June to February Part II

Front gable all finished

So much that I still need to recap from what we were up to last summer and fall.The good news is that I finally found the rest of the missing summer pictures.

Here's a picture that shows a good view of the front gable all finished up. The hope is that this year we'll actually get to finish the rest. Under the front gable we will have stone siding, and to the left where you see the missing Tyvek paper, we will open up that wall, redo the tyvek, add stone to the bottom and create some columns in the front.

If your central A/C unit needs 2x4's to hold, you might be a redneck!

Another of last summer's major accomplishment was the siding of the gable at the back of the house.

Here you can see the picture of what the back looked like before we got started. Also, noteworthy on this picture is to highlight the new central air unit to the house. :)

Living in the basement wasn't good enough against the 90-100 degree temps that we had for a couple of weeks in a row. All window air conditioners sold out around town. I happened to try wal-mart again and reserved one of the last 6 units that were coming into town on the truck that day. By the time we drove from one side of town to the other to get it, they were all sold out and only ours remained. Thank goodness!
We took one window panel out and mounted the A/C on a handy 2x4 frame. To help keep the cool air inside, we use 2" pink insulation board. Tacky looking, but works great! Shawn also built it in such a way that you just unscrew 2 boards and the whole thing comes out.

This poor little 10K BTU unit was put to the test, but it did a nice job of getting humidity out, and it didn't take much to help cool, since it is a basement.

Once it got cool again outside, we put it away before the winter. I doubt that we'll have an actual central unit in before it gets hot this year, so this will probably be used one more time.It can always be used out in a (future) shop or Evan's tree house.

For the job of getting the back peak sided, the guys had to bring out the scaffolding again and set that up.

All set to work!

The scaffolding wasn't wide enough to span the whole area, so the guys set it up on one side. The sequence was to re-do the Tyvek with a new layer, install the soffit and fascia on half the gable, then the trim around the window, then install the siding. Once finished, move the scaffolding to the other side and repeat.

Notice the safety harness for fall protection. OSHA would approve

You can see above that the soffit and fascia are installed on the left side of the gable. Shawn is working on installing the trim around the window. One way to do a curved trim is to special order the already curved piece ($$$), another way is to hire a contractor who knows how to curve a piece of PVC trim ($$$). Another way is to cut out a curved trim from straight pieces and made to fit the windows (lots cheaper than option one or two). Shawn drew up the window arch in CAD. Then, he created a template to fit a 6" curved trim inside an 8" wide straight trim.He  printed the template to the right scale and gave it to my father in law who took it home with him to work at his shop. He glued the piece of paper to the 8" pieces of trim, and cut them out perfectly, and brought them back when he came back to assist with this job.


Here you can see my father-in-law once again assisted Shawn with the job . He manned the saw and cut pieces of siding, trim, soffit and fascia after Shawn yelled down the dimensions.


Shawn stayed at the top of the scaffolding, and you can see in the pictures that he was even wearing a safety harness so that in the event that he slipped, he didn't fall to his doom. He was 25' or more up in the air.






To get supplies and tools up to Shawn, they guys used a basket on a rope. Same trusty technology that was probably used to build the Pyramids in Egypt and all those other ancient temples.

You can also see in this picture that they made very good progress, and the work is looking very nice, indeed.Since they wanted to make sure they didn't need to do anything up here again, the guys made sure that they got the caulking done around the window as well.



Thankfully the work went well without injuries. It was a lot of work, but the job turned out great!

Taken earlier this spring, after all the snow melted!

And here is a picture of the finished gable.You can also notice that we got around to siding the chimney as well! But those pictures will have to wait until next post.

You can admire the nice job my husband and his dad did on the siding. The window trim worked out great as well, since that curved trim hugs the window just right. Very proud of the work they have accomplished thus far!

There is still much more that I need to get caught up on, but hopefully one or two  more posts ought to do it. Then we can talk about the plans for this year. Spring is here and we're very busy gearing up for another season of housebuilding!

God bless... and Happy Easter! Celebrate since He is risen indeed!

June to February- The posts that never came... Part 1

If someone would have told me last summer that it would be months before I got back to the blog, I would have scoffed at the idea. I would certainly have told them that I have more dedication than that!

But here we are, February of 2012 and so much to catch up. The leaves are all gone, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years... heck... even Valentine's day came and went!

So much time has passed since July that it is going to be a big task trying to get the blog all caught up with work that has been done since then. Though who knows who is still reading this since I abandoned it for so long.

But the great big news is that we finally have high speed internet! Well, it is not super fast, but when you come from a 24K dial-up connection, it feels like high speed. So hurray! For those of you who didn't give up on this blog, that means that instead of 45 minutes to upload a picture, I can actually do a post in 45 minutes (with kids running around). After kids go to bed, should be faster. In other words, no excuses left for not doing a monthly post.

So let's recap what happened in the last post. We were in the middle of siding the front bedroom. If you followed my father-in-law's blog, then you were able to keep updated somewhat on the progress of the siding. But for the sake of continuity, I will post here the same thing.

But, I do hope I am able to find the pictures from last summer since right now I can't seem to locate them. I really hope they are not actually lost.

Until next time...

That time came...

I can't believe the end of June came and went! I missed my June blog post, and I almost missed July. Having 26K dial-up for internet does not help, though that is not the excuse. I am really trying to do one post per month, so I better get this out today.

Recapping from the last post, I left off in eager anticipation of our garage sale. You can see Evan here as he posed with one of the many load that made their way into town. The statistics? Three weekends of preparation, 10 hours of prep work, 10 hours of sale, and we ended up with $300 to show for our labor selling a quarter of the precious things we took. Not bad!

I did learn that father's day weekend does not make a good weekend for a sale. Weather was perfect, but the traffic didn't turn out as expected. So I figured it is because everyone went to see their daddies! Regardless, we made good money for things that were on their way to Goodwill, and in the end Goodwill ended with some 38 boxes, as embarrassing as it is to reveal that, we did take 38 boxes full of things to Goodwill.

At the end of the last post, Shawn had just finished with the soffit and facia for the front bedroom. So the next step was to work on the siding. The first thing to do was to re-do the Tyvek.

The big 9ft tall rolls of Tyvek cost quite a bit of money, and you get 150’ worth of it. Well, we don’t need 150 ft. So we bought a 3’ roll that has 50’ on it. As you can imagine, this means more layers of Tyvek, rather than two pieces for the front gable wall.


And this is what a wall covered with 3’ wide pieces of Tyvek looks like. It works the same, you just have to make sure you shingle-lap it and tape the seams.

Then my father in law came back for some more torturous work, and he helped Shawn with siding the front over a weekend back in June. The siding that we used for the front bedroom is still fiber cement siding, except we used the kind that when finished, it will look like shingle siding, rather than lap boards.

Here you can see Derald as he worked on painting the pieces, which may be one of his favorite jobs. :)


Then the labor of mounting those pieces up began. It is quite a messy job, specially when cuts have to be made, and the guys make sure they have their PPE (personal protective equipment) to keep from breathing the dust.

Which I’m sure one day will be in the same boat as asbestos and be illegal, since it is bad to breathe in.

Here Derald demonstrates the proper PPE to use for this job.


Installation for the shingle siding is a bit similar to lap siding, in that you need a 1 ¼” starter strip.

Then you need a solid board for the first run, since when you put the shingle siding on top, you need to have something behind it to cover under the slots.

You only need this on the first row, since the shingle siding pieces are designed so that when the next row goes on top, the previous row provides the solid backing for the shingle slots.


You can better see what I mean here:

You can see the solid siding off to the right, that is underneath the first row of shingle siding.

When the next row goes up, only the “tab” at the bottom of the shingle siding piece will be visible. And you can see that in the next picture.


The shingle siding comes in three different board "styles" and you alternate the three different pieces so that the end look will be a "random" pattern to the shingles.

From what I heard (I was not there that weekend), everything went smoothly until they started to get around the window.

But by the time it was quitting time on the second day, the guys had made great progress for a weekend’s work.

My father in law did a great job giving his perspective on this job on his blog:

http://dagwoodshopnotes.blogspot.com/2011/06/hardly-board-siding.html

So you can check it out and see the whole account! 

If I can, I’ll get to another post this month, to sort of catch up. I don’t have current pictures, but my father in law did return to finish the job on another weekend. And the front gable is all done! Plus I have more that I need to update, so until next time...

I'll leave off with daddy and Evan posing and showing off, dad's new drill he got for Father's day weekend.

Progress is off to a crawl start on siding... but the big sale is coming!

I wish I had a ton to update since the last post over a month ago. But I don't. I'll start off with the miscellaneous things that I can remember we've done. I should keep a diary, just so I can keep track of things for the next post. Maybe next month. (Yeah, right... add it to the list)

First off, we did end up putting up the screens for the windows upstairs to test the fit. Shawn think they should be fine, but I'm not convinced they will not get full of dust and become yucky. We should put them away, but I doubt that we will. The good news is that only the basement bar/kitchen screens were the wrong size. It is still on my to-do list to get the correct sized ones, so there's another thing on list.

The other thing that happened is that we finally got the electrical inspection. Good news is there were no issues, though the inspector did state his reservations about the basement ceiling not being covered. But that's acceptable by code, and we're good to do. So then of course, the electrician's bill arrived shortly after that, and even though we had saved up the money for it, and we were ready, it is always painful to part with such a sum that could buy a new vehicle. And that's for half the house. And to think that we got another small vehicle sized electrical check to go in the future. *sigh*

Still on an electrical subject, Shawn got a splitter for the phone lines, and here you can see him as he starts on connecting the phones to all of the rooms in the basement. We have six lines, one to each room, though we're not sure that we need all of them. At least we had the means to pay this electrician for his labor. :)

On a more exciting note we have a date set for our garage sale! And our daycare provider has graciously invited us to have it at her house in town, so we're excited (more like I'm excited) because the traffic will definitely be better, so hopefully that will mean plenty or treasure hunters willing to pay for our junk. It is scheduled for mid-June and I'm happy to report that the old house treasure is officially sorted into keep and sell piles.

Here are a couple of pictures that depict that oh-so dreaded task. The stuff that was upstairs that fit through the window made the journey to the outside, where we sorted into trash, burn, keep and sell piles.

Here is another picture that shows the monstrous undertaking.
All in all it wasn't too terrible, just odious. It took about three full weekends, and a couple of evenings. Of course, we could not have done it without some help keeping an eye on the kids while we were in the old house. Grandparents spent some more quality time with the kids, and we took advantage of their help again.

And next picture you can see what will hopefully give us a small refund. Even if it doesn't, all of the stuff you see here will have a one way trip into town. All of these precious items will become someone's treasures either through our garage sale, or from the goodwill because nothing will be coming back!

Our old bedroom is full of the keepsakes, but now that the major sorting is done, I want to do second opinion and thin the keep pile some more. Really, we need none of it. It's been six months since we've moved out and I have not had the need to use any of these things. Realistically I know we won't get rid of all of it, but I'm optimistic that we can part with a few more things. Probably in the next couple of weeks before the sale, we'll start sorting the sale pile, cleaning some items and pricing things to get ready for the big day!

The big focus has been on getting the old house sorted. But in between here and there when it was not raining, Shawn began to pick up where he left off on siding. So now the main focus will once again be siding. Shawn began by building the cornice returns, or whatever they are called, in the soffit and fascia of the front gable.

The birdhouse return is another silly name for it, and it is the white triangle thing you can see at the corner of the roof in the picture above. We did a lot of driving around to take a look at how most houses have these done. It was very hard to find some sort of guidance about these on the internet. So Shawn took a stab at it, and it turned out really nice and professional looking. You can also see in the picture where he had begun to cover the soffit up the top on the opposite side.

This picture shows both corner returns finished, and the front gable soffit and fascia is all installed. You can also see the poor shape that our Tyvek house wrap is in. It is to be expected since it is not meant to be left exposed for two years. We will be tearing it off and replacing it. You can see a hole above the window where Shawn noticed a bulge. We had birds making nests up at the top of the wall, and their butt was positioned just right so that some of their droppings slipped behind the tyvek and had been collecting there for a year or two. Gross. So needless to say, there will be some cleanup and repair that will need to be done before we cover that up with siding. Hopefully this next weekend we will start some of that. But overall, the Tyvek has done its task of protecting the wall behind it, despite the abuse and neglect it has received. So we will just move on, but we'll make sure we do a great job of preparing the wall before siding goes up. At least is it great to know that protected and done right, that Tyvek will do its job.

Also, in preparation for the siding job to come up, Shawn began to paint the trim boards so that those are ready to go.

This past weekend my in-laws came down to help us once again. My mother-in-law, Pam, watched the kiddos, while I was at the old house finishing up with the sorting. And Shawn's dad has been working on making us some laundry cabinetry. So he brought what he had built in his shop at home, and Shawn helped him to get it installed.

 You can see how great my laundry area is starting to look! Most of the lumber for the drawers and trim is from Derald's pile of maple wood he got from Shawn's grandpa Harley (Pam's dad) from a tree that fell in a storm several years ago. We bought some of the hardware, and other things, but Derald has been very kind in making this for us. As you can see, there are two drawers, and they pull out the full length, so I have access to the very back of the drawers. Nice! We are still deciding on the door, whether to make it one single door that will pull out both drawers at the same time, or have two individual drawers. I mean to go to some stores to take a look at some cabinets and decide. So maybe sometime this week or the next we can get to that. Once we do decide which route to go, Derald will make the door and come back and install it. You can see that the drawers are a little darker than the top. That is because they have a coat of varnish on them already. We sill have to varnish the rest of the cabinets, and I think we should get to that as soon as we can, because I do not want anything to stain the bare wood. Probably not this weekend, but hopefully the next.

If you want more details on the cabinet, visit my Father-in-laws blog. If the cabinet is not on yet it should be soon.
Derald's blog - washerdryer nook

So once again I'm shooting for a post mid to late June. By then the sale will be over, and hopefully the siding work will be fully underway! Until next month!

April Post

Spring is here, and the weather is making us think that it's time to start to get serious about siding. Last week we got the bill from the electrician (yes, we did pass inspection even with our weird project) and it came about $600 more than hoped. We had added a few extras and some of the work done upstairs was part of the upstairs bid, and not the basement. We knew it would be higher, but we had really hoped for less than that. So, there went the little we had saved up so far to start this year's projects. *sigh*

But, we do have the dumpster rented and we're supposed to be cleaning the old house. Right? I guess we're really used not doing anything or somehow we seem unable to come up with the time to get to it. Not to mention that with the kids it's about impossible to do anything. With Evan wanting to play with everything and keeping Bianca from eating whatever is on the floor, not much progress gets made if we bring them in. And I don't allow Shawn to throw anything unless I've had a chance to look at it, that by himself he doesn't progress much just because he waits for me to take a look.
Still, we got things sort of sorted into piles, but the dumpster is miserably empty. I have to keep reminding myself that we've actually burned a ton of things. But still. I am really really really really hoping that it's because I want to sell things at the garage sale. I'm watching that show about hoarders and I definitely don't want to go down that road.

Despite all of this, there has been progress. In between waiting for the electrical inspection and the carpet to show up, Shawn worked on our data/cable outlets. We were blessed with an extra Christmas gift from my parents to complete the purchase of a new flat screen TV. So, to go with our new tv, we splurged and got ourselves some dish network. Now you really know why progress has been slow. I call it training. We do watch a lot of DIY Network. Anyway, we needed to have our coax cables hooked up.

And here you can see Evan being a great helper while Shawn installs the data outlet in the guest/laundry/spare bedroom.

Shawn bought all of the supplies and tools needed, and installed the coax and cat5 and phone outlets for each room. Right now we have the satellite feed coming into the closet under the stairs, where it connects to the family room line, our bedroom and the guest/spare bedroom lines.

This picture is a close up of our new outlets.This one is in the family room right behind the TV. The one on the left is where the cables for the surround speakers come in on the wall behind the tv. And the outlet to the right shows how our new data/video plates look. We have phone, data, and cable on this one. Eventually when we are able to switch internet providers once our cell internet plan expires, we will have the capability of surfing the net from our tv and stream movies from netflix. But that will have to wait until next year, since our Verizon contract won't expire until then.

The other exciting thing that happened is that our family room carpet is finally in! And no, we didn't go with green carpet. This is the guys working on installing the rubber pad. And remember how we had to cancel the carpet install because the order had been messed up and only 2 rolls had come in? Well, they get the pad down and it turns out we only needed 2 rolls. Figures. At least we can use the leftover pad somewhere else. We also ended up with enough pieces of leftover carpet to do perhaps Bianca's room. Might need to tape a few seams, but I'm sure we can handle it. We have installed carpet before (once) and it actually wasn't too bad, it's just a bit labor intensive. But a small room like Bianca's might be worth the rental fee for the tools, since we already have the pad and carpet for it.

I thought I had a picture of the final carpet install, so that will have to wait to next month. (Yes, I am trying to do at least one post per month.)  This is what I have for now. At least you can see the nice dark chocolate color that we picked for our carpet.

We all love the change from hard floor to this nice soft surface, and we do spend a lot of time playing on it. One rule we now have is to avoid eating in the living room and no drinks. So far we're doing good on that.

I was trying to think what else we have worked on since last month. We've done a few miscellaneous things here and there, like caulk the joint between the floor and the toilet. Right now the current project is to install a frosting membrane to the bathroom window. It will be a while before we get some sort of window treatment, so this at least will help with privacy. Even though the neighbor facing that window is across the river, over the hill and half a mile away, I still feel very exposed.

One thing that we should have done when the windows came two and so years ago, is that we should have taken the stickers off the windows. By the time we thought about it, they were already so stuck on there, it's not even funny. By then we didn't have the time to be messing with this since there were other priorities. Now it takes about a thirty minute scraping and soaking with acetone to get those things off. So we'll be working on those suckers on and off as we get a chance. Another thing we should have done, was to double check the screen sizes. Those were delivered about a year after windows were installed, and we've been storing them since. Finally, today we brought them out since it was nice enough outside that we wanted to open the windows. Uh Oh. The screens for the bar/kitchennete window are the wrong size. Shoot. Now we have to go back to the dealer, and we're not looking forward to that. It took this rep 8 months of e-mails and phone calls to get him to get us the two missing handles that never came with the windows. Maybe by fall we'll have the right screens, if things are the same.
We got the rest of the screen for the basement in, and sometime we'll have to double check the ones for upstairs.
I really don't want to install those yet because they will get wrecked since work is still needed up there. But we better check them now, since at our rate, it will be five years before we're able to get to use them upstairs.

With the budget so very low, we're starting to think about what we will be tackling next. The old house still needs clearing, and I really need to prepare for a garage sale. The garage slab will probably have to wait until fall, when we hope to have the cash saved up for it. At least for siding we have all of the materials bought, except for things like paint, and caulk, which we should be able to fit in the little money we have left right now. So probably by next month there will be some sort of siding progress made. We'll also try to get to the soffit , but that's a little more expensive than paint.

We'll see what we can do. Maybe the garage sale will be a huge success and we can fund some more house projects with that.

Until next time...

Phase III - It begins

Well, we've officially kicked off Phase III. And we are christening this season of work with some carpet.
We saved up enough to put carpet in the family room since Lowe's has that good deal of labor for $100.
We need a special pad to go under our carpet, so that the insulation value of pad + carpet is low enough to allow our radiant heat floor to heat the space as designed. Three weeks ago we ordered the carpet and pad, and it arrived at Lowe's a week ago. They called, set up the install for this past Monday, so we spent a whole afternoon moving all of the furniture out of the space and cleaning.

As usual, we got the phone call that somehow someone messed up the order and though we had ordered 3 rolls of carpet pad, only two rolls showed up. It will be another week before the pad comes in, so we're hoping that on Monday we will get the call that the carpet pad came in, and we shall have carpet installation scheduled soon!

We are also still waiting for the electrician to schedule the electrical inspection. He must not need the thousands of dollars that we owe him since he doesn't seem in a hurry to get that inspection done so he can send us the bill. We keep making a whopping 1% on it, so doesn't bother us to keep the money a while longer.

The other thing that I can finally get some pictures is for my laundry area.

Here you can see our washer and dryer up on the pedestal. My father in law has volunteered the labor to build us a counter above the washer and dryer and some small cabinets on the side, and maybe some shelves/cabinets on the wall to store laundry items.
We're saving up the money to purchase the lumber, so maybe this spring he could get started on those? That would be nice.

And here are the pictures of those two interior doors that we purchased earlier this winter.

This one is the one we purchased for the bathroom that had the wrong swing. So you can see it here now as Bianca's bedroom door (which will someday be the office). We still have to stain and seal them, but I like the natural color so much, that I'd like to just put a clear coat on and leave it as is.

And this is the other door that had the correct swing for the bathroom.
Speaking of the bathroom, here is how our sink area looks for now:

The mirror is recycled from the old house, and where you see the little table on the right is where we will someday install a second sink. We had a mind of just building another fancy stand out of 2x4 like the one we currently have, and purchasing a sink top to match. This works for now.

One other thing that he have done in the month since the last post is that we built some plywood doors to close the area under the kitchen sink. We had Shawn's dad, Derald, route a rounded edge on them during one of his visits, and here you can see Shawn painting them to match the rest of the cabinets.

All in all, they turned out good, and it's nice to be able to lock away chemicals from inquisitive 1 yr old Bianca.

That is pretty much it for now.

Now that it is beginning to thaw, we will probably start focusing on the exterior. The goals for this year are:
-Finish the siding at the back peak, the chimney, and the front of the house
-Pour the garage slab,side walk and parking area in front of garage
-Get some garage doors
-Deal with the egress window wells and landscaping a little
-Stain the windows, get more interior doors, and install trim in the basement
-Get junk out of old house, have a huge garage sale and demolish the old house

It's a tall order, and we'll go as far as we can. We've begun cleaning out the old house, and we got a medium sized dumpster to clear house. Last weekend Shawn's parents came down to give us a hand going through the piles of things we have in the old house. By the end of the day, only a couple trash bags had made their way into the dumpster. This whole idea that oodles and oodles of things would end up in the trash pile somehow didn't work. Hopefully it is because things are garage sale worthy and not because I'm hoarding all of that!

I will try to post again in early April, and hopefully by then the old house will be cleared of the usable things, and the piles of things we'll be ready for garage sale season. We have a mind of also going through the barn and taking advantage of the dumpster as well. Until next time!

So much for posting

Two Sundays have come and gone, and I am still unable to post!
I guess since a weekly post seems about impossible right now, I am going to shoot for a monthly post.
So hopefully mid-february I'll have something worthwhile to write about.

Right now not much has been done in the new house for a couple of weeks, and the little that has been done, I will save for that February post. Maybe if I start writing now, I'll have something to post in two weeks.
One thing that we think we desperately need is some carpet in the family room, so that Bianca who now has started to walk has a safe place to play and fall without hurting her head. So maybe the new funds for this year will be christened with a carpet job.

Until next time...

Phase II is Officially Done

Phase II was what we needed to do to get moved into the basement. As the way construction goes, things didn't turn out originally as planned, but the major goal was achieved. Out of our Phase II projects, three major taks we did not accomplish, which will now be moved to Phase III: 1) Finish the siding and outside flatwork (including the garage slab and doors). 2) trim and interior doors for the basement including staining the windows, and 3) flooring. In addition to these, there are smaller interior finishes needed for the basement like closets (who knew closets were so ridiculous in price!), cabinets for the bathroom and laundry, and misc. here and there things. The kitchen turned out all right, so we'll save the expense of new cabinets here. The bathroom sink turned out so well out of 2x4 that we're now considering building another $8 stand and getting a used sink top out of the Re-Store to complete the pair. Figure something for toiletries and towels, and we should be good there.
We used the last dollar of our Phase II budget to buy a door for the bathroom. So we now posses two doors in our house, and I still need to take pictures.

The only picture I have on-hand today is of the paint job in Evan's room. It is still not finished, but Evan picked the colors, and loves the look of it, so I'm pleased. He even helped to put his own mark in his room, but that will have to wait until I get a chance to get more pictures.

The whole wall on the left is green, and the whole wall on the right is blue, and the opposite wall to this one is a combo of the two colors all over each other that Evan painted himself. Eventually Evan is to put brown handprints in those stripes, and there's still some more brown accenting that needs to be added. Evan love's trains and my intent was to suggest something train like, though the comments I've gotten is to question if he's into Transformers. Go figure.

Next Step is to plan Phase III:
The main challenge, of course, will be the budget and to creatively fit the projects within that budget.
The main focus of this Phase is going to be the exterior of the house and the garage. We need to finish siding the front of the house and garage, and the whole house needs a second coat of paint. We dearly need a concrete floor in the garage and a driveway poured in front of it, and some steps. And it will be nice to have some garage doors and to store vehicles there rather than tools! And we'll see what we can do about landscaping. We will also need to finish our window wells and figure something with those.

Also staining the windows is a priority this year as well. If we can swing it, I'd like to get flooring by next winter for sure. So for the next two or three months, we won't be doing anything that will require capital over $100 to accomplish, since we're manipulating our cash flow so that by summer we will have the capital to tackle the big projects.

In the meantime, we will start (someday) the unpleasant task of sorting the junk out of the old house. We will be renting a dumpster so that we don't just move junk around. If it's not garage sale worthy, it's binnable! I'm a hoarder, so this will be tough on me, but I want to be smart about what I keep, then make a profit of what I can't or won't, and not be sentimental about what I toss or burn. But that's easier said than done!

I will also resume posting once a week on Sunday's. For now the posts won't be big or full of things, since it's mainly miscellaneous tasks here and there that we're going to be doing. I'll try to catch up with pictures and we'll see how it goes.

A house is built with walls and beams, but a home is built with hope and dreams

Hope Christmas was Merry for all and may your New Year be blessed!

The pace of construction has really slowed down now. It's a wonder we ever had time to do what we did this past year. Maybe after the holidays things will pick up again, though the lack of funds does limit much of what we can do.

As the New Year approaches, it's a wonder to look back of all that has happened this year with our house.
Sometimes, there are moments where both Shawn and I are struck by that fact that we have been in charge of building this dream. It always brings to mind a decorative picture that we got from Shawn's parents (that I keep forgetting to mount). It says that a house is built with walls and beams, but a home is built with hope and dreams! We sure have huge dreams for our house, but even with it half finished, it has quickly become our home. And the hope that Shawn and I have within us is fills us with joy. We have been blessed beyond belief this past year, and our faith in Christ is what has held us together. Anyone who has ever done building or remodeling in any shape or form knows how this can be challenging. But through it all, what has sustained us is the knowledge that ultimately we own nothing, and we are merely stewards of what God gives to us. Though more often than not we probably mismanage rathen than manage what we have. We are greatful for the great support and help from family and friends. Truly, our home would not be as is without the help from those we love and cherish. So thank you to everyone who has in anyway, shape or form contributed in helping us along our journey.

Enough sappy stuff. Here are some more pictures about what we've been up to in the month since we moved in. After we had a workable kitchen, the next step was to get the laundry area ready. During our stint in the basement, we will have the laundry in what should have been the closet of the guest bedroom. Though as I ponder the future and a new laundry room upstairs, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps this will not be a temporary laundry area, but rather than haul the kids clothes upstairs whenever we do get a laundry room, we can just keep this one and do laundry here as well. By then the kids aught to be teenagers, so they can do their own laundry as well.

Our washer is a front loading machine, and in a previous home, Shawn's dad had build us a stand to elevate them off the floor for easier reach. And since the pedestals that do go with our laundry are ridiculous in price, we opted to buy lumber and build our own custom stand.

So here is Shawn building my laundry stand.

And here is the final product. Added to the to-do list of someday is the staining job. I really like the way the plain wood looks, so I think just a clear coat will suffice. I thought I had taken a picture of the washer and dryer on the stand, but must not. Also in the to-do list is a counter and maybe some sort of cabinets for storage above the laundry. So maybe this next year, we'll get to do that.

Here is the promised picture of our Christmas tree. In previous posts I may have called it Australian pine, but it's an Austrian pine (I think). All in all, it turned out a suitable candidate for such an honor. 

 

The next picture show's our massive fireplace. Right now it is unfinished and covered with cement board since it will someday be covered with stone veneer. A real wood burning fireplace will be housed in the middle. Santa didn't seem to mind the lack of fireplace and chimney and still made it to our home. The open storage area that you can see on the left will be for storing wood logs. On the right side, behind the wall is where all of the pipes buried in the concrete for our radiant heat make an exit, and a removable panel reveals access to the space below so we can work on the radiant heat manifold as needed.

 

On both sides of the fireplace we have some alcoves that we incorporated so as to not waste any space. Below this alcove pictured here is where the manifold is hidden. On the other side, above the wood storage area, there's a similar alcove to display who knows what. For now, this one is housing our small nativity scene. Someday we'll have a more size appropriate display item in there. Add that to the to-do list.

 

So that's it for now. We did go to Bernard's, as Evan calls it, to purchase a wood door for out bathroom. But we made a mistake in deciding the swing of the door, and it so happens that the only interior door in the basement that uses a left swing is in Bianca's room. So maybe this New Year's weekend Bianca will get a new door installed, and we'll keep going with the curtain we've been using in the bathroom for a wee bit longer. Menard's is still having a sale on doors, and Shawn might purchase another door with his Christmas present. So we'll see.

Until next time and Happy New Year!

We're In!

During Veteran's day weekend, we accomplished our goal of moving into the new house! With a working tub, toilet and sink, we felt that we could manage it. The house still needed to be properly swept and cleaned, not to mention that we lack interior doors, flooring and trim, but we moved our bed, Evan's mattress and Bianca's pack and play, and we slept in what will someday be the guest bedroom. But we did it!

With the long 4 day weekend, we managed to accomplish a lot, most of which I forget by now, but I'll do my best.

We started off with the trying to get a workable Kitchen. Shawn built a base cabinet for the corner and sink out of some 2 x 4's that you can see in the picture. Here, it is in the process of being painted white so that it will match our kitchen cabinets.

While he did that, I took some spray paint and refreshed our metal vintage cabinets from the old house. You can see one of the base cabinets in the back. Also, I took some rust calcium and lime cleaner and gave a good scrubbing to our nice old Kohler cast iron sink that we took out of the old house . We went to Lowe's to buy new sink drains, but after noticing the cheap metal things they use nowadays (and solid brass ones were ridiculously expensive!), we decided to save the planet and recycle our old ones. They are actually very good quality, Kohler solid brass drains, and a little bit of some elbow grease into cleaning them and new gaskets for them and we were good.

Once I finally had the sink without a trace of lime on it, it was time to start assembling our Kitchen. These next pictures show our initial blank slate. The stove you see is a modest electric stove that we purchased at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, which is the goodwill of home improvement centers. The oven looked like it had never been used, and aside from a couple of knobs that look like someone had a fire in a pan and melted them, it does the job well.
The sink will be right in front of the window, so that we may enjoy our beautiful view while doing dishes.

This next picture is a view of the other kitchen wall where most of the upper cabinets and the fridge will go.

This next picture is the beginning of our new kitchen. The new wood base looks nice in the corner. The space you see in between the wood base and the small metal cabinet will house the dishwasher. You can see that the small cabinet extends in front of the fixed panel of the sliding door. The original bar idea calls for a peninsula that will host the "bar" and that will not be in front of the door, though the counter may extend into it. But for now, we'll have to put up with this choice so that we can have a bit more counter space. A future project will be to make something out of wood to disguise the back of this small metal cabinet so that from outside the glass, the view is not so... ugly. At the end of the day, we took measurements and headed to Lowe's to purchase some new countertops and the rest of the plumbing supplies.

The next step was to cut the countertops to size. It took a couple of cuts to find the tool that would make a clean cut without chipping the laminate, and we got all of the pieces cut. We mounted the countertop onto the base cabinets, then Shawn cut out the hole for the sink while I worked on mopping and cleaning out our bedroom so we could move our bed to it.

Here you can get a glimpse at the color of counter that we chose.

And here you can see how nice our recycled sink looks when mounted on the new counter! A new shiny faucet really brought out the beauty in our sink, and the contrast between the red and the counter is nice. Without really planning for it, we ended up with a black and white main theme, and the red sink adds a nice 50's vintage accent. Which fits, since our old cabinets are from 1957. You can also see out window which still is in need of trim, and we need to make a ledge to fill in the bottom there. It's on the to-do list.


On Saturday of Veteran's day weekend we moved the fridge, and we had to take the thing apart, doors and hinges off to make it fit through the door. So what we had hoped would be a quick move, ended up taking several hours, specially when I saw how disgusting it really was in there when it was empty. Needless to say, that fridge had a personal close encounter with some bleach. Another thing that needed a thorough disinfecting was the water line for the automatic water dispenser and ice maker built into the fridge. Because of the well water, this part of the fridge had no been in use for 5 years. So we injected a cc or 2 of bleach into the line, ran the water until bleach came out, then let it sit overnight. The next day we flushed it out, and now we can enjoy drinking water right out of the fridge! What a luxury.

Now that the fridge was in the house, and the kitchen sink worked, we decided might as well bring a couch and the tv, and chairs for the dining table and officially move in.

Over the last several weeks we've moved the bare essentials. The beds, a dresser for each room, the couches, the computer, and the laundry. One of the unfortunate things of being in the basement and having mobile broadband for internet is that signal is poor at best. So posting the blog is really a chore when you have to wait at dial up speeds for a picture to load, and I have lacked the free time to sit there and wait. But we've been so busy just making small finishing touches here and there as well.

The main focus has been the kitchen. So little by little every night we've done something to it. We built a toe-kick for the wood base cabinet and spray painted it black to match the metal cabinets. I also spray painted the toe kick in the dishwasher black to blend it in better as well. Shawn also brought the upper cabinets from the old house, and after cleaning and putting contact paper on the shelves, he mounted them. We lived without drawer pulls for several days because I wanted to purchase new ones, since the old ones looked terrible.
When I went to Lowe's to find some new handles I was so shocked by the cost of replacing them. I also ran into the problem that these metal cabinets had handles which had holes that were closer together than the standard cabinet pulls. So of course, the only style of pull that would work was one of the most expensive ones and would have involved drilling a new hole and covering up the old one.

Since our budget is pretty much done, new handles were out of the question. Then I decided to spray paint the old pulls black just to improve them a bit. But Shawn wondered how the handles would look if he ran them through the wire brush in the benchtop grinder. He did. And what a surprise!

You can see here the old dull and peeling handle in the bottom vs. the polished one. They look practically brand new. Of course, I had thrown away a couple of handles because they had looked so bad since I had expected to buy something cheap and decent. Now we were short. Off to e-bay I go, and guess what? I find someone selling 4 of these same exact style. I was also very surprised to discover that our old metal cabinets were once very popular back in the 50's. I even saw cabinets being sold for as much as $800. Who knew! So I placed a bid on the handles and got them. This will actually turn out perfect because I needed an extra pair of handles for the new doors that Shawn will build for me to close off the space under the kitchen sink.

The electrician needed to come back to finish installing a few things, and one of them was installing some under-cabinet lights. Since the metal cabinets do not have a frame underneath them to hide these lights. Shawn built a pair out of inexpensive wood and I spray painted them black and we mounted them.
You can see it at the bottom of the upper cabinet in this picture. It adds a nice little touch to the cabinets and ties in that whole black and white theme some more.

So here it is, at last, a picture of our semi-finished kitchen. We still have to move a pair of small upper cabinets in the old house that will go above the fridge. Also, Shawn will be building a set of doors to close off the space under the sink (and now I have handles to match!) In the corner cabinet, we bought lazy susan hardware, so I now have a lazy susan on each shelf so we can access the canned goods that we're storing in there.

There a few more cosmetic things to do, not to mention most of the cabinets are empty since the vast majority of our posesions are still at the old house. So we still need to sort, clean and move all of that stuff. That space above the range hood is calling for something, so decorating will also be in our future.

This picture here shows the kitchen towards the family room side. Right after the fridge, we have a small cabinet that holds our microwave, and right next to it is a small black armoire desk that houses our computer since the "Office" will be used as Bianca's bedroom while we live down here in the basement (for the next 10 yrs, at the rate we do things). At any rate, there are recommendations that you keep the computer with internet access in the living room, just so kids don't end up going somewhere you don't want them to go when they play their games online. So works out just fine. And Shawn showed Evan a Go Diego Go simple flash game to play, and he's hooked, of course. Evan also loves watching youtube videos of trains, volcanoes, and planets. The internet can be a wonderful teaching tool. One of my priorities now is to find a good security software to prevent an accident where inappropriate sites might get accessed by mistake. I thought I wouldn't have to worry about such a thing for a while, but it's uncanny how fast a 3 year old takes to the computer!

Back to Kitchen. We love the way our kitchen turned out. Really, the only major expenses here were the range hood, the counters, and the faucet.The rest is vintage, recycled and reclaimed. So we're very proud of our green kitchen.

Here in this picture you can see how our kitchen looks today. My father in-law fixed my small rolling cart since it was falling apart. It fits just perfect in our kitchen and serves as a small island and adds a little more counter space for prep work. If you can use your imagination and imagine the floor once it the concrete is stained and polished, it will really look nice.

And finally, I'll end this post with a bit of flair. I absolutely love all of the light available in the kitchen. Shawn thinks I'm nuts for wanting so much light, but I love it! We have ambient light in the main fixture in the ceiling. Then there is a can light over the sink for task lighting, and future can lights will go up to light above the counter on each side of the stove. Someday, when we do have a peninsula for the bar, there will be pendant lights that hang from the ceiling right above the bar counter. And last but not least, there's accent lighting that also serves as task lighting in the undercabinet lights and the range hood lights. I love it.

I will do my best to update again in a week. Next, it will be to showcase my laundry area and the living area and the bedrooms. Evan's room is finally painted, though I still need a few things to finish up, but it turned out nice and he likes it. Also, we had a huge storm this past fall knock down one of our australian pine trees and it was tied to the roots by a thread and was beginning to die. So Evan and Shawn cut it down and turned it into our Christmas tree. It takes a huge corner of our family room, and I think Australian pines are not really shaped for Christmas tress, but it works. Unconventional. I like it. I'll have to show that next time.

We also have on the to-do list to buy an antenna and see if we can't boost our cell modem signal so it won't take two hours to do a post!

Until then... Merry Christmas and God bless