Two Additions

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And Sundries

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It’s all in the details

Last run on the slopes at Sugarbush this weekend just turns the tide towards the building season which is already in full hammer-swing. While the owners had their fears of not being ready for opening day, we have delivered the building to them all cleaned up and polished.

Additionally we have a few more houses re-sided

With a rough inspection finally scheduled for next week, we should be hanging the sheetrock in the four apartments on the day after.

Stay tuned

I keep thinking I’ll have a chance to update this site, but the days keep flying along, the phone keeps ringing and we’re involved in more projects than can ever get documented here.

That’s a good thing really. It means we’re so busy, there’s just not enough time to add many words or pictures to the homes we’re enhancing. But where most people my age are retiring, I’m in a growth phase of my business, transitioning from wearing the nailbelt on small jobs for the last 10 years and moving back into larger projects and more management.

It’s time to let the young bucks do the heavy lifting.

Today, we have several projects of interest starting with our bread and butter vinyl siding teams on two sites.

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In Burlington, we are thick in the middle of converting a one-time family home and rooming house into 6 upscale small apartments with bedrooms, galley kitchens and laundry in each. The subs are nearly finished the rough-in and the insulation is taking the chill out of winter.

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And if that’s not enough, we’re fitting up a new store on Pine Street

Ground breaking went beautifully in early October. Alan Cary is a magician with a backhoe. I wish I could have stood around all day and watched him work  (thinking of the townsfolk in Mike Mulligan) as his four corners came out neat and square.

Don Thetford of Anchor Foundations has been going strong since I last saw him 10 years ago, but we took up our friendly conversation as if it had only been a week. His corners were also neat square and perfectly level.

 This pile of lumber was delivered in mid-November. There are enough 2×6’s for the downstairs walls, 2×10’s for floor joists and 23 sheets of plywood to cover the floor.

Winter has come early and set in with a vengeance.

We’ve already lost a couple of days to snow storms and had to dig out and scrape off the lumber.

Not used to the cold, it feels very cold to be framing–bad enough, it’s been awhile since I’ve used these muscles.  Somehow, you just hunker down and keep moving to keep warm. At least you don’t waste much time eating lunch…

and somehow…

stick by precious stick

 

 

 

the job gets done

 

 

 

Just as the next load gets dropped

After years of focusing on siding jobs with the occasional roof overhead, the Design/Build “department” has signed a contract to build a garage/studio in Jeffersonville.  This required me to dust off the old tools of CAD design, contracts and large budgets to put together the bank-worthy package that I could do blindfolded a decade ago.

It’s a simple design and will be a lot of fun to build.  It will go up quickly and the siding, roofing and windows are what we’ve been doing. Sheetrock and paint will challenge my elbow and rotator cuffs, but the finish work will ice the cake.

Pictures, of course will follow as the work progresses.

 

The Winter songs have been sung

 

the final runs have been run

 

All of the equipment spends a rare weekend at home before being redistributed to several sites in the coming days.

The scaffolding has certainly been put to good use by a crew of determined guys who do what it takes to reach the high and low points of our work.

 

 

 

 

 

That could mean getting creative to keep it safe, or shoveling snow

 

Sometimes, of course, we have to rent the right tool to get to the right spot safely

 

Regardless of the tool and the bitter cold beginning and snowy end of winter, we’ve managed to put on a fair amount of siding and new roofs…

 

Like this one in North Ferrisburg

 

 

and Vergennes

 

 

Barre

And this beauty in Huntington (that’s fiber-cement siding)

 

 

 

The big news for Spring 2018 is that some projects are looming that require some of my design and contracting skills, different tools dusted off and getting some use.

 

The winter has been both brutally cold and unusually balmy, but still we’ve persevered.  This week we’re just finishing up the last siding work from 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From a siding job in the Fall, we were fortunate to be invited to work inside on some of the worst days this winter, installing the ceiling and walls on a tiny house in Williston.

 

 

 

 

 

And it wasn’t all siding this winter. We got the sonotubes for a deck into the ground just before the frost set in.  In January, when the wind let up, we added this side deck and built a new entry over the concrete steps that had failed to stylize the house.

 

 

 

 

From a big wind storm in late October, we tarpped several roofs that our schedule now allows us to get back and repair the damage by replacing the entire roof.

 

But siding is the way we spend most of our time.

The year has rushed by. Winter hurtles towards us, but the line-up of projects stays strong. Vinyl siding is still our bread and butter even as a dramatic windstorm has given us several roofs to repair and replace. Last week saw us hustling across the county with tarps and strapping to secure the damaged roofs.

For the last month, we’ve spent a relatively longer amount of time on one site in Bolton. This home has had a significant make-over, getting a new roof, all new windows and a few doors, finished off with a new coat of vinyl siding to make it really stand out on the mountainside.

What looked like this:

 

 

 

 

Has been transformed into this:

And what was a dusty inconvenience for the owners…

 

 

 

 

…has become a sunroom to be enjoyed all 4 seasons instead of three