Cold-weather activities

For about two weeks at the beginning of January the house had nothing done on it. The temperature was simply too low for the cement to be poured into the ICFs (insulated concrete forms). For that, the temperature had to get above 15 degrees (-9.4 Celsius) or so. Finally, the temperature got up to the 15-20 (-9.4 - .6.6 C) range, high enough to pour concrete. The forms into which it is poured are so well insulated that the concrete can set/cure.

We had a 2+ hour meeting on Thursday simply to go over the window schedule again. We found some additional mistakes, so it was good that we went over it all. It's astonishing how much windows cost. There is a +13% charge for each window simply to have the interior trim made out of something other than pine. They have us over a barrel, however, and we simply have to pay the difference or have a softwood trim that doesn't look good at all.

The house now has basement walls. Today there were some additional steps taken for the top of the walls. Tomorrow they start building the east wall of the house out of wood, since there will be windows and doors on the east wall.