Now that the first floor is insulated and drywalled, it is more like a “regular” house. Maybe I should change the focus of the blog to small spaces, since phase one is about 700 sq feet. It is coming together as planned with no real hiccups. The indoor plumbers were out today and almost finished. The electricians are very close to being finished and I have almost completed the kitchen and paint work.
There have been a couple of nuisances, like having to strip the paint off of one of the doors because it didn’t cure correctly. Everything was done correctly with the prep and application, so the only thing we can think of is that the high humidity caused problems. This happened on the metal stair stringers too, which will likely have to be repainted. The end result of the door turned out fine, it just took way too long to fix. The good news on that is that Behr is buying me 3 gallons of their top of the line paint, Marquee, to compensate for the problems with the alkyd paint. So far the Marquee has been awesome, drying fast and hard. I did use recycled paint from the Habitat for Humanity store for one room and really liked it too. Grainger is also compensating me for some metal stair treads I bought. They were supposed to be galvanized but apparently weren’t. They started rusting outside after the first rain. They are refunding me the price and not requiring me to return them because they are already installed. I may try to keep the rust look and clear coat them like at Truck Yard, my new favorite haunt down the street.
The city water tap has not been as good of a recovery story. I have been trying to get water service connected since last August, so a year, believe it or not. I have worked with three plumbers and from best guesses, the water line is not where it’s supposed to be and buried under the very wide McGowen St. Since the city does not actually connect your water service, you pay an approved plumber to do it, this has clearly caused issues. No one is interested in cutting open 40 feet of concrete on a major street for one residential connection…at least not for the price under the budget of a small nation. We will see what happens here.
Onto update pics. The bathroom is almost complete, minus shower doors. Loving the space saving toilet. 
The kitchenette is complete except for the countertop which was on backorder, but I should have a replacement within a few days.
And the bedroom / studio is ready for a little trim and closets to be built.
I’m realizing that I never posted pics of the metal stair stringers after I installed them, so here are some late, but relevant pics, along with the newly rusted outdoor ones.
McGowen Container House (and more) 