Flooring underfoot

Linnea started the flooring Sunday night in the kitchen. We are installing it under the cabinets, so we are installing it across the area the cabinets will be in. We should take a trip to Indiana and the Cabinet Warehouse just across the border next week. Here are some pictures to show off the outdoor lights and the start of the flooring.




Linnea is working diagonally from the South-West corner.



The stack of 3/4" thick pine flooring. Aged about nine months since we got it. Looks good on the floor, even unfinished.



The tile for the whirlpool tub.

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.

Here's a series of photos to show what we have been doing this long weekend. We rented a boom lift from Art's Rentals to let us skip the wobbly nightmare of scaffolding over the settling fill dirt. It's been a toss up, whether to finish the siding before or after the fill was done. Neither one has been really a decent base for the scaffolding. It's costing us a small fortune for the boom lift, but it's really handy and is allowing us to get it done in just a few days. I freaked out at about the 25' height, so Linnea has been working in the bucket and I have been cutting siding and getting it upstairs with the kid's help. Here are some pictures to show how it's gone.


Here's Linnea finishing up the dormer in our bedroom.



This is the dormer for the boy's room.



And working on the back of the house. Due to a shortage in the Hardiplank, we are going to 'celebrate' the area above the windows with shingles. It should look great tomorrow.



How it looked around 9PM tonight as we got ready to leave.

Photo progression

Here's where we are today. It's the American Fourth of July, our Independence Day, tomorrow so we are going to celebrate with a classic American cookout on the barbecue and then see a movie. Hope to get in to see the Transformers movie with Linnea and the kids--Linnea loved Transformers when she was a wee little girl.

This picture shows the dormers on the North finished--now we are finishing the Southerly ones.

A week's work, not too much visual

After a week of week, including lots of backfill and siding, it seems like nothing happened in some ways. It's a constant balance between discouragement and perseverance--trying to remember that I am not in charge of the weather, the bank or even myself. God is the man, I am just following him in this seemingly never ending work of building a house.

Anyway, we worked on completing the siding this week--the three North dormers are done and we are started on the middle South dormer. Linnea is going to cut all the shingles for the remaining dormers and we will balance precariously on the tower of scaffolding to install them. The exciting part is leaning the ladder onto the roof from the scaffold and climbing across with a pneumatic nailer and shingles in hand--what could go wrong?



The finished North dormers



Here is the tower of imminent death or injury. Don't look down. Of course, my good friend Bob the Mason swings like a monkey on more wobbly scaffolding, but he's a professional and I am just an amateur faller.

My youngest son has been affected by building in small, insidious ways. Can you spot the psyche damage in this photo? 500 bonus points to the first correct answer.

Here's how to make a huge mess of your yard

This weekend is the rental of the skid loader or "Bobcat". It's a really useful tool for moving rocks and dirt around and placing them right where you want them. It's also a dangerous tool, as after a hour you feel you have mastered everything there is to know and then you run over the tomatoes. At least, that's what I did. They survived in their raised planter, and after we scurried over to replace the masonry blocks they were not much worse for wear.

Moving all this dirt and backfilling around the house is exhausting--we got about 9 hours of sleep last night and didn't hardly move. Woke up really sore and stiff--who'd have thought that driving the Bobcat could beat you up so much? Here are some pictures to show you what's been happening. We need to finish it up tomorrow so we can take it back to Vandalia rental.


Linnea working on Saturday moving our supply of river rock. We call it river rock because that's what we had in California growing up. Out here in Ohio it's glacial rock, as a glacier went right through our house (where it would be anyway), cutting the limestone and granite into little bitty rocks and tumbling them as it went. So convenient to have a rock quarry on the back of the property.



This is the front of the porch, showing the retaining wall under construction. The drain pipe from the gutter runs under the front eave to collect water and send it down towards the pond area. Yep, Linnea found a place for the pond that she wants to build.




Here is the front yard area--I told Linnea that this is the biggest mess she has ever made--it must be a whole acre that has been torn up. Compare it to this picture from before the Bobcat!

Mom's Cafe

I haven't been able to tall about this project so far this weekend, but Linnea finished the tile front of the range hood. It's a monster 1,200 cfm exterior fan that has a 10" opening outside attached (somehow) to the 8" duct at the range hood. We puzzled about how to build the sheet metal duct, and ended up using leftover cement board to build a box over the hood that went up to the 10" opening for the blower motor.

Linnea and our youngest son spent part of Saturday and this evening finishing the tile over it. She got some chalk board paint from Lowes to add a message area that she can decorate as she wants. Linnea says "It's mine to decorate--it's not for everyday stuff". I think it looks cool.


And here are some more pictures to show where the room paint is in the kitchen and living room. More painting tomorrow and it looks like we will start the final grade backfill and rough landscaping this week.

What's happening?

We have been working like mad to get the drywall done and get the house ready for paint. In a nutshell, we have finished the walls, ceilings, cement board for tile floors and showers and Linnea and our daughter have started painting the kitchen. Here are some pictures to show where we are.
This morning as we started work. From there, after laying out the tile for the range hood, we went to primer.

Cutting in the green heather #3 from Laura Ashley at Lowes

To here:

At the end of the day:

Drywall in the homestretch

Here's a picture to tide you over until Sunday...it's another three day weekend as I am taking Friday off from work to spend on drywall. We have almost all of the ground floor finished, and will start tomorrow with the stairs going up to the first floor. I have to explain that we have not decided what to call the ground floor/first floor/downstairs and what to call the first floor/upstairs/second floor. You see, we have lived eight years in Europe and came to Ohio from England--where the ground floor is the one that has a front door. The first floor is the one you walk up stairs to from the ground floor. Here in the States it seems to be a little more confusing with the first floor being the ground floor and the second floor is the first floor. As clear as mud.

Anyways (my Mom would kill me for starting a sentence with "Anyways"), here is a picture of the basement and first floor with lights--new and improved. We are getting fluorescents for the can lights--the new ones from Sylvania seem to work well and don't have a color tinted toward green. The kelvin of the one's we like is unknown (from the packaging) but it is their 100W incandescent replacements that are 23W. A nice, yellow light very similar to the light from an incandescent.


The front of the house, now with running water and lights!


And the back of the house, looking into the living room.

Another tool review

The Bosch Drywall Screw driver bit tool review

While shopping at Lowes I found a screw driver tip from Bosch. It's their Drywall Dimpler/Driver and it's great. It attaches to your regular screw driver and turns it into a drywall driver and dimpler. Using a drill with a clutch set fairly low, it avoids overdriving screws and allows someone unskilled to set them accurately at the right depth. It's not perfect, but it works about 90% of the time. It's weakness is inside corners, where the drill body keeps the bit from being square on to the drywall--it leaves a slightly proud screw. My kids and I call these screws "need to be humbled screws" as they are slightly proud. We have a kid running around with either a hand powered screw driver or a battery powered one with a regular Phillps bit in it. It wears out pretty quickly when it slips in the cross slots of the screw, and I am not sure if the tip can be replaced or not, although it does come out.

About $10-15, depending on where you buy it. Reversable to lock out the built in clutch. Worth buying for a single house worth of work.

Insulation done, drywall underway

Well, the drywall went up a big way this weekend with the first annual Simonalle Drywall Party. We tried to see if drywall floated on soda up to the ceiling. It took more than just refreshments to get it there though--pizza turned out to be the ticket. We got almost all of the downstairs ceiling board up, and lots of the walls too. The weather was hot and humid, and cutting gypsum drywall board with the loose insulation laying around made for a miserable day, but we had good friends helping to offset all of that. We are really looking like a house now, as the kids said over and over.

Here's some pictures to prove it.


This is looking into the kitchen from the living room.


And looking through the stairwell into the living room and kitchen.

Insulation, 3-way lights and busted water lines

The water line that broke was on the insulation guys pump, not ours. No tragedy for us except the lost time. They did get the walls done in the boys room, the kids bath and part of our room. Here is a picture to show you the NuWool insulation in the dormer walls.



Apparently it's the same cellulose that gets blown into the ceiling for your attic, but NuWool adds a glue and borate solution to discourage pests and add fire retardence. Here is a picture of the entire wall in the boy's room.



And here is a good tip; the NuWool is blown in with the velocity of a good softball pitch and it fills all voids it hits. It's also not the most specific in where it aims, so cover over your outlets and anything you don't want filled. We used cling wrap from Glad that really sticks well to itself and the plastic boxes.

Insulation

It's in the high 80s today, and the poor guys from Robinson Insulation had to install the NuWool in the heat. They started this morning with the blow-in loose cellulose in the attic and boy did it make a mess!



Take a look.



Then they did the leaning walls/roof that the lower slope of the gambrel roof makes. Linnea and the older son installed the upper portion of the drywall after they filled the lower part. We left the top sheet off to allow them access to fill the voids, but it wasn't needed. It has enough velocity that it blows everywhere and as a result the house now looks like this upstairs:




Tomorrow they will be back at it, doing the gable walls upstairs and exterior and fire-blocking walls downstairs. I am kinda glad that I am back at work for most of this week.

Take a Sunday off, mostly

Since we went to church today and I wore my dress uniform (Go Air Force--leaving the bombing to us), we went back to the apartment before heading out for the rest of the day. Linnea and I went to Lowes to pick up our water heater and then dropped it off at the house, before going off to a great friends daughter's graduation party. When I grew up out if California that was saved for college, but here in Ohio it seems to be a big thing as we got invited to a couple and everyone seemed to have one. It's not like they won't go on to college, but celebrations are big here. Anyway, after hanging with the Bourkes we went over to the house (about 65 second drive) and I connected the well pressure tank into the PEX manifold while Linnea worked on more tape and mud. We will prepare for the insulation crew tomorrow (run coaxial and CAT 5 cable, finish stubing out the PEX to copper fittings, etc) and have a BBQ at the house tomorrow afternoon to celebrate Memorial Day. Back to work on Tuesday for me and back to the house in the evening.

Drywall, day three

Here are a couple of quick photos from yesterday's work. The kids started on taping and mudding the sheets; Linnea has said a million times that doing drywall mud is like frosting a cake.

Since she can teach just about anything, she taught our kids how to do it, and they did a pretty good job. Our daughter did the best, and most, while oldest son was continually abused by me as brute force labor and as my sheet hoist.

Here is the view from our bedroom down the hall. Bathroom on the right.


This is the reading nook at the top of the stairs. When the house was framed up to the second deck, but before any walls were up we sat up there and said how nice it was to have a destination most of the way up the stairs, looking out the window. It became a little nook (and yet another place for odd sized drywall pieces) when our daughter and her cat sat there and looked out the window.

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.

Passed the rough inspection

Well, we passed the rough inspection! Troy was happy with just about everything, but we will have to add a receptacle above the second sink in the master bath. That and a few little nit-noids and we were done. Yeah!

On Tuesday the 25,000 pounds of drywall showed up--okay, but it seems like that much. Tony the building supply guy did a more detailed take-off to get a better idea of how much we needed, and with all the supplies it added about $1,300 to that budget category. Good thing we don't need any money. So, we took the rest of the week off and started putting up ceiling board. That's 1/2" gypsum drywall with fibers in it to resist sagging. The crew from Building Specialties boomed the load into each floor and carted it around to each room. Boy is that convenient, but boy is it in the way of putting it up.

As a bonus, here are the pictures of the two upstairs shower floors Linnea is putting together. The tile is in ours, it's bargain tiles from Lowes. The river rock is for the kid's shower and it's an artistic experiment that Linnea and our daughter are doing. They are going to set the rocks in the concrete with their flat side up to give a smooth floor, yet show off the rocks. I think it will be cool.

Ready?

Tomorrow we are going to call Troy the Inspector (Inspector Troy?--sounds like a mystery) and schedule our Rough Inspection. It has only taken, umm, way too many months to get this far. Once upon a time we planned, on paper even, to be in Thistle House for Christmas. Anyway, we are over budget and past due for this inspection. I finished the last electrical circuits today with the three-way light switches. I hope I wired those right. It makes sense on paper, or actually on a 2x4, but I have NEVER done one before. Anyway, we need to get to bed so we can call the inspector bright and early.

Rest of the story

Here are the missing photos from the last post about the shower.

Shower pan's going in...

Here's a quick photo series on how Linnea put in the shower pans. We have to get the PVC liner inspected before she can put in the next layer of cement. Speaking of inspections, we are one day from the rest of the Rough Inspection. Travis the electrician came over and helped me finish off the panel, so when I run the well power, septic pump and water heater we will be ready. Tomorrow we will have an early day at the house as daughter is going to the Arthritis Walk fundraiser early in the morning. So we should be able to finish off the rest of the punch list for the inspection.

More on the shower pans. The asphalt paper isn't shown, but it's stapled down to the subfloor, then the concrete is floated in to establish a basic slope to the drain. The drain is a special type that has perforations that let any water that goes under the tile and mortar, but slides on the PVC liner.

Linnea is so pleased to be sitting in her lined shower, just look at the smile! This is the PVC liner on top of the concrete. Linnea got a set of plastic slope guides that install in the shower pan and establish the slope to the drain. I will get a picture of that tomorrow...