Friday, January 8, 2010
A small victory...
It's not much, but a victory nonetheless: the power company swapped the feed to the house from the temporary pole over to the new meter panel on the front of the house today. Our electrician made sure to come by and make sure we had power, and he hooked up an outlet upstairs so we have actual hard-wired power up there now. So, no more running extension cords to the temporary pole! It's one step closer to a real house...
Monday, January 4, 2010
Not done yet.
Okay.... so.... I've taken the post-slacking to a new level. Anyway, last time I wrote we were putting in the new windows. Well, we decided at some point to re-side the rest of the original house, rather than leaving it as-is (which was the original plan, for $ reasons). We also decided, if we were going to tear off the rest of the old T-111 and barnboards, we prolly oughta just get rid of the old single-pane windows as well- there were only four left anyway, one of which was broken during demolition of the siding. In the photo below showing the rear of the house, we added in a few studs, replaced a bunch of the insulation, and prepped for new shear plywood and a new rear window.
Here's the east side of the house, showing the old fake-brick asphalt siding which was under the T-111, and the barnboards under that. It was all in pretty poor shape, so it's a good thing we decided to just bite the bullet and get rid of it. Obviously, we went a bit out of order here... ordinarily you'd wrap the house with Tyvek from bottom to top, but of course we changed plans part way through. You can see that the Tyvek is loose at the bottom so the new row can be tucked under.
Here's the old bathroom window removed, with the opening ready to be re-framed (once the big house-rat gets out of the way of course). We chose to make the bottom of the new window a foot or so higher, so it clears the sink and toilet better.
And this next shot shows the east living room window, still to be removed. The existing studs didn't line up with the new layout perfectly, so new studs were added in, and the insulation was refreshed as needed. Now we have extra bearing strength in the east wall, and we also chose to leave the existing diagonal shear braces in place (and, the window framing was improved as well once the window was popped out). Yay.
So now, the next few photos show the house completely wrapped with Tyvek, all the windows are in place, and for practical purposes, the house is ~99% weather-proof (the temporary front door is still there in these photos).
By this point, we had already gotten some snow, although it melted off pretty quick. The old T-111 is leaned againsthe bottom of the house to protect from snowmelt dripping off the roof and splashing from the ground onto the lower side of the house. We'll leave those boards in place until the final siding is installed.
So with the exterior mostly buttoned up, we moved back to the interior. First order of business: finally finish the stairs! Here's a photo of the stringers in place, which as you can see go right through the old front window opening.
The stairs are finally complete! Wheeler admires them, Peanut scrounges for crap to eat, and Renée looks thrilled (she was actually in the middle of tearing out more of the old front wall, until someone interrupted to take a photo). Predictably, the stairs have already become mundane... but it sure was exciting for the first day or so.
Now for some interior framing. In this photo, the back bedroom is framed in, the laundry room is on the right, and the bathroom framing is just starting on the left. It's nice to be inside, as the weather has started getting pretty cold.
Also, we finally built the stairs to the master bedroom mini-closet (or the man-cave, as it's affectionately (derisively?) known). In this photo, the east wall of the master bedroom is in progress as well.
Once most of the interior framing was complete, it was time to get back to some other unfinished business. Pete's weekends are no longer coincident with mine, so he's been doing things here and there on his days off- drywall backing, interior attic wall framing, closet framing, etc. I spent a whole day a few weekends ago digging a new interior pier footing completely by hand, with a trowel, and carting the dirt outside with a bucket. It was time consuming, to say the least. I also had to put a jog in the existing sewer pipe because as luck would have it, it went precisely exactly perfectly directly through the middle of where the new post needed to be. This photo shows the rebar in place (although not quite plumb at the moment), and the sonotube as well (again, not in final position yet), almost ready for concrete. The concrete was super-fun: since it was snowing outside, I had to mix it all in a bucket while underneath the house, a few gallons at a time. The fluffy concrete dust was also fun. It was all fun. You shoulda been there.
In the meantime, the electrician was working away, and I also finished up the rough plumbing, both upstairs and under the house. None of the water lines leak, so that's a good thing (or so I'm told). We had the rough inspection (framing, electrical, plumbing) on the 23rd of December. No major issues, other than the fact that apparently WE HAVE TO HAVE THE HOUSE COMPLETELY COVERED WITH THE FINISHED SIDING BEFORE THE ROUGH FRAMING CAN BE SIGNED OFF! It's not the end of the world though- we were given the go-ahead to install all the insulation, which will be awesome considering the whole winter-time, freezing-temperatures thing that happens up here (a few weeks back when it was getting to around 0 F at night, we could only get the house up to 59 degrees- it was kinda cold). Anyway, we're trying to decide what to do about the siding right now... we thought we could worry about that come springtime, but it was not to be.
Which pretty much brings us to the present day. I got the temporary front door removed this weekend, and put the new front door in. We're going to install a neato window kit into the front door soon, but for now, it's plain white. Here's the opening all prepped for the new door (and some of the electrical wiring can be seen, with spray-foam insulation everywhere to hopefully cut down on heat loss later):
And here's the new door installed. Since the old door didn't fit the opening exactly (it was 6" too small each way), the new door has already reduced the heat-sucking cold air through the addition. Slowly but surely, the whole thing's coming along...
Here's the east side of the house, showing the old fake-brick asphalt siding which was under the T-111, and the barnboards under that. It was all in pretty poor shape, so it's a good thing we decided to just bite the bullet and get rid of it. Obviously, we went a bit out of order here... ordinarily you'd wrap the house with Tyvek from bottom to top, but of course we changed plans part way through. You can see that the Tyvek is loose at the bottom so the new row can be tucked under.
Here's the old bathroom window removed, with the opening ready to be re-framed (once the big house-rat gets out of the way of course). We chose to make the bottom of the new window a foot or so higher, so it clears the sink and toilet better.
And this next shot shows the east living room window, still to be removed. The existing studs didn't line up with the new layout perfectly, so new studs were added in, and the insulation was refreshed as needed. Now we have extra bearing strength in the east wall, and we also chose to leave the existing diagonal shear braces in place (and, the window framing was improved as well once the window was popped out). Yay.
So now, the next few photos show the house completely wrapped with Tyvek, all the windows are in place, and for practical purposes, the house is ~99% weather-proof (the temporary front door is still there in these photos).
By this point, we had already gotten some snow, although it melted off pretty quick. The old T-111 is leaned againsthe bottom of the house to protect from snowmelt dripping off the roof and splashing from the ground onto the lower side of the house. We'll leave those boards in place until the final siding is installed.
So with the exterior mostly buttoned up, we moved back to the interior. First order of business: finally finish the stairs! Here's a photo of the stringers in place, which as you can see go right through the old front window opening.
The stairs are finally complete! Wheeler admires them, Peanut scrounges for crap to eat, and Renée looks thrilled (she was actually in the middle of tearing out more of the old front wall, until someone interrupted to take a photo). Predictably, the stairs have already become mundane... but it sure was exciting for the first day or so.
Now for some interior framing. In this photo, the back bedroom is framed in, the laundry room is on the right, and the bathroom framing is just starting on the left. It's nice to be inside, as the weather has started getting pretty cold.
Also, we finally built the stairs to the master bedroom mini-closet (or the man-cave, as it's affectionately (derisively?) known). In this photo, the east wall of the master bedroom is in progress as well.
Once most of the interior framing was complete, it was time to get back to some other unfinished business. Pete's weekends are no longer coincident with mine, so he's been doing things here and there on his days off- drywall backing, interior attic wall framing, closet framing, etc. I spent a whole day a few weekends ago digging a new interior pier footing completely by hand, with a trowel, and carting the dirt outside with a bucket. It was time consuming, to say the least. I also had to put a jog in the existing sewer pipe because as luck would have it, it went precisely exactly perfectly directly through the middle of where the new post needed to be. This photo shows the rebar in place (although not quite plumb at the moment), and the sonotube as well (again, not in final position yet), almost ready for concrete. The concrete was super-fun: since it was snowing outside, I had to mix it all in a bucket while underneath the house, a few gallons at a time. The fluffy concrete dust was also fun. It was all fun. You shoulda been there.
In the meantime, the electrician was working away, and I also finished up the rough plumbing, both upstairs and under the house. None of the water lines leak, so that's a good thing (or so I'm told). We had the rough inspection (framing, electrical, plumbing) on the 23rd of December. No major issues, other than the fact that apparently WE HAVE TO HAVE THE HOUSE COMPLETELY COVERED WITH THE FINISHED SIDING BEFORE THE ROUGH FRAMING CAN BE SIGNED OFF! It's not the end of the world though- we were given the go-ahead to install all the insulation, which will be awesome considering the whole winter-time, freezing-temperatures thing that happens up here (a few weeks back when it was getting to around 0 F at night, we could only get the house up to 59 degrees- it was kinda cold). Anyway, we're trying to decide what to do about the siding right now... we thought we could worry about that come springtime, but it was not to be.
Which pretty much brings us to the present day. I got the temporary front door removed this weekend, and put the new front door in. We're going to install a neato window kit into the front door soon, but for now, it's plain white. Here's the opening all prepped for the new door (and some of the electrical wiring can be seen, with spray-foam insulation everywhere to hopefully cut down on heat loss later):
And here's the new door installed. Since the old door didn't fit the opening exactly (it was 6" too small each way), the new door has already reduced the heat-sucking cold air through the addition. Slowly but surely, the whole thing's coming along...
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