The details

Here's Rob, caulking the interior for painting. He'll go through many many tubes of caulk, but it makes all the difference in having a smooth finish. Like sanding the trim, painting it, sanding it again, and then painting again.

We tried some more paint colors in the kitchen. At Lowes you can get little sample cans of all the Valspar colors - what fun! We like the general color combination, but not the specific colors, except the dark terra cotta. So I'll go back today and get a couple more of green and dark yellow. The orange I picked for our bedroom turned out to be a neon cantaloupe color, which is fun, but not what I'm looking for. Having the colors up will make such a difference. As a note, usually you paint earlier in the home-building process, but we chose to concentrate on the septic. Also, we put the floors in a little early, I think because Rob wanted to get the trim up.

Today Rob is going to redo the main floors one more time, as the finish didn't really set before it got messed up.

The electrician finished, and then had to do a couple more things for the inspector, but should pass final today. He's been easy to work with, and our only complaint is the light switch in our bedroom ended up behind the door. That's something we should have noticed right off, but we weren't thinking about the doors much at the time.

The health inspector let Rob fill in the last 2 lines after he came out last time, and now just wants to see the water flow through the distributor box before signing off. Huge, major accomplishment on Rob's part, to have built this very large septic system by himself for a somewhat picky inspector.

Financially, we are still on budget. The extra gravel for the septic took our driveway gravel money, but there is time to do that later. Today I'll talk to the counter makers, but that shouldn't cost much as we are doing formica. That will last a couple of years, and then maybe we'll upgrade. I don't know the final cost for the tankless water heater vent. They had said 2 or 3 hundred, but that was before they noticed it has to be stainless steel, so we'll see.