Watch this space, Part II

Here's the skylight finished with framing and drywall. We will try to get a good picture of it once it's finished with tape and mud and paint.

Drywall, day two

Since I took leave from work along with the long Memorial Day weekend, we really hope to get ready for the insulation crew to come in on Tuesday. We finished almost all of the ceiling upstairs today--we need to put up the water resistant board in the showers. After that, we started on the ground floor ceiling in the kitchen, as the wall between the kitchen and laundry/bath will be insulated with the blow-in cellulose NuWool. Our friend Jim came by after lunch to help out--even after he went to the dentist. Now that is real friendship. He helped out hugely, as he used to be a contractor and work in construction. I learned several good tips today from him that will help out with the rest.

Here are a couple of pictures, especially of the skylight over the stairs. It looks even better than I hoped. It will remain open on the sides for the insulation crew, to allow them to pass their hoses through it.

Last, here is a picture of the upstairs that our son took; you can see the ceiling board across the rooms and a little of the walls up already.

Watch this space!

While it isn't as impressive as it will be, this (IMHO) will be the crowning achievement of our work on Thistle House. All of the wiring, plumbing, siding and roofing will be background work--mostly unseen. But this skylight at the top of the stairs will be something special. We found it at the Dayton Habitat for Humanity ReStore. The ReStore is a lumberyard/donation headquarters for all kinds of treasures--donated to help fund Habitat for Humanity's work in affordable family housing. The Velux skylight came from the ReStore minus the flashing kit--but it was just as good as a new one from Lowes at less than 50% of the cost. It was kinda of a whim purchase, and we thought about using it in the un-started garage. When I was working on shingling the roof, Linnea and I decided to install in on the South facing top of the roof. It shines right, and brite, into our daughter's room and the top of the stairs. We want it to shine mostly on the top of the stairs, but would like to turn our daughter's room into an eventual office, as we framed in a removeable box that will be a reflector opening over the stairs. Here is a picture of the box. When we are ready to convert the room, the ceiling can be removed there and the framing unscrewed: presto, a skylight straddling two rooms.