Basement framed, Little River Falls

We visited the cabin site over Labor Day weekend and were surprised to find the remaining two basement walls had been framed. The builder had to send a crew home last Tuesday because there was no electricity at the site. A temporary line was running across the property when we bought it, and Scott thought the electricity was already on. Randy had to call Cherokee Electric, which at first refused to turn on the power until he or I came to the company's office. After agreeing to pay extra fees, Randy got them to do the paperwork via fax and expedite the service call, but it was still supposed to take a couple days.

Plywood for the main floor is in place as well. The basement will be unfinished for now, but when we move into the house full time we plan to finish it with a den/game room, bedroom, bathroom, office and laundry room. Since I had to decide where the future bathroom and laundry room will be so that plumbing could be installed beneath the concrete slab, I drew up a floor plan for the basement. This irritated Randy. He didn't understand why I couldn't just say "Put the plumbing here and here (random locations) and we'll work around it later." Maybe, but that could have led to a bizarre layout for the entire floor. To decide where to position the toilet, sink, bathtub and washing machine, you have to determine not only where the bathroom and laundry room are going to be, but also their shape, size, where the doors will be, etc. And to figure that out, you have to put some thought into where all the other rooms are going to be. After a few minutes of considering this, I concluded that just drawing up a plan for the entire floor would be the simplest -- and probably fastest -- way to accomplish the task. (The floor plan is with the pictures below.)

It turned out to be a good thing because Scott went ahead and framed the windows and doors in the appropriate places. That should save some money later on. We walked around in the basement for awhile this weekend. The view is going to be really nice, even from there.
We also spent some time at Little River Falls. I want to start visiting the outdoor attractions in the area, both for myself and so we can tell people interested in staying at the cabin what there is to do. I know people kayak, rock climb, hike and swim in pools in the river. The parking lot next to the road into the neighborhood has been overflowing the past few times we've been there. But we usually go to our property, look around for about five minutes, then leave. We don't have much time during our trips, and we like to visit family in the area while we're there. I'm going to try to go somewhere new each time we visit the cabin, though.

At the falls, which is the starting point for Little River Canyon, the water level was way down and lots of people were walking over the exposed rocks and swimming in little pools created by depressions in the rock formations. Some people were swimming below the falls, too, and others were walking under the small stream of water -- about 10 feet wide -- that still spills over the drop-off. A volunteer park ranger is posted at a sign that gives information about the falls and canyon. He said there's actually more water now than there was most of the summer because the area got some rain late last week. The kids and I walked around above the falls. The water temperature was cool but not cold, and the designs in the rocks were interesting. Some looked like shell impressions. Since rainfall is so far below normal this year, many of those rocks probably haven't been visible in a long time.

Here are photos I took at the falls and at the cabin:

Concrete floor poured

Sonja and Eddie, Randy's sister and brother-in-law, visited the site today and reported the concrete basement floor has been poured. We don't have photos, but some neighbors sent us these pictures this past weekend. A gravel sub-base and concrete forms were in place.

Basement plumbing installed

We visited the house site on the way back from a weekend vacation in Atlanta. (Note to potential tourists: the trek through the World of Coke "museum" feels like a not-so-subtle brainwashing, but the CNN tour is cool.)

The pipes for the basement plumbing were in place and some tar and brown plastic sheeting were added to the outside of the two walls. The concrete floor wasn't poured though. The builder had said that would be done early last week.

Here are some new photos:

Claw-foot tub refinisher

I spent the morning calling claw-foot tub refinishers in Alabama and Georgia. After getting estimates of $600 to $700 per tub (our budget is $500 each and we already have $150 in one and $175 in the other), I called a company I initially thought of when I decided to put claw-foot tubs in the house. If I'd done this to begin with, I could have saved us a lot of trouble.

The business is in a borderline-dangerous outskirt of Birmingham we drive through on the way to my parents' house. A bunch of tubs that need refinishing are chained up outside the place. We stopped there a couple times awhile back, but it was the weekend and no one was there. I turned to Google and the online white pages, and when this business didn't show up in my searches for bathtub refinishers I sort of forgot about it.

Anyway, I got the owner on the phone today and he sells refinished claw-foot tubs for $530. That's the excruciating part. He must not have surveyed the competition recently. An architectural salvage company in Cullman sells them for $1,200, and that's the next cheapest price I've found. The good news was I could bring him the tubs I've already bought and he'll have them refinished for $330. That's within the $500 budget and a little less than the $530 of buying one already refinished, but saving $25 doesn't make up for the trouble of picking up the tubs, unloading them (they're HEAVY -- I fear for my fingers and toes, not to mention my back, every time I help move one) and storing them. The owner told me he doesn't refinish the tubs there; the same man has been picking them up, refinishing them and bringing them back for 20 years. He must not have raised his price in 20 years either, I thought. A refinished tub is displayed in the store and it looks really nice. I kind of feel bad the guy is doing this work so cheaply compared to everyone else, but I can't be the one to clue him in.

Next week Dad and I are going to take the tub that's at his house over there to be refinished. It won't be back for five to seven weeks, but that's not a problem given the slow progress of the house.

Durango damage

As promised in the previous entry, here are some photos of the damage to Randy's Durango. Ironically, he had just gotten the driver- and passenger-side windows repaired (they wouldn't roll down most of the time, and if they did, they wouldn't roll back up) after living with the inconvenience for a year because the repair was so expensive. Now the driver-side window is messed up again.

Basement walls and well

I did have to call the bank, and the builder is a bit annoyed with us as a result, but walls for two sides of the house are up now. The existing well has also been drilled 50 feet deeper. The well will be under the house -- something we couldn't avoid because it was there when we purchased the lot. The people we bought the lot from owned the adjoining lot as well and were planning to build a house in the middle. If we moved our house to the right it would be too close to the other lot; if we moved it to the left we'd lose most of the view. In any case, the well needs to work for a long time because if it ever dries up, we'll have to have another one drilled.

Here are some photos Randy took yesterday:

Randy also damaged his SUV while at the site. I meant to take some pictures of that, but he's gone on a business trip now, so it will have to wait. He was trying to move his trailer (you can see it in the far right of the above photo), which he left there a couple months ago. He and his brother-in-law, Eddie, were going to pick up a load of sod for Eddie's yard. Randy hasn't told me exactly what happened, but the molding over the rear left tire was ripped off and there's a gash in the driver's side door. The trailer is still stuck in some dirt.

Randy and Eddie can't order sod from the same company again because they didn't pick up the order. Apparently sod dies if left out overnight after it's been cut.

Randy was planning to pick up the green claw-foot tub with the trailer later in the day. It ended up fitting in the back of his Durango, so he was able to bring it back here anyway. It's almost in good enough shape not to need refinishing on the inside. At first I thought it hadn't been refinished before. The surface looks like the original porcelain. But when I looked closer I saw a few small places where a top layer of paint is peeling. That will need to be sandblasted off, and I can't do that. We'll have to have both tubs professionally refinished.

Second claw-foot tub

We bought another claw-foot tub today. It seems a bit premature seeing how nothing -- other than moving some dirt around -- has been done toward building the house, but I'll get to that later. The builder asked us to find the tubs as soon as possible so he would know where the plumbing needs to be installed, and we have.

This tub was advertised in a shopper on Sand Mountain, where Randy is from, and Eddie, his brother-in-law, and Rhonda, his cousin's wife, called us and told us about it. The woman selling it e-mailed me some pictures of it tonight. It looks like it's in better shape than the first one we bought and it costs less -- $150. I e-mailed her back and told her we'd take it. The green-and-gold paint scheme will have to go, but if the inside doesn't need to be refinished I might do that myself.

Here are some more photos of the tub. A stamp of the date it was made -- July 27, 1925 -- is on the bottom. A friend who bought a claw-foot tub for the Victorian house she's restoring told me they all have a "birthday." I'll have to take a closer look at the first one we bought -- it's at my parents' house -- because I didn't notice it on that one. The claw feet appear to be exactly like those on the other tub.

We went to the cabin site this past weekend. Scott, the builder, hasn't been returning Randy's calls, so we weren't sure if anything had been done. And it hadn't. It's been three months since the construction loan closed (and Scott received $20,000 from the bank), and the only change at the site is that part of an embankment has been dug out and the area where the house will go has been flattened.

As we were walking around, surveying the lack of progress, Randy asked if I wanted to get the camera out of the car and take some pictures. "Well..." I said, "I don't see how they would be different from the pictures we've already taken." He grinned and said he guessed I was right.

If I get another bill for an interest payment and nothing else has been done I'm going to have to ask someone at the bank what we should do. The house is supposed to be completed nine months from the closing date and if it isn't, we pay a penalty. I didn't understand this at first; it seems like the builder should pay. But the bank doesn't have a contract with the builder, I realized. It only has a contract with us. I'm getting worried the house won't be finished in time.