Upstairs Railing and Flooring

The last 2 foot stretch of railing is complete upstairs. On Saturday I laid the oak flooring we needed (yes, it does take pretty much all day to lay about 16 square feet of recycled 2-1/4 oak flooring) and today I got the railing up then started work on finishing the kitchen light install and our temporary deck railing infill (it’ll make more sense with a picture).

While I was working on the floor on Saturday, Amber finished the laminate flooring in the boy’s room (yes, she laid half about 40 square feet in less time than it took me to do 16). Amber’s also been working on bundling some of our leftover oak flooring so that we can get the master cleaned and get laminate flooring down there.

The move-in list has been updated and it really does look like we’re getting close!

Change Log for…

Well, I haven’t been very good about getting change log posts up, have I.  We’re still plugging away.  We have someone working on the stairs and that will be done on Monday.  Matt’s working on getting the kitchen together today and this weekend (after working on the oak flooring last weekend) and hopes to be done by the end of the weekend.  I’ve been doing some more painting and cleaning, but most of the week has been taken up with kids’ activities.  Tomorrow I hope to start installing the flooring we have for the bedrooms.  The boys’ room is almost for that.  I’m really looking forward to seeing that floor go down!  If you look at the move-in list, you’ll see that we really are getting close…  We might even be in our house in August.  We shall see.  I’m not feeling particularly excited, because  it doesn’t really seem possible that we might be living there.  It has just been too long of a process.

Change Log 06.05.09 – 06.08.09

Change Log for Friday, June 5th to Monday, June 8th

  • I finished painting the sink area of the kids’ bath and finished the walls in the shower area
  • I did lots of cleaning downstairs
  • Matt installed the sinks, faucets and drains for the kids’ bath and master bath.  We now have four working sinks in the house.
  • Matt did more trim work for the windows in the open area, then disassembled the scaffolding and got that loaded on his dad’s truck.  It is really nice not having that scaffolding there anymore – although it certainly was useful.

I updated the Move-In Checklist and as you can see we’re slowly making progress.  Emphasis on the slowly part!

Shantytown Pump House

Last year our well went un-insulated all winter and during a particularly cold stretch we had a pipe break. Fortunately I noticed it within about 12 hours because I saw that the electrical meter was spinning at a crazy rate. For the last 10 or 11 months I’ve meant to do something to prevent it from happening again this winter, but the house has always taken priority

Since we’re currently having drywall hung and textured, I can’t really work on the house so I decided to finally do something about the pump house. The fact that we’re expecting temperatures to be in the high teens had something to do with it too.

I figured it would take me a few weekends to really get a good pump house up and didn’t really want to spend that much time on it right now (much less the cost of building materials) so I “made do”.

well_power.jpgBefore I could work on anything up there, I needed power. When we ran the wires for the well back in the summer of 2007, we ran four so that we could have two hot legs for the 220V pump, a ground and a neutral for a 110 circuit. I used one hot leg and the 110 to put in a duplex plug.

IMG_7899_sm.jpgThe basic frame is made up of three pallets that my Dad had. I bought three 4×8 sheets of 3/8 OSB for about $9 each and cut and stapled them up with my pneumatic stapler. It ends up being a surprisingly stable structure.

IMG_7905_sm.jpgThe backside of the pump house. I’ve since gone back and cleaned up the gaps some by stapling additional OSB over them and using leftover mastic from our SIP installation to “caulk” them.

IMG_7908_sm.jpgThe kids hung out and helped. Here they’re playing in the “snow”. I had Emma help me a as a counterweight when cutting the OSB. I put the sheet in the back of my truck hanging out over the tail gate and Emma sat on the end in the truck so that it would remain horizontal for me to cut.

I cut a final sheet and used screws to hold it in place over the 4th wall. Now I’ll be able to access the internals by simply taking a couple screws out. This will give me the access I need to turn the light on and off to be doubly sure nothing will freeze.

Paint decision making

Here’s a couple pictures of our paint selection process.  We ended up going with the one on the corner of the house – the lighter one, not the one on the top painted board.  We’ll have a cream-ish trim color and a red-ish accent color and door.  They should start painting next week!

Rough Electrical at 99%

One more receptacle box. A bit of wire cleanup. Rough electrical will be done! (assuming I don’t find anything else while cleaning up and reviewing it all).

Need to fix a stud and redo some vent piping to make the stud more vertical. Need to install vents for dryer and water heater.

Phones and Space and More

I’m very close on finishing everything I need for the rough inspection. I’ve got an appointment with a guy next Saturday to talk about drywall and get a bid.

Recently completed:

  • All ceiling fan boxes mounted and wired.
  • Can lights on landing wired.
  • Fixtures in kids bath mounted and wired.
  • Master bedroom and master bath swept and vacuumed.
  • Extra lumber moved outside (thanks, Jonathan)
  • Wood flooring moved down from upstairs storage to kitchen area (thanks, Jonathan)
  • Phone line pulled from phone box outside into house (thanks, Jonathan)
  • Remaining electrical box in away room wired
  • Telecom box in hearthroom nailed and wired

Holes in the Roof

This morning, the roof of our house was an unbroken sheet of shingles. Now it is pierced in three places.

Two plumbing vents went in (a 2 inch and a 3 inch) and I believe that the plumber finished his work. I need to put in a dryer vent and direct vent for the water heater but other than that the plumbing/propane should be done.

I finished wiring the boxes with the 220V futures in the bedrooms today while waiting for the stove installers at various points.

The third hole in the roof is for the wood stove chimney. The stove is in place, but the chimney wasn’t run because they didn’t have enough chimney pieces. Everything’s ready and they’ll come back out in a couple weeks to finish the installation.