Six Weeks?!

J.D. thinks that the house will be done in about six weeks. That would be awesome, as I'd been envisioning twice that.

We passed the latest stucco inspection two weeks ago; there's no clear reason why that crew hasn't come to finish it yet.

The guys hanging the siding say they'll be working this weekend and next and then be done.

We cut the $4000 interior door budget in half by going with plain solid core doors @ $60 (and hollow on closets @ $40) instead of the single-panel doors with square sticking. Did anyone out there know that interior doors cost so much? Around $150 a door for the panel doors, pre-hanging adds another $120-ish. We're doing 13 doors.

Other victims of the eleventh-hour budget reality check include:

• Pocket doors for the studio. Gone for now, though the pockets are in place, hidden under drywall.
  
• Underfloor radiant heating in the master bathroom. Gone. We live in Southern California, so we won't miss it that much.
  
• Glass panel doors for the bathrooms and laundry. Gone.
  

I'll reserve writing a post-mortem until things are, well, post-mortem, but I will reflect on the budget for a moment:

For one thing, we intended to be more involved with selecting less expensive "allowance items" than those in the contract, but having small children left little time for that research.

For another, we added things (change orders, in contractor-speak) like solar power, can lights, and a skylight.

Lastly, the unexpected $8000 city mandated fire sprinkler system didn't help matters.