Well, for reasons I'm not going to get into, Wednesday mornings have become a really bad time to hang out at my house.  So, with my mailbox full at work and my office-mate finding furniture for me, I decided to actually go to campus.  Since Heather is off this week, stopping by the house seemed to be a good idea too.  Of course, by the time I managed to get myself away from campus Joe was already out at the house and had been there for quite some time.

As I've mentioned, we've contracted with a company in Ocala to handle our speaker/cable/telephone/data wiring.  The electrician had finally done enough for these guys to start the rest of the wiring (which was why Joe was out there).  And the plumber finally made his appearance as well.  I guess there's always some good to go with the bad, as you will soon see...
 
 

	Well, they framers finally put in all the windows...and just look at the cute little vent!
	...Including the breakfast nook picture windows.  Those are some pretty big windows!
	One big question was what to do for the walls on the back porch.  It's a well- protected area, but it needed an exterior treatment.  We didn't want to go with matching hardy-plank for what really is an interior room.  So, our builder found this exterior grade cypress.  It's so nice we decided to stain rather than paint it. Unfortunately, the framers didn't know that.  You can't see it in the picture, but they used standard flat-head nails.  A quick phone call to the builder assured us that they'll be using finishing nails for this instead.
	We really do like the framers though.  Here's the dog door they installed for us on the back porch.  They like us too since we brought it by before they finished the exterior planking.
	We like the wiring guys too.  Here's Joe's little home theatre equipment room.  And so the major wiring begins. Our entertainment center is gonna fit in the little room, with plenty of space to get behind everything so Joe can play with his components.
	Ah...but they didn't forget about me either!  This is where my network hub will be located in the Den. Did I mention that we're not only running data lines to each of the rooms, but we're using CAT5 for the phone lines as well?  Apparently CAT5 can handle 4 voice lines.  So, I get what I wanted all along, with no fuss!
	But not all is rosy at the construction site.  This is where the bathtub goes in the girls' bathroom.  Against the wall is supposed to be an 8" shelf.  The plumbers (who have not been noted for their ability to read plans) roughed in the water lines in the wrong location - completely ignoring the shelf. The shelf itself is currently only about 3 1/2" wide.  We think the framers did this to try to leave enough space for the bath tub.  It didn't work So, the plumbers had to rip up the concrete and reposition the lines.  But it's still wrong!  The shelf isn't wide enough, so it looks like the plumbers are in for more work.

Things have been rather odd lately as well.  The busiest person around, namely Joe, is the one who's been doing the most work on the house.  Working around his deadlines he's managed to coordinate the electrician & home theatre folks, run out to the job site to get the framers on track, and manage to find the one lighting fixture that we have centered the whole family room design upon.  (It's a really cool brushed steel floor lamp - I love it!)  About all I've done is run out to the site to answer questions for the electrician (ok, so I called Joe twice & he called me once while I was out there).  Together we've got the cabinets & lighting all picked out for the house.  (Yeah, we went over our allowances on both, but we had an allowance for an irrigation system and I'm giving that up.  I strongly suspect that my Landscaping allowance will be next...)