Month: August 2008

by

Electric Tile Pick and Wash

I layed out all of our slate tiles this morning and sorted them by good for the floor (relatively even and standard thickness) and better for the wall (not). Then I pulled out the romex that was going through the conduit for the island future and replaced it with metal-clad as I don’t think it’s code to run bare romex through conduit like that.

After lunch (and after finishing emptying our storage unit) Amber and I selected the lucky tiles to make up the floor under our woodstove. We arranged them all on the space we’d prepared and I cut one (3 full rows and one half-ish row) to see how that would go. All I have to say is that a diamond blade on a 4 1/2 angle grinder seems like it’ll cut pretty much anything.

After dinner, I finished cutting the remaining tiles, read up on the procedure for setting them, and then washed and dried them and labeled them for future placement.

by

Yes, Virginia, We are Still Building a House

In the past it’s been my preference to blog about big items done on the house. Major things, accomplished in a set timeframe. However, those sorts of posts usually require a commensurate amount of time to blog about them and in the past few months it’s just felt like too much.

I’ve been thinking about this, the lack of communication and what to do about it, and I’ve decided to not sweat the big stuff. I’m going to blog after I work on the house.

It may be a sentence, it may be a paragraph, it may be a full blown post with pictures and everything. The important thing is to put the info out, in whatever form.

To start with, I’m just going to run down a list of little things that we’ve accomplished in the last few months that I haven’t been blogging.

In no particular order:

  • False 2×4 wall built inside the away room against the pocket doors so that we have a place to put a switch and plugs without interfering with the pocket door opening.
  • Wired away room ceiling fan box and can lights.
  • Moved chest freezer up from Livermore where Amanda and Tristan were keeping it for us. Installed it in the house. Realized that the current framing only gave us 1/2″ on either side (without drywall). Tore out a wall between utility room and coat room. Have plans to rebuild it to gain us about 1″ on either side (with drywall). Will still need a vent through the wall into the main living space so that the freezer doesn’t overheat.
  • Ran electrical through the wall for all exterior lights.
  • Put in boxes for most telecom points and pulled wire into boxes – only kitchen and hearth room left.
  • Extended the telecom point in the away room after deciding on a better location
  • Talked with a guy about best way to mount ceiling fans in a SIP roof.
  • Talked to a guy about painting the exterior. That will happen in late September, but we need to do some cleanup before then.
  • Reinforced the wall that will be between the wood stove and the stairs with a sheet of OSB to stiffen it up.
  • Dry walled it with my Grandfather.
  • Bought backer board and started cutting it to create a channel for air flow and sections to set slate tile on. Realized that scoring and snapping was likely to give me an RSI and was painfully slow. Bought a diamond blade for my angle grinder. Cut about 180 two-inch squares in about an hour.
  • Cleaned the floor where the woodstove will go. Mixed thinset. Put down thinset and the anti-fracture membrane. Prepped for slate tile installation so that it’s ready for our woodstove arriving in about 2 weeks. All a joint project with Amber and the first time we’ve done any tile work.
  • Primed exterior door jambs.
  • Mounted boxes for smoke detectors. Some of which are about 12 feet off the floor.
  • Planned location of water heater and some shower valves.
  • Drilled holes for PEX piping.
  • Soldered faucet stub outs to copper banding in preparation for supply line plumbing.
  • Discovered that plumbing is harder than electrical – seriously considering subbing it out.
  • Roughly rough framed the window seat and bookshelves with overhang for lights that we’ll have on the landing upstairs.
  • Installed and wired boxes for most of the non-ceiling fan lights.