trim carpenter was supposed to start today but he never did. I finally got a reply from him by text message saying he had stayed on his hunting trip for an extra day. He's now starting tomorrow. In other news, the friend who's doing my electrical and outside trim came unexpectedly today to finish the vinyl trim under the patio and install the fiberglass posts. You can see the doors and the posts in the photos below.

Electrical Update

My electrician did not hookup the house with his temporary setup afterall. He told me that the parish was going to require another inspection before year end even though we weren't ready for a final. So he didn't want his temporary rig to cause us to fail. Later though, he said we were filing for an extension so they wouldn't need to come out again before the end of the year. But I still don't have the temporary setup, so I'm not sure where that stands now.

It would be great to work under real ceiling lights!

Still Painting Moulding, Trim Work Next Week

My trim carpenter was supposed to start on the day before Christmas Eve, which was Tuesday of this week. He had to push back until this Monday. That's given us time to paint more moulding. We've almost finished all the crown. I also painted a few lengths of baseboard and casing in case he needs them right away.


We're running out of space to put the painted strips. We've been stacking them in the front garage in such a way that there's a spacer between each layer and the moulding on top doesn't touch the one underneath. One sticking point now is that the trim guy and the garage door installer are coming on the same day. The garage door guy needs the garages cleared out to give him room to install the rails, etc. And the trim guy won't be ready to use all that crown on his first day (he's installing the doors first). So for that day, we're going to need to move all the painted crown somewhere else.

As you can see from the photos, these strips are each 16 ft long. We've used every space that would fit them to lay them out and paint them.

Gearing up for End-of-Year Activity

A lot will happen in the next two weeks. The weeks surrounding Christmas and New Years will see the trim starting to go up, more electrical finishing work, the garage doors being installed, and the appliances being delivered. I'm taking vacation days from work during these two weeks, so I'll also be able to get a lot done myself.

My electrician is supposed to come this Friday and Saturday. He says I'll have power hooked up to the house temporarily when he's done. It will be nice to have real lighting to work under. This will also allow me to call out those contractors that need power in order to complete their next steps. The security company and the A/C guy both need power to finish and test their installations.

We've finished painting the doors and door frames. Last night we started on the crown moulding. The Trim caprenter is scheduled to start installing the doors and crown next week starting on Tuesday. My garage doors are due to be installed on the 29th, and the appliances arrive on the 30th. I'm hopeful that the doors do get put in on the 29th because I really want them in before the appliances arrive. My appliances may have to sit in the front garage and if the doors come after them, they will be open to view while the doors are being installed.

And I've got a to-do list of my own for these two weeks. There's still lighting fixtures and other things to buy, finish work of my own to be done, and more decisions to make! I'm trying to finalize how my circle driveway will be laid out in the front yard. It seems so narrow. But I have to submit a sketch with measurements to the parish to get the permit.

Snow Day in New Orleans

On Thursday, Dec. 11 we had snow in New Orleans! Anyone from up north would be severely unimpressed, but for us it was a big deal. The snowfall lasted about an hour before it turned to sleet and then to rain. There was a good one or two inches accumulated on people's cars before it started to melt.

Aside from being so rare, it's a big deal around here because we just aren't prepared for it. People don't know how to drive on icy roads, and we don't have equipment to de-ice them. Our infrastructure isn't prepared to handle it, so limbs falling under the added weight took out some power lines.

If you drove about an hour and a half north of here (north of Lake Pontchartrain), my friends in Hammond got 8 inches on the ground! They were without power for almost 4 days.

Photos of Trench Work

Here are a couple of photos of me on the excavator when I dug the trench for the conduit. It was fun working the machine! My friend Edwin came by and took these on his camera phone:

Underground Conduits in Place, Painting Doors and Trim

You know, there are times when I wonder why I started this process. It doesn't happen often, but occasionally I hit a low where it seems like this project will never end! It may last a minute or a few hours, and then I'm back on track. One of those moments occured on Saturday, Nov. 23 when I rented a mini excavator to dig the trench for the underground conduits. The conduits will hold the electrical, telephone, and coax cable running from the utility pole to the entry panels on the house.

The reason this got me down was that we worked non-stop 6 hours on Saturday and another 8 on Sunday, and this only got us a trench with no roots blocking it! We had to come back again to complete the laying of conduits in it. The problem was all the roots from two big trees I had removed at the front of the property. I tried digging a trench straight across the yard, but this went right through the tree stumps. Even when I dug a bit of a zig-zag around the stumps, we still had to deal with all the roots. The trench for the electrical conduit had to be at least 30 in. deep. We had to get down with shovels and electrical saws and whetever else it took to get through each root. That's what took the time.

It was fun operating the machine, but can you believe it: 2 days to dig a 50 ft trench? During that weekend, it just didn't seem like I was making any progress. All the painting was at a standstill and a whole weekend seemed wasted... But I'm all better now! ;-)

We're painting doors and trim inside now. It's a slow process to prep each door frame. First you need to remove any protruding nails or staples from when it was assembled. Then there's filling the holes and scuffs with wood filler. Once that dries, you sand it down. Finally, it's ready to paint. And it takes two coats to do the job. At least the doors won't have nail holes to fill when we get to them.

After the doors, I've got a LOT of trim and moulding to paint!

Moulding Delivered, Garage Doors Ordered... Again!

My base and crown moulding was delivered yesterday. I had gotten two bids: one from the supplier my trim carpenter likes to work with and one from my window and door supplier. The door supplier was a bit cheaper on some items, but I preferred to use the supplier that my carpenter was accustomed to. I thought it would help the job to go smoother if he already had lines of communication with them. So I asked them if they could match the prices from my door supplier, and they did.

Also yesterday, I placed the order for my garage doors with another contractor. This was a guy that my trim carpenter recommended. He's an independent company. He was cheaper than two other local companies I checked with, and he works with Clopay doors like I originally wanted from Home Depot. Clopay has colors that more closely match my vinyl windows. The guy met me at the house to measure and confirm what I wanted. I paid a deposit of $1,500. He says the doors will take 3 weeks at the most to come in.

Rapid-fire Miscellaneous Tidbits

• I found out tonight that the trim carpenter prefers to start before I tile
• I have to go tomorrow to pay for the tile before they order it
• The house is all painted, except for a couple of closets. A bathroom needs a second coat on the walls.
• I finalized my kitchen cabinet design today! I gave her a deposit. She's going to write it all up as an order and let me know when she sends it to the builder.
• The plumbers connected my sewer line to the house today. They had to dig and axe their way through an old tree stump, so they were not happy to see me when I came by! Nah, they like me. But they joked about not wanting me to talk to them.

Garage Doors Cancelled!

I've had my fill of Home Depot and Clopay and their entire garage door ordering scheme. Two days ago, I cancelled my order completely and I'm looking around at other suppliers again!

In a previous post, I said I thought the nightmare was over and that the order was finally put in for production of my doors. Apparently my faith was misplaced... I had called the woman at Clopay that I had been working with to confirm this was the case. In the meantime, I got another call from Home Depot saying that Clopay had kicked the order back again because the windows I wanted were not available in the wind-loaded door.

Throughout this process, Clopay has claimed that the Home Depot employees have all the catalogs and information on-site to figure out what's available and what's not. The Home Depot people claim they don't have any of this information, and that they always need to go through Clopay. What it boils down to is that the people at Home Depot aren't interested in doing their job. If you truly don't have the catalogs at your disposal, then get on the phone with Clopay and confirm every last detail BEFORE you submit the order and tell me that everything is ok!

This back-and-forth cycle has gone one too many times now. I placed the original order online on Sept. 22. It's been almost two full months! So I'm having to start from scratch.

In researching different things about building the house, I often ran into posts on the web about how awful Home Depot can be. I always knew it was far from perfect, but I've never had reason to vent about them until now.