Alex and I haven't been able to travel to Winthrop for the last two weeks because Alex is nine months pregnant with our first child (due date August 30!), and we have to stay close to the hospital. However, a lot has been going on with the cabin, and Dave and Lisa have been working hard on the jobsite. There has also been a fair bit of drama in the materials delivery department.
Our new Vinyltek triple-pane windows were supposed to be delivered last Tuesday. Our framer, Gary Giltner, traveled on Monday from Post Falls, Idaho, with a crew of two, to install our windows, siding, and doors. Tuesday arrived, but our windows didn't. After several calls to the shipping company, we found out that our order was in a warehouse in Kent rather than on its way to Eastern Washington. Worse, they told us it wouldn't be delivered until Thursday. That meant that Gary and his crew would be sitting around with nothing to do for two days.
Things got worse when we were told that our largest window, which gives us our incredible south-facing view of the mountains, had tipped over in said warehouse and shattered. Worse still, the new delivery driver, who was about to head out for Winthrop, refused to carry a broken window.
Without the windows installed, Gary couldn't finish installing the siding, something we wanted to get taken care of before fall weather arrives. This was a hard lesson in how interconnected everything is on a house-building project and how one relatively minor mishap can set off a chain of difficulty and delay.
To try to get our window and siding install back on track, we formed a plan to pick up the broken window in Kent and drive it to Winthrop ourselves. Vinyltek would order some replacement glass and send someone out to Winthrop later to fix the window.
It seemed like it would work, until we found out that Vinyltek had forgotten to include our patio doors in the original shipment. So Dave, on his way to Winthrop with the broken window yesterday, had to stop in Canada to pick up the doors. While doing this, he found out that the vinyl frame of the window had also broken, and the whole assembly would have to be replaced.
Despite these setbacks, it was exciting to see the photos Dave sent yesterday of the siding installed on the north, east, and west sides of the house. We really like how the gray contrasts with the varnished wood beams supporting the carport and porches. The white areas that are left on the partial-siding photos are the Tyvek home wrap still visible where rusty steel accent siding will be installed.
