Surprise!

On Tuesday (Dec. 22), I heard a strange noise emanating from the barn as I left for work at 3:30 a.m. I was tempted to just ignore it but my conscience got the better of me and I went to check it out. (Before going to the barn I had to find a flashlight because the electricity to the barn is currently out. It went out on Monday, Dec. 21. The last time the power cut out in the barn was just before lambing season...) I found a flashlight, wandered out to the barn and discovered that Moya (Hannah's goat) had given birth to twins at some point in the night... I got Grace and Hannah up and they took care of Moya and her offspring while I went to work.

The fact that Moya had kids wasn't the surprise part. Hannah had bought her as a bred doe (not "bread dough" (stupid spell checker)). We knew we had a pregnant doe on our hands, we just thought her due date was late January. Surprise!

We were woefully unprepared to begin milking. Thankfully, we had milked before and this was not Moya's first freshening either. She is an awesome milker! Very cooperative, patient and a good producer. The girls had to milk her while she stood on the ground since we had gotten rid of all of our milking equipment about four years ago.

I downloaded milk stand plans, Grace picked up the necessary lumber and our bedroom addition was temporarily transformed into a work shop. I finished it off in a couple of days and now it's ready for action. It could use a coat of paint but the girls are more anxious to be able to milk a little more comfortably.

Heat

Why is it that whenever I have to do anything under the house it inevitably involves the longest possible distances of crawling, wriggling, etc? I hate having to do stuff in the crawlspace but if we wanted heat in our new bedroom it had to be done.... Also Grace is taping and mudding in there and when the temperature is hovering around absolute zero it not only affects her ability to work but also the ability of the tape to stick and the mud to dry (as opposed to simply freezing...)

I was going to get started on the duct work last week. I had mapped out where we wanted registers, taken measurements, made a rough sketch and figured out how much and what kind of materials we would need. I went to Home Depot in Abbotsford and was confronted with a plethora of different sizes of duct work. I panicked and went home. I waited at the border for thirty minutes before I could explain to the guy at the booth that I didn't get anything at Home Depot because I didn't know what size ductwork I needed. He seemed a little leery of my explanation and seemed to be on the verge of pulling me over and searching the van (and my person) for illegal drugs... but he didn't.

I got home and figured out that it was six inch ducting that I needed. (I had to crawl under the house to figure this out. Ugh!) I decided I would just go to Lynden Sheet Metal to get my materials since I didn't want to cross the border again. When I got there the helpful receptionist told me that my little sketch was the dumbest layout she'd ever seen and that only an idiot would do it that way. (She was nicer about it but that was what I took away from our conversation...) So I went home again, modified my plan, refigured my material needs and by then the day was pretty much done.

Grace and I picked up the ductwork on Saturday night at Lowes in Bellingham. I got started today (Friday) and realized that five foot lengths of six inch ductwork aren't as bendy as I need them to be in certain instances. I needed to go get some more 90 degree fittings (which can be made to do amazing things since they're all twisty...)

We picked up some more parts on our way to Seattle to pick up Sara and by Saturday I was going full tilt. To make a long story short (and let's face it, without pictures most of you have stopped reading by now anyway...), it took me all day (Sat.) but I got heat to the addition.

It's in and it works!

The picture may be a little grainy but below is photographic proof that we managed to get our bedroom door installed today! We finished framing it up this morning and by lunch we were jamming shims all over the place and hammering nails into the jambs... and before you know it we had a door! And it only took us one try! We were waiting for it to fall out all afternoon or to get stuck closed or something - but it didn't!

We also almost finished all of the drywalling. A few more small pieces here and there and we will be ready to tape and mud.

It's getting door-ier in here!

This is from Monday. I played hooky from work. Grace had the day off too and so we worked on the addition some more. This view is from inside the addition. I almost finished framing the rough opening for the door today. (I also rewired the outlet that would have been in the middle of the doorway. It's now safely out of the way about three feet to the left.)

Tonight, after scouring through the inventory at the ReStore (recycled building materials) and the Buyer's Market (surplus building materials), we picked up a door at Home Depot . We hope to have the door hung by tomorrow.

Doorway (ish...)

See that small section of weather-beaten Tyvek pictured below? That poor piece of Tyvek has been waiting for almost a year to be put to good house-wrapping use. During that year it was buffeted by winds, wrapped up and nailed to the wall, urinated on by dogs and suffered various other indignities. Why was it waiting you ask? It was waiting because until today the small section of wall that it was supposed to cover did not exist. Today that wall came to be. This was the opening by which we have accessed the addition ever since the rest of the walls have gone up. Today we put up three studs, hammered some sheathing on, and wrapped it up. No more can we access the addition via the front porch. How do we get into the addition you ask? Read on, MacDuff...
Witness below. It is a hole cut through the wall of the entryway of our house. When you look through that hole you can see part of my head and part of Grace. That's right; this opening is the small beginning of a doorway into the addition from our house. It will eventually be enlarged to more door-like proportions but it's exciting to get a bit of an idea what things will look like.

One snag (there's always a snag). See just to the bottom left of the "doorway"? That's an outlet. It would have ended up in the middle of our doorway if we continued according to plan. Given the options of having an electrical outlet in the middle of our bedroom door or crawling under the house to reroute some wiring, we opted for the latter and this will be taken care of in due time.

Drywall

We passed our insulation inspection on Monday. Yay!

Today Grace and the kids had the day off (Veterans' Day) and so they began to drywall the walls. Actually Grace didn't have to do too much other than direct traffic since Jesse supplied two workers. Thanks, Austin and Kyle-from-Ohio! They ended up getting quite a bit done by the time I got home from work and then Grace and Paige hung a few more sheets tonight. It's probably about half done so we are well on our way!

Here's a fake action shot of Kyle-from-Ohio, Jesse and Austin.

more insulation...

Last week found us in the attic of the addition hurling bats of R38 insulation around. Yesterday I placed them in their proper positions and, just like that, it looked like we had made all kinds of progress!

Not ones to rest on our laurels, this morning (and afternoon) found us in the crawl space under the addition inserting bats of R30 insulation between the floor joists.

Once we had accomplished that task, we went inside the addition and stuck bats of R21 insulation in between the wall studs. Then we got sick of it and quit before finishing it off...

We are dirty. Our skin itches and our eyes burn. It's time for a shower. All in all a good day.

Insulation

See those feet hanging down from the ceiling? Those are attached to me. I'm sitting on a piece of plywood in the attic of the addition.

Here's the rest of me. It looks like I'm going to a Halloween party dressed as the unabomber but I'm not. Look closely at my sweatshirt and you will see lots of pink fluff on it.
It's fiberglass insulation. Grace handed it up to me and I tossed it around in the attic.

This is what things looked like in the end. This is what 320 square feet of R38 fiberglass insulation looks like piled up in a heap. We will put it in its proper place next week. I'm itchy. I'm going to take a shower and then we are rewarding ourselves with a trip to the North Fork Beer Shrine with friends....

Ceiling drywall...

It was a miserable, rainy, windy, cold, typical northwest Washington fall day today. Until this point in our addition project, weather like this would mean not working on the addition at all. But those days are all in the past because now (insert drumroll here) - we are working inside! Today we got most of the ceiling drywalled!

I went to Lowes on Friday night and picked up 10 4x8 sheets of half inch drywall. I backed the van right up to the front walk so that we could get going right away this morning. We hauled the sheets in as we needed them so as not to overly clutter things up.

Here is a "before" shot. Grace and I are just about to heave the first sheet up to the ceiling.

After briefly trying to man-handle a 4x8 sheet of drywall up against the ceiling joists and then attach it, we remembered that the last time we had installed drywall on a ceiling we had two kids helping us. Since there were no children available to press into service, we called Westside Building Supply in Lynden and rented a drywall jack. It looks like a medieval torture device but in actuality, after fire and the wheel, it is the greatest thing ever invented... This sped things up considerably (as well as saving our backs and shoulders.)

The drywall jack was terrific. I will never drywall a ceiling without one again! Here it is in action. We just tacked the sheets up along their edges because we had to get the jack back to Lynden by 4 p.m.
Finally, the fruits of our labors. We left the two foot strip open because we've got to shove insulation up there yet. We figure we can finish off these smaller sections without the jack.
So, after months of seeming inactivity, we are back in "addition mode". Hopefully by the end of next week Saturday, we will have it insulated and the ceiling drywall completed.

heading into fall (again...)

Ok, so I'll admit it - there's a bit more to this whole "addition thing" than we realized when we committed to it. But, we're past the point of no return and so we soldier on. We're not discouraged or anything, we've just had to revamp our deadline goals to adjust to the realities of lack of time, motivation, skill, etc. Regardless, we consider ourselves to be "on track". (No smart alecky comments please...)

As you might have guessed from the lack of blog activity, we had kind of a slow summer.(Someone asked me a few weeks ago whether I'd been having any "additional thots" lately.) We actually got quite a bit done. It only seems like we haven't been doing much due to no blog posts. Also, most of the things we completed were things I had already written about as if they were done. (You'll remember we are fairly notorious for not getting things "all the way" done.)

Our rough electrical is finished and has passed inspection as has our rough plumbing. We timed it so that the inspections were done at the beginning of autumn. This way we have a full six months before another inspection is necessary. That's something we've learned since last year - we won't need an extension for our building permit when spring arrives.

Currently we are putting up insulation and beginning to ponder punching a doorway into our exisiting house so that the addition can be accessed from inside during the winter. Right now we get in through a piece of missing wall beside the front porch. It will seem weird to be able to get to the addition without going outside. This way we can get some of the inside work done during the course of the winter. On the negative side, this means mess getting tracked into the house...

There you have it. Things are moving right along.... slowly but surely...

Fence... totally done...

The fence is done and stained. Grace and the girls painted the bulk of it on Thursday; and Grace and I cut the posts to length and made caps for them on Friday.

Meanwhile back in the addition... We finished up a few details in the electrical department today, and set up a date for installing the rough plumbing.

it works!

Grace and I finished the business end of the fence this afternoon. I was going to finish it last week but a couple of things prevented me (even though I was on vacation). "Preventing thing" one was that Grace wasn't home; "preventing thing" two was that it was unbelievably hot last week. (I spent the bulk of the week down by the swimming hole drinking beer and reading.) Hannah helped me get some of it done last week but after eleven a.m. it was just too hot to be out there.

Today Hannah took a few pictures that not only show off our new fence but also demonstrate its functionality.

The important part about this first photograph is the background. It shows the fence keeping animals in (just like it's supposed to). But wait, these aren't just *any* animals - they're goats. Goats are the Harry Houdini's of the livestock world! Gwen (an adult mother goat) and two baby goats (whose names I don't know) are contentedly contained. That's almost miraculous! (That's me in the foreground...)

This next picture shows most of the completed fence. It's a little warpy but we just say we were going for "a rustic look." This picture also shows the fence preventing an unwanted animal from entering the pasture; in this case Norman. Granted he's not the brightest animal in all of God's creation but, just the same, our fence kept him outside.

Grace and the girls are hoping to stain the fence tomorrow and then I have to build a big gate; then we're done. (...and then we really should get busy on the addition again...)

New fence...

If there's one thing I've learned over the years of renovating and pretending to be a gentleman-farmer it is this - if you put up something "temporary" and it works for any length of time, it becomes permanent... Which brings us to today's topic -

When we moved in more than five years ago, we fenced off our horribly overgrown side yard. It was a veritable jungle of blackberries and six foot tall canary grass. We let the goats have a go at it for about a year and then we pulled up the fence posts and "temporarily" fenced off the true pasture. This spring our "temporary" fence finally gave out. Four years worth of sheep and goats pushing against the tired raspberry posts caused a number of them to snap off at ground level. We moved animals around and pounded in metal tee posts to hold things up "temporarily" but the shine wore off that rather quickly.

About two years ago Grace bought a bunch of surplus treated 4x4's from a local Habitat for Humanity project. She also bought a plethora of 12+ foot 1x6's from a now defunct lumber yard. We had all the materials we needed to proceed. Now we just needed to get motivated. Once the temperature climbed above 80 degrees on a daily basis we figured it was time to get out there and put up a new fence. (It would just be wrong to tackle a task like this under comfortable conditions...)

We de-stapled the old fence from its posts. We coaxed the few remaining unrotted posts out of the ground. (Surprisingly enough, they were back-breakingly solid...) We rented an auger and auged (that's right, I said "auged" - deal with it) our post holes. We fought over how the fence should look - level all the way across or parallel with the lay of the land? (We went with the "lay of the land" option.)
We went to the local gravel pit and filled our utility trailer with 5/8's crushed gravel to tamp around the posts. We ran a line so that we could get our permanent fence in a somewhat straight line. (We had "eyeballed" our "temporary" fence and apparently someone needs to get a stronger prescription for their glasses...) We got the posts all set in a fairly straight line and then proceeded to nail boards on after a brief discussion as to whether it should be a "three" or "four" rail fence. (Three.)

It's not quite done - but it's well on its way! We have it to the point where it will keep animals contained (with the exception of baby goats...)

(I seem to have packed on a few pounds...)

I'm going to start on some gates on Monday - and then our days of chasing animals all over the yard and stepping over the fence to get into the pasture will be behind us.

Progress report...

I noticed that it has been almost two months since I've posted anything about our addition endeavors. That's not because we haven't been doing anything - it's just because I haven't posted anything.

Here's what the exterior of the house looks like now. By carefully arranging the angle and strategically overlooking other things, we fixed it so that you might get the impression that we are all but done based on this shot.


It does look nice. We're very pleased with the way it's looking and truthfully there's not a whole lot more exterior-ish stuff to do. This is pretty much what it's going to look like when everything is finished. At least as far as the outside is concerned....

The inside is a different story. We framed up the interior walls, got the rough electrical done, we're starting on the rough plumbing, and have generally picked away at stuff. We're happy - we're not in a huge rush or anything.

The project is not as all consuming this summer - now that it's all enclosed we're taking a much more relaxed approach to things; which is nice.

Once we get the rough plumbing done we can have it inspected and then we move on to insulation and dry wall. Then it will look like we're really making progress! Stay tuned!

In honor of my distant relative Jan Vermeer

The Art of Painting by Jan Vermeer

I read somewhere that a lot of skills, dislikes/likes and other traits have a tendency to skip a generation. I think that's true and if so that would most definitely mean that I am part of an "off generation" as far as Vermeers and painting is concerned. Somehow I'm related to Jan Vermeer (at least that's what my dad told me - he might have lied) but there are few jobs I despise more than painting. Granted it might be different if I got to paint cool things like old JV did, but I sure hate painting houses...

The Drudgery of Painting by Al Vermeer

Paige helped me (but it was still awful). I had to do a reenactment for the picture since there were no photographers home when we mercifully ran out of paint. If you look closely at JV's painting (it's claimed to be a self-portrait of sorts) you can note that he and I share brush stroke techniques. Hey! Maybe I'm not part of an "off generation" after all!

Below you can see the final product. Unfortunately it's only the first coat - but the second one is going on with a roller.

New back door...

I don't know for certain but I'm quite sure that the previous owners of our house found the back door on a driving range - probably about 50 yards or so from the tees. It's ugly and pock marked with many, many dents and dings of varying depths. It is without a doubt the ugliest door ever made. It is a steel door - very secure, I suppose. It doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. There are no fake wood panels or anything else even the least bit appealing to the eye. I can't even describe the color - it's a nondescript greenish, whitish, beige-ish... It's basically a 3x7ish piece of steel... In retrospect, I can't believe we put up with the thing for as long as we did. If you think I'm exaggerating; check out the following picture:
Do you see how ugly that thing is? I don't know what that round thing is near the top. (The hippies who lived here before us had some kind of a yin/yang thing on there which never really came off...) You can also note that the bottom third of the door is somewhat discolored - that's from dogs sleeping against it. (I can't blame that one on the hippies...)

Where am I going with this? Well, if you didn't pick up on it from the title to this post, we got a new back door! New for us anyway. Good old craigslist came through for us again!

Today after work I took my trusty Milwaukee Sawzall and sliced the old door out of there. (We'll try to unload it on some unsuspecting hippies via craigslist.)

Once we had the old door out we realized that we didn't have any shims and so we lived without a back door for several hours while Grace went to Home Depot to get a pack of shims. When she got back it was fairly late but we were still relatively excited about getting the door installed. Our enthusiasm waned in a big way after about 20 minutes. We wedged the crooked, non-closable door shut and went to bed convinced that tomorrow would bring better things. It did! Voila!

I'll trim it up on Friday and then we can banish the memory of our driving range door forever.

So how's the addition coming along?

The title to this post is the question which we are most frequently asked these days. Short answer: The addition is coming along just fine. We haven't really worked on it for the last three months but it's coming along just fine.

Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of this blog. I was supposed to be chronicling the trials and tribulations of adding on to our home. As I quickly scanned the entries of the last year I noticed that by no means are all of them about the addition. Granted most of them are but not all. We've been doing a lot of other stuff too and that's kind of where we're at right now.

Last year our building project was pretty much all consuming; then the weather turned really lousy; then we got an extension on our building permit; (now the pressure is off for another six months); then when the weather got nice again we noticed that we had kind of let things slide around the place. We've been busy doing spring clean up kind of things. I recently found a fence that had disappeared under a tangle of blackberries. Grace discovered that our side yard was also being (re)consumed by them and she reclaimed it. We had cleared all of this stuff out when we moved in and it was beginning to revert to its "pre-Al&Grace" state. We also set up a fence after we discovered that lambs don't swim well. (Oh yeah, we also had lambs earlier in the spring.) I finally put up a curb using treated 4x6's so that Jesse's friends would be able to distinguish between lawn and driveway. (The first time one of them came over he ran over it and dug up the yard...)

We've done other things too. Things that don't even involve our property or house or barn... (We do have a bit of a life...) So that's the state of the blog at one year. Don't worry faithful readers (both of you) - more addition adventures are just around the corner!

Next up, interior framing! Then rough plumbing and electrical. It's going to be a fun summer.

Back to the addition...

Spring is officially here; and since that's the case we figured that we had better get going on the addition again. So today (even though it was only 32 degrees this morning), we repaired our torn and sagging Tyvek and installed some exterior siding. It felt good to work on the addition again - especially once it warmed up to over 50 in the afternoon. It's nice doing siding because you cover a lot of square feet in a relatively short period of time ( - makes it look like you've really accomplished a lot!) And so after a hiatus of almost four months, we present to you once again (insert drumroll) - the addition!

DANGER! DANGER!

If you are renovating/remodeling/adding on, I would suggest you stay away from places like this:

Throwing caution and good sense to the wind, Grace and I went to the 2009 Whatcom County Home & Garden Show last night. We had accomplished quite a bit during the day and since we're gluttons for punishment we figured for a night out we would go to the home show. It was pretty interesting. The place was full of vendors and exhibitors hawking goods and services of every kind. Thankfully, nothing really caught our eyes; so we're still on track with our original plans.... (Dodged that bullet...)

Next!

Having actually completed the bathroom in the suite, Grace and I were emboldened to finish something else. (No, not the addition (yet). Settle down!)

About two years ago we remodeled the bathroom in the house. We finished the bathroom itself but there was a small hallway that escaped our attention. Truth be told, it didn't so much escape our attention as we just grew accustomed to its not being done... We tackled that today.

Here's what it looked like when we started (and what it has looked like for a long time already.)

It's hard to capture the full extent of its unfinishedness since it is a tiny area. It's only about a 4x4 space; our photographer couldn't get the whole thing in one picture due to space constraints. I think these photographs are more than adequate for communicating its state of unfinishedness though.

Today Grace bought two sheets of drywall and a 2x4 and away we went. Even with just the drywall up the transformation is incredible! We've got to do a little mudding yet and install some flooring and then we're done. (Our photographer is gone for the night so maybe I will post more pictures tomorrow...)

Finished! (almost...)

We're so close to being done that I feel confident in posting about it... plus I notice I haven't posted at all in February - (but it's a very short month you know...)

Yes, it's true! Grace and I are almost done the bathroom in the suite. A little caulking, one more quick coat of paint and then towel holders, etc. and we're done! I'm sure we can get it all done tomorrow.

Today's big project was getting the toilet installed. It got a little more complicated since Grace found some flooring on craigslist on Thursday. I came home from work on Thursday to find Grace and Sara laying flooring. (Our original plan was to simply paint the floor. This looks a lot nicer - and it's warmer on the feet.) You can see the flooring in the pictures.

Back to the toilet... Grace picked it up a couple of weeks ago at The REStore . It sat outside and waited to be installed... and waited... That wasn't bad in and of itself. It was put to good use - as was the toilet we took out of the bathroom - observe:
But all good things must end and the toilet was installed today. I had replaced all of the innards beforehand so I figured it would be a quick job. Unfortunately, there was one part I hadn't replaced (the tank bolts) and it leaked like crazy... After a quick trip to the hardware store, all systems were go. The toilet was christened shortly thereafter - what a day of rejoicing and celebration!

Here are a couple of pictures. They show the flooring we got as well as the shower and toilet.

In the end, we managed to remodel our bathroom for well under $500. That's a pretty good deal if you ask me. Ya gotta love craigslist, the REStore and various other thrift stores!

...a diversion... (soon to be a life-long project!)

Every "Do-It-Yourself" home renovation book that I've read states that the bathroom is the most complex and time-consuming room to redo. There's the whole plumbing aspect (hooking up leak-free supply lines as well as positioning toilets and drains so that gravity is your friend). There's also electrical work that has to be done in such a way so that water and electricity can safely coexist in a small, confined space. All of this (and there's more) on top of the fact that the typical DIY'er is pressed for time and no one wants to be without a bathroom (even the second bathroom) for any length of time.

DIY books also mention that the difficulty is compounded exponentially if, in the course of your bathroom renovations, you want to rearrange your fixtures. Then you've got to deal with lining up supply and waste lines in such a way that they properly meet the fixtures you're installing. You've got to poke holes into floors and walls - and you can't always be too sure of what might be lurking on the other side...

In spite of what we had read, Grace and I have, over the course of our years in this house, undertaken three bathroom renovations. That's no mean feat, especially when you take into account that our home had only one and half bathrooms when we bought it... But wait, there's more. Not only are we presently engaged in our third bathroom renovation but every one of these projects has involved repositioning fixtures.

At this point you may well be asking, "Al, how do a couple of intrepid DIY sadists manage to undertake three bathroom renovations in a 1.5 bathroom home?" Well, I'm glad you asked; let me explain. When we moved in we had one full bathroom (about the size of the lavatory on a DC-10) and we had a room (minus one wall) in the suite with ugly, mismatched plumbing fixtures (a pink sink, green toilet and white claw foot tub with enamel chipping off it.) We got a "new" tub, throne and sink from a contractor friend; installed them in exactly the opposite places that the existing tub, throne and sink were; built a wall and called it good. Then we remodeled the bathroom in the house. We expanded the room by about 18 inches; removed the existing fixtures - installed a new tub/shower, sink and toilet (again, in brand new positions) and called it good. Then we realized how much fun we had redoing the bathroom in the suite so we thought we would do it one more time - and that brings us to the present. Now we can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel with regard to our latest (but I guess I shouldn't say "last") bathroom project...

Water, water (pretty much) everywhere....

Not much has happened on the home renovation front of late due to a number of circumstances.

We had the massive wind storm which tore the Tyvek off the addition; then it got bitterly cold and it snowed like crazy. (This was not just "northwest Washington snowed like crazy" this was the real deal.) We had three vehicles stuck on Christmas Day - two on Heron Lane and one in the neighbor's driveway. We got everything unstuck and prepared to hunker down and wait it out. Then the furnace went belly up on us; it got down to 30 degrees in the house at one point. Thankfully the pipes didn't freeze. Now it's warmed up; the rain has returned (with a vengeance) and we are dealing with this...

These pictures were taken from the same vantage point two weeks apart... Our pasture is on the right - a good portion of it was overwhelmed by the creek. In the summer Johnson Creek is quite a bit smaller even than the "before" picture.

Here you see Grace and Jesse surveying the "creek". Generally it is about a 12 foot drop from the bottom of the bridge to the surface of the water; water is touching the bottom of the bridge in this picture. That's a lotta water folks! You can see our barn, cars and house in the background.

As to our "diversion", we've made some progress - even to the point of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We managed to get the shower seated properly with the drain hooked up and water flowing to it. (That was a bit of nightmare; but it's done now...)

Here's the cupboard. The counter top and sink are next on the agenda...