Holiday Lull

We hope that everyone had an enjoyable Christmas.  Not having to work for about a week and a half has been nice, however progress on the house has been slow.  The contractor shorted the sheetrock order by 30 some sheets.  He then ordered more and shorted the reorder by 10 sheets.  Come on man.  Its not rocket science.  Now the sheetrock hangers won't come back to hang 10 sheets so I guess the contractor will have to do it.  Great, now I get to hear him whine some more.  Below are some shots of the sheetrock after initial taping and mudding.  Happy New Year folks!

 

 

Dennis Suite.

Living room.

Fireplace in dining room that I put cement board (Durock) on.

In living room looking towards stairway and front of house.

 

Ashley daydreaming of actually being able to live in the house.

Mantle I've been working on.  A co-worker brought it to me from Tazewell, VA.  Its poplar, came out of an old barn and has some nice hand hewn marks on it.  My neighbor and I cut the ends off a bit with a chain saw and then we used his sawmill to square the back up nice.  I'm going to brush the dirt off of it and leave it natural.

Well, here is ole Rocky the 7 week old mini weenie dog.  My wonderful in-laws "surprised" Kennedy with him for her 7th birthday.  There was no consultation with us whatsoever so we were quite surprised as well.  I have to say this is a pretty sweet breed.  He about the most loveable animal I've ever had and has such a personality already.

He loves wrestling with the couch.

Drywall Update

As I predicted in the previous post, the hanging of the drywall has was not completed today.  They were 20 sheets short.  Hate to say I called that one.  Regardless, its pretty freaky seeing sheetrock in place of the old plaster.

Dennis Suite.

Looking towards living room.

Looking from dining room towards kitchen and living room.

Dining room.

Upstairs hall.

Alex's closet.

The pile is about gone!  The bad news is that its just moved to the other side of the barn.

On a sad note, I must inform those few that actually read this blog that we sold the Rally Racer last Wed. night.  I had a lump in my throat as she was hauled off.  The new owner is a 15 year old boy and I'm pretty sure he's gonna rice the hell out of the poor car.  Oh well, at least she had a dignified last 13 years.

Almost 100hp of pure driving excitement.

JD, recognize the hole punched in the bumper??  Good times...

Insulation, Drywall and Good Friends

A big THANKS John and Jessica who came to visit this past weekend.  John and I (Jessica was shopping... mm hmm...) completed several small jobs that I had been meaning to finish.  Ashley and I had a great time at the Shroom.


**EDIT**  Jessica did throw a few boards out the mudroom door.  Thanks Jessica!


I'd like to thank Neil as well for the generous donation of nearly a thousand feet of CAT 5 wire.  There is plenty left and I ran extra just in case.

The exterior wall insulation has been installed and as of today there is a crew hanging drywall.  Word is they'll be finished hanging and begin taping by Friday.  However, I'm skeptical as very little has gone according to plan thus far.  The giant pile in front of the house should be gone by weeks end as well.

This is the finished mudroom wall. Hey John, the contractor is adding a 2x4 under the ceiling joists as the other 2x2 support was somehow removed.

Here is some blocking I installed on either side of where the stove will be.  This will make hanging of our open shelving easier as we won't have to look for studs to nail to.  There is also some blocking on the other side of the wall for mounting the TV.

This is similar blocking upstairs in the master bedroom for hanging the TV.

Unloading the drywall. The truck actually has another house's drywall on it too.  The driver said that with both loads of drywall, the truck weighed about 55,000 pounds.  I'd like to say a big ___ you to the dumpster company that was afraid to bring a loaded dumpster across the bridge.  It handled it just fine.

Them's some big sheets of drywall.

Hallway along stairs looking from downstairs bath to living room.

Looking into kitchen from dining room.

Master bedroom wall insulation. Wink.

Gas insert and fireplace.  I'm going to try to hang the concrete board and obtain an old beam for the mantle this weekend.  John, can you come visit again?

Rough-Ins

We are steadily moving along.  Siding and roof will be completed by lunch Monday, or so I'm told.  Plumbing, electrical and HVAC rough-ins should be finished by Tuesday and ready for inspection Wednesday.  About 90% of the interior walls have been framed so after the rough-in inspection we'll be ready for insulation, then the insulation inspection and then we can begin sheetrock.  I think we'll be able to go ahead and put the porch now but it is still a game time decision.  All in all we are pleased with the progress but I'm thinking the end of the year deadline may be a week or two out of reach.

 

 

 

The mud room roof and siding are complete as of yesterday.

The giant pile of wood, bricks, plaster, etc. on the left of the picture keeps growing, but I think we have a plan to get rid of it.  The contractor is going to bring over a dozer loader type piece of equipment (941 Cat to be exact), move the pile one bucket at a time to the barn lot where we are going to start burning everything in a huge pit.

Here we have the living room and kitchen ceiling. The ceiling joists were initially replaced with 2x8's which the plumber could not drill through to run our sewer line.  Therefore, the contractor scabbed 2x10's beside every 2x8.  He graciously "donated" the materials as I think he realized that the 2x8's should have been 2x10's in the first place.

This is the dining room.  We removed as much of the chimney as possible to still be able to keep the fireplace/mantle in the adjacent guest bedroom.  We were also able to have a larger than planned opening into the dining room from hallway which will open the house up even more.

 

This is the wall between the kitchen and living room.  It is built out of 2x6's so we can run the sewer line down through it and into the basement.

The stairs have been reconstructed to the full width of the stairway.  Check out the roughed in electrical on the right!

This is the master bath with wire and plumbing roughed in.  Its kind of hard to tell whats going on but that's the doorway directly in front.  The tub will be in the back right corner, the sink & vanity will be along the right wall, a 5'x4' tile shower in the front left corner and the toilet in its own room in the back left.

 

This is the furnace of the new split heat pump system in the attic.  It is sitting on a platform to allow for maximum attic insulation without compacting.  It think all it needs is the exhaust pipe installed out the back of the house.  After we finish grading around the back of the house, we'll install the outside unit.

Plumbing supplies.  The PEX pipe is pretty neat stuff.

Moving Along

Siding is about two thirds finished.  Roof is about three quarters.  All windows and doors are installed.  Subfloor downstairs is in.  Still have to build back the stairs and a wall or two downstairs, then electrical can begin.  HVAC started this week.  Also, the majority of the floor joists downstairs were replaced and I laid plastic sheeting in the crawl spaces.  The wrap around porch is still up in the air.  Not sure if the funds will be present to add it at this time.

Front door is not exactly what we wanted but, at this point, she'll do just fine.

Still need a wall to seperate kitchen from living room.

Stairs need re-built.

Alex & Kennedy messing around...

I know I should be enjoying the holiday season, but I've never wanted Christmas to not come before.  Will we be in by before then? I am beginning to wonder...

The Big Snag / Money Hole

Below you'll see what has been the worst snag we've run into since we began.  Originally, the dirt was pushed against the house, above the original wood siding, therefore it had to be moved to install the new siding and to correct the problem.  Upon doing so, we uncovered this mess.  The wall along the entire back of the house and the wall down about a third of the side of the house were sitting on cracked cinder blocks and stacks of 2x4's.  The remedy for this situation would require the house to be jacked up by the downstairs ceiling to allow for a new footer to be poured.  We would also have to replace the entire back wall and part of the side wall due to rot.  We would also discover that the walls on this area weren't even tied to the floor.  When we jacked up the house the walls came up to and were flapping in the breeze.

Here we have the house jacked up and are removing the old walls.

The new footer has been formed up.

New footer.

We also added double LVL beams to be able to open the downstairs up.  We also had to replace all the original 2x4 ceiling joists with new 2x8's.

The entire house wrapped in OSB sheeting and ready for windows and siding.

The mudroom ceiling and walls are rotted and built poorly so they are being replaced as well.

There was a flat area on the roof that was covered in rubber sheeting but we didn't want to have to worry about it leaking so this cap was built to cover flat spot.  It actually came out really nice as I was expecting a church steeple-esque structure.

This snag has cost us precious time and money as Christmas is fast approaching however, all is seemingly well now as a few windows have been installed this past week and the metal for our roof is on site.  The siding should be here this coming week as well.  Just in time for the bad weather...