Now to box in the ducts

Tuesday, December 4th

Andreas has been at the house So much I think HE should be named the General Contractor!

I took a couple of hours this morning to go to the house with him to talk to Sergei about 'stuff'. Turns out the 'stuff' was all the framing to box around the duct work and pipes, etc. Also known as bulkheads.

Sergei is always asking the questions of 'how you want this' an Andreas' usual answers is 'I don't know, how would you do it?' men, no imagination

So I was glad to be there, and Sergei gave me a big grin when he saw I was there. That's always nice...even though it was freezing cold and we stood around a lot pointing at things and trying to figure out what he was saying, I think we decided a good numbner of things so he could work this week without waiting on us. I have to still come back with the kitchen details...you don't want to have the box too low and you also don't want it too high or you could end up with a weird gap above your cabinets that collects nothing but dust.

I also got the meet the plumber Slava finally (he looks a little like Borat in a fuzzy hat). He has less of a grasp on english but is a very nice man. We even had to run out to Home Depot to get some plumbing bits (tub drain units). Andreas wonders why Slava doesn't buy them and he tries to explain they can be $20 - $150 and I nod as I know this but Andreas doesn't agree, until we go to buy it! You can get the everyday piece for $20, which we have at the crackhouse and we'll use on the second tub here, however the master is all 'brushed nickel' and the everyday piece is chrome. On a somewhat cool note, the HD was all out of the expensive packages we wanted for the master bath but they had some ripped open boxes with only partial contents. Luckily for us, the week day staff at HD are not 16 years old and the guy said just take that one part because all we do it write it off as an incomplete set. Very cool.

We still have seen no sign of the duct guys, they are supposed to be fixing some outstanding things but then we heard the boss is having a baby so I think we can excuse the tardiness a little!