On Hiatus.....Sort Of

Its been a sparse week for posting. That is partly due to me being out of town, and partly due to much of the progress happening at the house is not all that quantifiable. I guess I could post some pictures of the massive pile of debris that I piled into the dumpster, or the completely cleaned up house at the end of my 4hr process on Sunday. However its not all that fun, and surely wouldn't be new to this space. What is new and fun is taking pictures of the infrastructure of the house in the most abstract way possible. There are going to be some quiet days in the next week while we get everything finished up on the mechanical portion of things and get the house inspected for electrical, plumbing, and rough carpentry. Once those are done and approved, then we can move on to spray foam insulation later next week.

I find the electrical conduit in the house quite appealing from a photography perspective. Part of it is the "speckled" look that you get on a black and white photo from the way the steel is anodized....the other part of it is the smooth way its bent into the contours needed to snake its way around the house. Whats really impressive is watching the guys manipulate this stuff into the shape they need to get it crammed into the wall spaces. The equipment that is used is simple and efficient allowing the electricians to really move quickly. This is necessary with the conduit being required in the city of Chicago....very few other places in the US require it in this way.



Here is a good example of everything thats going on in the wall spaces. In the above shot there is electrical conduit, copper water supply line, pvc drain tile, and simple electric wiring for the security system. This is by no means the busiest wall space in the house either and is more of a representation of the average wall space in the central portion of the house. Once we add in the cable, HDMI, and speaker wire, the wall spaces are going to be full of mechanicals. In certain places the wall spaces are so full that we are going to take pictures and measure the locations of piping and other items to prevent the carpenter from screwing something into the wrong place once the walls are closed up. This is also something that will help us down the road with either remodeling or if we were to move and sold the home to someone else. Have a good "map" of the way mechanicals are laid out in a wall space, while a bit egregious, is something that I will be glad I did down the road.

My hope was to be putting up dry wall next week. So far that is not looking to be the case. That puts us into the following week which means we will be lucky to have the walls closed up, spackled, and primed by the end of the month.

Rounding the Corner

Here is the first pass at the garage design as proposed by the gents over at HPZS. They have been working with the department of buildings to get the framework for an attic space over the garage. There were successful in helping the city understand that we have a need for dry storage space over the garage due to how much of the space in the home is dedicated to living space. As you can see, the design matches the Dutch Colonial design of the house, and fits right in with all of the homes in the neighborhood. We think this is very important as many of our neighbors to the rear area going to have to deal with looking at whatever we build for years to come. Might as well have it be in keeping with the rest of the design of the neighborhood and not have it stick out like sore thumb.


Here is the layout as proposed. Joe and Gary have done a good job of laying out the second floor in a way to maximize the space in the attic with full headroom (7' or over finished). Furthermore, there are some really nice nooks etc that will prove useful long term. I like the way the second floor and first floor entrances are separated. We plan on storing things like off season clothes, coats, and holiday decorations. With the first and second floors not sharing a technical hallway, this should keep some of the garage smells contained in the first floor.


This is the way the site will layout with the garage on it. One of the biggest things to be decided is how to do the hardscape around both sets of stairs near the house, and the doorways for the garage. We have decided that we will not have any grass in the backyard. Most of the good summer sun comes from the direct east and northeast which is going to leave the "yard" space (that which is not house, deck or garage and is behind the house) with very little consistent sun in the first half of the day. Having this scenario with the east yard of our current home, I think it will be a constant battle trying to keep grass growing. I have an idea in my head of how this is going to look next spring when we get started on the landscaping.



I just wanted to point out a few of the things going on around the house that have not come up to this point that I like. This is a shot of the 4" recessed light (or "can") we are putting in the first floor of the house. The standard recessed light used in residences is a 6" can, so this gives the house a distinctly different look. Part of what the smaller light means is a smaller foot print of light emitted towards the floor. This makes things especially nice for dimming.


I just posted this picture because I have been thinking a lot about how intense the infrastructure of the house has become. I was walking through there this morning just taking in all the work that has been done. Much of the current mechanical work goes a bit under the radar as a result of there being little outward change (other then sawdust and scrap). I also noticed three or four things that need to be changed around a bit as well. Its really hard to keep all of it in front of you when you are constantly working to improve the design and layout.

This week should show the end of plumbing, electrical, and rough framing with inspections for each. Once that is done and the city has signed off, we will be able to start with the spray foam insulation and then the drywall. I hope we will be putting up drywall the first full week in October.

Caulked and Ready To Roll

After fours days of searching, driving 30+ miles, and cajoling a small hardware store into making a purchase order to a distributor (thank you Tennenbaum Hardware) for me, we finally got the balance of the caulk that we needed to finish siding the house yesterday. I have not spent much time in this space mentioning specific companies mainly due to it not being the point of this blog. However, in this case a lot of credit is due to the fine people at Nu-Puttie Corp in Maywood, IL for being patient with me and helping find a way to get me the caulk we needed to finish this job. Its funny, but sourcing the remaining three cases of caulk in the same color as the siding was one of the biggest challenges of this entire project.

I have to say, it was worth the effort. Its really nice to see the exterior of the house come together. Furthermore, once I saw how the caulk looked in comparison to clear caulk I was very happy with the result. You can see from the above picture that the caulk almost exactly matches the siding and provides a very nice transition to the trim around the windows.

Here is a shot of the front and side of the house with the siding finished. Its important to note that there is a lot of work to be done on the soffits and fascia yet. That will essentially make all of the exposed wood you see around the roof line framed in black alluminum fascia and black gutters. I think the finished product is going to look really good when its replete with gutters.

Here is the back of the house. As you can see, Fabian of Castro Roofing and Siding is doing the final work with the caulk on the seam where the siding meets the corner trim. The two most important places for the caulk to go when installing this siding is at this location as well as arond the windows and doors where water can seep in. This is why they end up using over 3 cases of caulk on the entire house.

Here is a shot of the east side of the house. Its hard to make out, but you can see there are two exhaust vents coming out of the side of the house. These are for the furnace and the bathroom fan on the second floor. These are required by code and unavoidable. I would love to be able to not have them sticking out the side of the house, but there is literally no way around it.

I have been focusing so heavily on the exterior of the home, very little attention has been brought to the electrical work that is being done in the house. The above picture is of the "naked" panel that will eventually have all of the wires and circuits for the entire house. The rough electrical connection to the city - called the service - is in and just needs wiring run through here in order to be connected and providing power to the home. I say "just" but its truly a ton of work. I am actually very intrigued to see how it all ends up working as it seems to be a very laborious process wiring a house with all of the conduit and boxes already in place.

On another electrical note: We did officially decide to put a backup generator into the electrical infrastructure. I ordered the generator a few days ago and the boheamouth (3' wide x 7' long) was delivered yesterday. The 8kw generator is quite a large item.....lets just say I wont be moving this thing around myself. There are two main reasons we decided to put in the generator: Reason #1 - With the backup battery for the sump pump (a reliable one) being over $1000 and a surge protector/backup power for the data room being another $5-600 we were going to be close to the cost of a generator and only be protecting two things in the home. The 8kw generator has 8 circuits and will be able to protect both of the aforementioned items along with the fridges, oven, basic lights in the house, and furnace fans. All of that for a bit more money was a no-brainer. Reason #2 - putting in a backup generator is 100 times easier when you are putting the electrical infrastructure in the house from scratch from a labor perspective. As a result, if we were going to do it, now is the time.

SIDING!!

The house is finally starting to look like a house. Fiber Cement Siding is going up really fast. I left on Thursday around lunchtime and they were just starting to put the siding up on the west wall.

This is what I returned to: All of the west wall, most of the front porch, a decent amount of the east wall, and some of the back as well. Its funny how the house has gone from looking like a construction project on the outside, to looking pretty buttoned up and finished on the outside. It really is looking nice.

This is a shot of the west wall windows. Originally I wanted these windows to be twice as wide creating a large break in what is a pretty large wall space. While I did get to break up the space, its doesnt look as large as I wanted. I do really like the uniformity that I am getting from the windows, and the stark contrast between the gray of the siding and black of the windows and trim is really nice as well.

Here is a shot of the back of the house as it is now (they havent worked this week yet). You can see they are putting the hardie wrap up as they go put a second vapor barrier around the house before the siding even goes up. The small squares that are on each side of the sliding door are the places where we will be putting up the exterior lights for the back porch. They create these from the same product as the trim and it helps create a consistent look all around the house.

One final shot of the front and side of the house. You can see the scaffolding still left on the west side of the house from where they were working up high. I really like the smooth, clean look of the hardie board. It has a much smaller profile on the house then the sort of bulky aluminum or vinyl siding that is traditionally used. If you add the "green" value of the product along with the long lasting nature (25+ yr warranty including the paint!) this is one of the best decisions we made and stuck with on the house.

We had to get more siding to finish the house, so they should be back at it again tomorrow or first thing Thursday, and we expect to be done with all of it by Friday. The house should be ready for inspections, finished framing, and insulation by mid-next week!

Its all in the layout

The rear deck is essentially done. The big "if" out there was how to do the ballisters on the outside of the deck to make the vertical portion of the railing and associated covering of hte lower part of the deck. The carpenter and I disagreed on how to layout the ballisters as he was looking for a wider space between them then I wanted. So, we decided to put both of our designs in side-by-side and see what happened. Well.....we both agreed that mine was the better of the two.

This is a shot of the inside of the railing from deck height. As you can see, the tighter ballisters make everything look more compact and angular. I really like the look of this from all angles. Also, doing it this way should get us a great degree of control over the twisting and bowing that happens with treated lumber that is this small. Its VERY hard to keep this from happening so all we can hope for is to minimize it as much as possible.

Here is a shot from the ground in the back. As you can see, we decided to run them all the way to the ground creating a barrier between the lower part of the deck and the outside. We have a little bit of cement laid under there to allow for some storage, but we mainly will be looking to just minimize what ends up getting growing , gets blown or thrown in there. I can only imagine how much I would have thrown down there as a kid.

This is a close up of the trim we had put around the windows before the siding. As you can see, this is the same black as the windows. This trim is called LP, or laminated plywood and was painted with two coats of paint at the production facility to give it a minimum of 10yr life span before it needs to be re-painted. This is also what we ended up using for the corners on the house as well. As a result, we are going to have two items on the house that will need maintenance over the years; something I was hoping to avoid.

Here is a shot of the house last night. Starting to really look good. Hoping to have a fully sided house next week.

Rear Deck Framing

The carpenter's did their usual speedy work yesterday and threw up almost all of the deck frame. Its amazing how big it feels. Last minute we moved the deck out about 5ft to make it bigger, and I think we are going to like that decision for the rest of our time in this home. It was absolutely the right decision. We are going to be able to put our patio table out on this area and sit and enjoy morning or evening sun on this deck.

Here is the deck from the back. As you can see, they have the stairs built coming off the back of the deck and are just left to put the treads on. Its a little bit hard to see on the right side, but the corner post is not sitting on anything right now. This deck is constructed a bit different then most in the sense that the main support of the deck is actually derived from a spot inside of the corner post. This gives the look of the deck amost "floating." The original intention was for this to be used with a very nice floating railing system that worked in conjunction with the ballisters, but in the end this is not going to be the way we build the railings/ballisters. As a result, we have to add 4 more piers for the corner supports to be anchored to. The main reason was that we were worried about the 4x4 posts twisting as they aged without being anchored to a footing. So, we are anchoring 4 more posts, and we will be using cable bolts to bolt the rest of the posts in at the deck level.

Here you can see the aforementioned support for the deck. The 6x6 posts are the main vertical support along with the actual house itself where the main ledger board was mounted with 1/2" thick cable bolts through the wall. The other thing that I realized yesterday is we have way more room under the porch then I thought we were going to have. As a result, we will be able to use this space as storage more readily then I thought.

This is a stair stringer. The carpenter doubled up the stringer for both a support and design perspective. One of the pieces of the deck that we kept from the architects design is making the back stairs 4 1/2' wide. at 54", this gives the deck a much more open look, and will work very well in defining the space between the deck in the garage. Once we have a set design for the garage (coming soon) I am hoping we will be able to acheive a sort of "courtyard" for the house where we will be able to have a second area for outdoor related enjoyment. I have an idea in my head of how this should go, lets see if I can make it work.

Infrastructure

The rest of this month is going to be dedicated to finishing out the infrastructure of the home. The HVAC is done with the exception of the basement furnace and the boiler for the radiant heat. Most of the rough plumbing is done and the electrical system is being built now. That leaves us down to interior framing around some of the mechanicals, finishing out the electric, and laying down the basis for the walls to be closed up.


The two pictures above are of the foyer ceiling. In and effort to define some of the space in the home; I decided to bring the ceiling in the foyer down 12" from the rest of the first floor ceiling height. When I originally thought of it I just wanted to create a differentiation between the foyer and the living room adjacent to the space. I came to find out from the architects that this is a method Frank Lloyd Wright employed several times in his spaces. In certain cases he brought the ceiling down so low in the foyer that it was uncomfortable. The idea is to compress the entrant to the point that no matter how much higher the ceilings got when you walked into the rest of the house, there entrant felt a sense of the home "opening" up to them as the walked into the house. Once I was told this by the architects I felt like it could be a great way to help further reinforce the open floor plan on the first floor.



This the "accent" wall where the fireplace used to be. We ended up making it about 10" thick as a result of having to run some plumbing related items (one stack and three supply lines) through the space to keep the soffiting to a minimum. When this is done it could be the feature of the entire first floor. However, I am going to keep the treatment of the wall under wraps for now...could be awesome.


When the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC are laid out in this template its nice to see all of the clean finished work. After looking at beat up, old (sometimes 100yrs old), and deteriorating infrastructure for the last two years, its nice to see the new infrastructure taking its place. This is really nothing more then a little bit of plumbing, but its nice and straight with the clean finished angles on the copper pipe.


This is the finished second floor HVAC unit. As I mentioned before, we decided to put two furnaces in the house to isolate the spaces and try to control the temperature of the home a little better. With the whole house being insulated with the spray foam insulation, the house should theoretically be one temperature. This means we are going to be using this furnace for not only our bedrooms, but also for the attic. It is going to be very important to make sure we heat/cool that space the same way as the bedrooms as it will all be one unit.

Carpenter will be there to work on the decks and interior frame out. Electricians are on today as well - I think they are the ones who will be most frustrated with me when we are done, lots of changes going on here.

Siding should start tomorrow (trim supposed to be delivered in the morning - crossing fingers)

ADT and Finish carpenter are coming tomorrow as well.

Should be a great week for progress

Front Porch!!

The pieces to the completion of the exterior are starting to fall into place. The carpenters started construction of the front porch yesterday and got a ton of work done. It was quite a nice day yesterday for the guys to setup shop just off the porch and put this together.


This is where they ended the day yesterday. The entire structure of the porch is done, along with all of the decking, and the stringers are setup to put the treads and risers on today (assuming the rain stops). Now that the structure is officially set, we were able to ascertain that the ballisters (or spindles depending on who you ask) will work as 2x2x8's....thankfully. I spent a good amount of time on the phone Thurs and Friday trying to find 2x2x10's and was not able to find them. Apparently they just warp way too much past 8'. So, I will order those today for delivery early next week and we can put those on to finish up the deck. I am really interested to see how this is going to look when its done as most this design is not seen very often.



At this point we its impossible for me to not admit that I am a dork when it comes to certain things aesthetic, so I am just going to come out and say it: I love cement. I think its just an amazing product. I love the versatility and the way it comes together. I like the preparation process that is necessary to make sure the end result achieves the desired lasting power cement provides. More then anything else, cement looks awesome. Its just fun to watch it change as it cures and ages in the elements. I could dedicate an entire photo book to just images of curing cement.


The back yard is resembling a lumber yard right about now with all of the decking material along with the interior lumber, and the scrap pile. I had an idea in my head of what the job site would look like through the process and this is more what I was thinking. Whats funny is how short lived this makeshift lumber yard is going to be. By mid next week most of this will all be gone. The great part is it will all be in the finished deck, porch, and interior framing.



The siding has arrived. I am happy to have it on my property finally. Ever since we started this process we have planned on using Hardie Board for our house. Our good friend has been working for Hardie for years and we know it to be a sound product with many endearing qualities - most of which is the above mentioned ColorPlus Technology which assures us of at least 25 years of no maintenance on the paint. We chose a very light gray color that is borderline white. I think its going to look great with the black windows and custom black trim that I ordered. This process will start on Tuesday when the siding company arrives to start. In the course of one week this house is going to go from a complete mess on the outside to a buttoned up product. It should be a great transition....I am sure the neighbors are looking forward to it.

Sidewalks!

They are in. There is a great amount of satisfaction in finished and curing cement. I dont know why, but it just looks great. I am sure that part of this is the process of getting to the freshly poured concrete with the sledgehammering and the empty dirt spaces where they used to be. In the end its just nice to have it done and to not have the ugliness of the previous sidewalks that inhabited this space.

Then its just the little things. We never talked about how the cuts in the cement were going to go, but the mason did a great job of being a little creative with the sidewalk where it went from the wide part back to the normal width sidewalk. Interesting fact: the cuts in the cement are put there to control the cracking that will happen in the cement no matter how well its poured. By putting the cuts in the cement, the cracking in the cement tends to gravitate towards the thinner areas saving the rest of the cement from cracking. Here's to hoping it works well.

We have officially decided we are adding a backup generator to the infrastructure of the home. To the right of the stairs is the area that I had poured yesterday to accomodate the 8kw generator we are going to be incorporating into the house. The generator is going to be hard wired into both the electrical and natural gas on the home. This will allow us to run the sump pump, a few lights, the refrigerators, the fans on the furnaces, and power to the data center that controls the computers and TV's. This is going to not only be a nice security blanket for us in the event of a big storm, but it will be a great sellling point for us should we ever decide to move.

Womanized lumber. Thats the technical term for treated lumber that is used in the construction of decks and porches. There is a large pile of it in the backyard for the carpenter to start with today. We are really having a hard time finding a specific length of 2 x 2 that is going to make the ballisters on the front porch. Until then, the frame and rest of the porch and deck construction begins today.

Coming Soon....Power.

Electrical started yesterday. Three guys crawling all over the second floor getting the electrical infrastructure started. The walk through on the electrical plan last Friday was pretty intense, and as a result is forcing me to think about lighting quite a bit over the last few days. Its funny how you take for granted things like the placement of outlets and switches. There really is a method to the madness, and if you put your mind to the way you will use your house, there are definitive do's and dont's for the way the house is layed out.

This is the shot of a triple switch in the girls bathroom. Its funny how something as simple as the bathroom fan / light being on the same switch or not becomes a decision that I have to make. There is no way to adequately state exactly just how many decsisions there are to make on a project like this. In this case we wanted the light in the ceiling to be able to be on without the fan being on, so we need two switches for the same fan. There were 30+ electrical decisions like that in the house just on the walk through. There will be 30 more before we are done wiring the house. Dont get me wrong, I knew they were coming, I just didnt understand that it would be this many and how detailed it would be. No matter how involved I am in this process, you still take certain things for granted.

Here is a great example of the decision making that needs to be done on a daily basis. I walked into the house at lunch yesterday for my daily check-in and found the electrician standing in the master staring at this wall (without all of the electrical infrastructure). I know what cabinets I am going to have (I started looking 4mos ago), and I have an idea where I want everything to be. However, it was essentially an idea of where things were going to go. As late as last week we were still talking about what to do about the lighting and mirrors for the master bath wall. When I walked in yesterday I had to decide where the lights were going to go in this bathroom and it needed to be the final decision. I made a decision, and that was that. Its not to say that you cant change things, but the idea is to get them right the first time and be done with it. Its the way you keep costs down and things moving. Its the mantra I keep coming back to it over and over again, if you are not a decisive person, this would be the most painful process for all parties involved. You cannot agonize over every decision. Just cant do it. There is no way you would be able to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time if you did.

More electrical today.

Carpenter is back tomorrow for more framing and deck work.

Last of the windows arrived yesterday.

Siding arrives tomorrow. Window trim on Monday. Siding should start going up on Tuesday.

Cement should go in this afternoon.

Going to be a busy end of the week, I will try to post more pictures as we get moving on this stuff.

Elbow Grease

And what else should it be about on Labor Day Weekend then Labor? Thats how dirty my hands were under the gloves I was wearing while I was working on cleaning up the property. Lets just say the entire house is a mess.


I mentioned before that a contractors job is to create (or destroy depending on vantage point) and to not clean up after themselves. As you can see from the state of the first floor, there have been quite a few contractors doing their best work. The house needed a good superficial cleanup. There basically hasnt been any major cleaning since we started the demolition. Bottom line: the house was a MESS. Because we are going to have to pay a service to do a thorough cleaning once we are done with the rough construction and mechanical, I decided to take it upon myself to do the superficial clean up. I am just bad enough at cleaning for my effort to be considered superficial, so I was the perfect man for the job.


My plan was to tackle one floor of the house each day of the long weekend. The biggest issue in the house was the plaster that was stuck to the bottom of the wall spaces. With the way that plaster was put up 100 years ago, some percentage of it is bound to get pressed between the slats when its wet. That leaves piles of solidified plaster sitting at the bottom of each wall space. This was the case for most of the second floor. I decided that I was going to get all of that out of the wall space so I knew it was done correctly.

I haven't really taken a ton of pictures of the cleaned up space, but I finished the first floor yesterday and the 2nd floor on Saturday. In each case it took me roughly 4hrs to complete, and I was a complete mess when I was done. The worst part of the whole thing is the dust and dirt that filters down to the floor below. This is because there are wall spaces and holes in the floors as well as slats in the floor boards. So, you only clean up a certain amount of it and know the rest is being pushed below. I only have the basement left to do today, but its officially the culmination of the previous days work.



The rough HVAC work is done in the entire house. All of the ducts and vents and registered are in. The 2nd floor furnace is in. We know the location of each of the supplies in the house, and its good to see they all look well placed. All that is left to do is to install the downstairs furnace and the two AC condensers. I know it seems obvious, but you cannot underestimate just how sharp clipped tin is. Yikes, I have had a few small pieces stick through the gloves over the last few days. Flat out dangerous stuff.


The mason laid out all of the forms for the sidewalks on Saturday. The original thought was to put the cement down on Saturday afternoon so they could cure all weekend, but once they started it was clear they were going to need all day to get the forms laid out correctly. The toughest part was making sure the landing area for the stairs would be in the right place. In order to do this we had to measure the height and then project the location by choosing how wide the treads were going to be. So since we want 11" deep treads, the front of the last stair would be 88" from the location of the porch. We are leaving a 3' landing pad at the bottom of the stairs. I for one will be happy to move to a house that we have controlled the layout of the flat work around the outside of the house. I think our current house is poorly laid out, and would love to rip it all out and start over.

The electrician should start on Tuesday and the plumber will be finishing up the balance of his rough work. The carpenter will be back to frame out the HVAC system and start putting in the decks (finally). There is a decent chance we will have siding there by Wed, and hope to start on that by the end of the week.

Flatwork

The ground is prepped and ready to have forms set and cement poured. We decided it was time to get it done as the carpenter should be here to start the porch work next week. The mason spent a majority of the afternoon taking out this cement and prepping the area by removing debris.


Tomorrow morning they will put up the forms so a sidewalk goes from the front sidewalk, around the side of the stairs and porch, and down the side of the house to the back stairs of the deck. The majority of this sidewalk is going to be in the dogs run, but it will be a necessary walkway for the functionality of the lot. They will be pouring the cement tomorrow afternoon. I hope I am around so I get the chance to watch them work this out. It takes talent to lay cement quickly and efficiently. I was not there when they poured the floor in the basement (still bummed about that) so this will pacify my need to get a closer look at the process.

I have learned of a new universal concept of contractors - leaving refuse on the job site with reckless abandon. I am not saying I am frustrated with it, because I know its legit, but its unreal how quick things pile up. I am going to spend a good amount of time working on cleaning up the property this weekend. With the long weekend and nobody working on the interior, it should give me three solid days to get things cleaned up. I am going to focus on getting all of the big stuff up so when we are done with the mechanical in two weeks we can get a good solid professional cleaning for the inspection and then the spray foam insulation. It shouldn't be too bad to get this cleaned up, and will be a great chance to go over the location of things one more time before we make them permanent by closing the walls.

Ed The GC, Eddie the Electrician and myself walked the house today going over the electrical layout. WOW. Talk about a ton of process thinking and focusing on how you will actually use space to make sure all of the switches and outlets are in the right place. Its quite challenging to thinking about habits and patterns that will occur in the new house. I am pretty excited to see this come to fruition as I think we corrected a lot of the layout needed tweaking. This is going to be a lot of work getting through it, but in the end we are going to have a lighting scheme that makes a lot of sense and is simple and straightforward.

Two weeks. We should be talking about insulation in two weeks. We will be putting in decks next week. There is a good chance that siding will start mid to late week as well. The house should be closed and sealed by the end of the month. I have a pretty good idea about where we are going to be in a month and its going to be interesting to see if it all works out the way I think.