Additional Thots

Deck's done...

2010-09-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

Other than making a few steps (which I might do tomorrow), the deck is finished!

I put the roof on it today. Grace and I picked up some smoke tinted panels at Lowes on Wednesday night. (It was quite an adventure securing those twelve foot panels to the top of the van and then driving home.... Thankfully, it wasn't a windy evening.)

When we got up this morning it looked like rain. The weatherman promised buckets full of rain too. I was all ready to see how many panels I could get up before the rain hit when I noticed that we hadn't bought any fasteners... I had to go to Nooksack Valley Building Center to get screws. By 8:30, I was up on my ladder and roofing like there was no tomorrow. I kept thinking, "This will be the last panel before the rain hits..." and then I'd do another panel. By 11 o'clock I ran out of screws (the project was a little more "screw intensive" than I had figured...) I went back to NVBC to get screws, found my screws, realized that I didn't have my wallet with me... stopped at the middle school to leave a note for Grace to go to NVBC in order to pay for the screws... and then, back up my ladder...

By the afternoon, the weather had actually cleared up. I didn't know how good I had it with the cloudiness and the cool temperatures... The wind started to pick up a bit and it made handling the panels a little tricky. I was just starting the last one (which I really couldn't have done by myself) when Grace came home. We got the last panel up (I actually had to make one more "screw run" to Valley Plumbing - for four screws!) and suddenly, we were done.

And, this is what it looks like:

Funny story: Norman, who you see in the picture, always insists on being underfoot when we work outside. Three times, I stepped on him as I came down the ladder. Once, he was all sprawled out under my ladder when the ladder buckled and fell on him. As I was hanging from the rafters, trying to figure out how to drop down without hitting the collapsed ladder, Norman looks up at me and proceeds to lay down directly underneath me... I got down without squashing Norman.

Deck update

2010-09-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

We're back!

We finally got a stretch of half decent weather that coincided with a weekend so we could work on the deck. We weren't really expecting to since the weatherman promised us lousy weather but when we woke up this morning it was gorgeous. Grace went to Lynden and rented a belt sander and then I sanded... and sanded... and sanded...
Sanding was pretty horrible. The picture shows me sanding where I could at least stand up. Once I moved closer to the house I had to crawl around. Every now and again, I wouldn't pay attention and suddenly the sander would take off on me....

When the sanding portion of the job was done we were ready to apply the stain (which Grace also picked up this morning.) We were very pleased with the results. Here's a before and after picture.

Before

After

(note the high security string for keeping Norman off the deck -

it worked as long as we were there to yell at him...)

Next week we hope to put the roof on and then we hope for just a few nice days so that we can enjoy our deck a bit this year yet...

Deck and gosling update...

2010-07-28T12:17:00.001-07:00

Since the pictures uploaded in this order we will deal with matters pertaining to goslings first...

The picture below shows the size of our goslings as of Sunday, July 25... We managed to grab them since they had found a way out of their pasture but neither Woody nor Hovander had (yet). As soon as Paige and I corralled their off-spring the incredibly upset parents were well on their way to breaking down the fence to kill us.

But I digress.... As you can see they have grown quite a bit since the last pictures that I posted. They are in the goose equivalent of their "awkward adolescent years". No feathers, just furry pseudo-feathers. They don't honk, just peep. In the poop department though they seem pretty grown up... The whole family still gets out on a regular basis so our yard and driveway are a mess.

Below you can see our deck progress to date... I am "on vacation" this week and so I have lots of time to devote to the project. Grace, on the other hand, is teaching summer school and so she can only help in the afternoons and evenings. It's going well and we should have the bulk of it done by the end of the weekend. (The picture also shows the window I replaced a few weeks ago...)

Deck progress and goose family update

2010-06-19T18:19:00.001-07:00

The new deck is coming right along. We spent our weekend digging holes for footings, setting our footings/deck blocks and then pouring cement for the piers that will support the deck. This is a picture of our progress to date.
On the goose front, things seem to be going well too. Woody and Hovander continue to be stellar, over-protective parents. (I pity any creature that decides to mess with their family...) They got out of their pasture yesterday and I managed to get close enough to take a family portrait. (Hovander's on the left; Woody's on the right; goslings are wedged between mom and dad.)

woody, hovander and the kids...

2010-06-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday we were surprised to find that Hovander, a goose that we've had for almost 15 years, hatched out a couple of goslings. She had been sitting on eggs for a number of weeks. She does this every year. If it's not eggs, its anything remotely roundish that she can find to sit on. Last year we found a gander and put them in a pen together. It certainly wasn't love at first sight - as a matter of fact, it seemed like they hated each other with passions that only geese can evoke... but apparently they got along better than we realized...

Hovander had made her nest in a corner of the barn. There was a pile of straw and some feathers but no food source of any kind. We didn't really know what to do about getting those little ones some food especially since Hovander would hiss like a demon and charge at us with outstretched wings if we came within 10 feet of her goslings.

This morning I went to the barn and she was by the sliding door with her babies. I left the door open and she wandered out. She attacked our overly amorous drake and hissed like mad at Norman but once everyone learned to stay away from the little flock it was OK. Eventually she stood in front of Woody's pen (he's the father) and called to him. He came and stood by the gate and once the coast was somewhat clear, Sara opened the gate, ran for her life and this is what we witnessed....

Woody had never seen his offspring before and we didn't know what to expect. Initially it looks like Woody is just happy to be out of his pasture and is thinking of going out with the boys. But Hovander calls him back and seems to tell him that it's his turn to watch the kids for a while. He watched them as closely as Hovander did and she had a few minutes to go for a swim in the big puddle on the driveway. It was pretty amazing to watch the instinctual parenting skills of those two birds - people could learn a lot from a couple of geese...

Why we took the deck off (needlessly...)

2010-06-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

One of the main reasons we decided it was time to do something about our back deck was because we discovered that we had a leak in our main water supply line to the house. The line ran right under the deck and we figured it would be a lot easier to dig it up if the deck weren't in the way. Well, as you know, last week we tore the deck off and so all that remained to be done in terms of preparation for rebuilding the deck was replacing the water line. Jesse had done some major preliminary digging last weekend and yesterday I got down to business.

Right off the bat I made a major discovery. After digging just a little bit more I found out that our problem was not the line itself but a coupling in the line. I figured that it would be a simple matter of splicing a chunk of 3/4 inch water line on to the existing line. Then I found out that the splice I needed to replace was directly under the 4 inch black ABS line that whisked sewage from the suite to wherever that stuff ends up. I went to the hardware store, got the parts I needed and got to work. I had to dig it out a little more in order to get the room I needed to finagle everything in. After digging, I found out that I didn't need the parts that I had picked up. It turns out I needed a "T" since whoever installed the sewage line figured that they would save time and labor by running the supply line to the suite directly under the 4 inch transport line. Back to the hardware store... Then the old "T" broke off in the pipe.... Grrr! Did I mention that I had to do a lot of this in the rain? I did. It took me all day but I got it done.

So in the end, it was pretty much unnecessary for us to tear off the back deck.... Now, of course, we have to do something back there. At least the water feature in the backyard is gone. Our ducks don't like that but we do.

This is how I spent my Friday.

This is what I looked like when I was done.

(You can tell everything worked because I'm smiling...)

progress report...

2010-05-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

We had a long day today. Thankfully Jesse and Yuseph helped out. The weather was perfect - too lousy to do anything fun but not lousy enough to keep us from working.... I'm tired and dirty so I'll let the pictures tell the story.
This is the part where I broke a window. I didn't break it with the wrecking bar; I broke it with my shoulder. It's a long story...

This is the part where Jesse almost got crushed by the roof of the deck falling down. Yuseph is propping up his section but something slipped. It's a long story...

OK, this is the part where we almost destroyed the suite. We finally got the roof to fall in the right direction (at first) and then it snagged on something, changed trajectories and grazed the storm door of the suite on its way down. (Thankfully this blog doesn't have a soundtrack...)
It's a long story...

And this is what everything looks like right now. We've made some progress; we've still got Monday.

our next project...

2010-05-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

We've taken a month off; we've pretty much cleaned everything up from our bedroom addition project; the Memorial Day weekend is upon us - all signs are indicating that it's time we started on something new.

Here it is:

When I see our deck in pictures it looks worse than in real life - but it does need work. So much work that we're going to tear it off and build a new one. The new one will be lower - no railing - and somewhat smaller. We use the deck a lot and are looking forward to it being even more serviceable. (We will also replace the window back there - it's the last window in the house that needs replacing...)

We'll see how long this takes us. We'd like to be able to use our new deck before the summer's over - time will tell...

Moved in

2010-05-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

We're all moved in to our new room! We'll be sleeping there tonight. Over the years, we've slept in the house for about thirty nights and always on a "temporary" basis. It will seem strange not to be living out in the mother-in-law suite anymore but we are looking forward to seeing what it's like to live in the actual house.

On to the next project.

I mentioned a while ago that the electricity to the barn was out. Fixing it had been on hold during the final push to complete our bedroom but now that is done so away we went.

On Friday a friend of mine and I began to dig a trench to get power out to the barn. (I have repaired my original wiring too many times to bother with it again.) The trench is finished (except for the fun "under the driveway" part), so next weekend I will get some wire and some conduit and relight my barn/shop.

This isn't even our next big project. This is just something that was waiting to get done while we finished off the addition. Once we get a few more of these "been waiting" things out of the way, we'll tackle our next big thing...

Finished!

2010-04-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

We are officially done the construction portion of our addition project! We passed our occupancy inspection on Wednesday and since then we have been starting the clean-up/moving in phase. To say the we are very pleased with the way things turned out would be an understatement. It took us nearly two years but we are finished!

Here are some pictures of the relatively cleaned up; very partially furnished room.

From the northeast corner-

From the southwest corner (the doorway)-

...and two shots of the bathroom -

so close...

2010-04-09T08:57:00.000-07:00

Almost there... I took three days off work while Grace was on spring break. I'll post some pictures and give a detailed update soon.

Fence (July 25, 2009 - March 13, 2010)

2010-03-13T11:45:00.000-08:00

Well it only took about eight months but our pasture fence is finally done. It was "mostly done" by the end of August 2009. The one thing that still needed to be done was figure out how we were going fill in the twelve foot gap that was meant for a gate. We had considered several options but never committed to anything. I was going to build one but it would be incredibly heavy. We were going to buy one but it would be incredibly expensive.

In the end we came up with a fairly novel solution. The first eight feet is a removable panel that slides into the end post and it's anchored into a cement deck support on the other. Then the last four feet is a gate. We rarely need a twelve foot opening and when we do we can remove the panel and open the gate. So that's done now.

I've also hung the bathroom door in the addition. I think I'll take it down and try once more since it doesn't really close now... (This is why I decided to work on the gate today...)

Next...

2010-03-06T17:48:00.000-08:00

Friday night we went to the Home Show in Lynden. We survived unscathed - thankfully we're too far along in our project now to make any major changes. We did come up with some more ideas for our next project(s) though. We enjoyed it and it was nice to get out after a couple of very productive and busy days.

Saturday found us running around Abbotsford and Bellingham. We were at the Abbotsford Home Depot at 7:30 a.m. because the ceiling fan that we bought at the Port Coquitlam Home Depot on Wednesday night didn't have the installation instructions with it. The fine folks at the Abbotsford HD opened up a box and gave us the directions. We also picked up some more trim and all of our electrical supplies there.

We were back home by 9:30. We unloaded the van and then headed to Bellingham. We went to the Bellingham Auto Auction for a little while. We didn't buy anything but had to leave when it became impossible for us to keep our hands down... Then we went to the ReStore, Home Depot and the Buyer's Market. We came home with a door for the bathroom and a folding door for the closet, also another gallon of white paint for trim (aka "next weekend's projects".) By the time we got home we didn't feel like working in the addition and ended up mowing the lawn for the first time this year.

Bedroom floor (part 2)

2010-03-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

Floor's in; looks good - moving on...

Bedroom floor (part 1)

2010-03-04T21:25:00.000-08:00

Today we undertook to get a proper floor in our new bedroom. Grace and I both had today and Friday off; she had picked up some laminate flooring last week and so there was nothing left to do but install it. There was actually something fairly important to do prior to installing the flooring. We had to find the subfloor. Witness the picture below. That's not a set up shot. That's several months' accumulation of tools, supplies, etc. which we never really quite cleaned up.
After several hours things looked like this. That's the subfloor. We hadn't seen it for a long time. It had lots of blobs of drywall mud and mounds of concentrated paint all over. After chipping and scraping for a long time we got things to the point where we could lay our flooring down properly.
We actually managed to put the bulk of the floor in today. I don't have any pictures yet but it looks great!

Bathroom

2010-02-27T19:56:00.001-08:00

It seems like the bulk of our time is going to be dedicated to completing the bathroom. This weekend was no exception. On Friday morning, the bathroom looked like this:

You can't tell on the "before" picture but there's no paneling on the walls. I also made a pony wall to support the side of the tub. I also finished the crown molding and Grace painted it and the window trim. I had to wire in the outlet for the tub and the timer too. Here are the "after" pictures.

Grace picked up flooring for the main room today. She and I are both off on Thursday and Friday, so we should have the floor in by next weekend!

Bathroom floor

2010-02-20T13:48:00.000-08:00

As we inch ever so slowly toward the completion of this project we hit another milestone today. We put down flooring in the bathroom. I had prepped the subfloor yesterday (chipped off spilled blobs of drywall mud and paint, sanded, scrubbed it clean) and early this morning I put a coat of primer on it. By noon we were laying tiles and by two o'clock the floor was in. Next comes the wainscoting on the lower walls and then the fixtures.

Before

After

Trimming windows

2010-02-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

I started trimming windows on Friday morning. I suffered a setback when I discovered that the manufacturers of the tape measure I was using were unfamiliar with the imperial system of measurement. (Apparently they had never heard of the metric system either.) Once I figured out how to convert drevnergysies into inches I was on my way. Unfortunately I had already cut up quite a bit of trim by that time. The sum total of my efforts for Friday - one window trimmed up and a lot of kindling for the wood stove.

Today went better. I found a real, American-made tape measure and got the rest of them trimmed up in no time at all.

I remember when we renovated our living room many years ago that it seemed like we were getting nowhere until we trimmed the windows and suddenly it looked as if we were almost finished. And then it was only a short six months or so before we were done... We should be able to do better with the addition. Time will tell.

Trim, Tub surround

2010-02-06T17:00:00.001-08:00

My Friday was spent installing trim in the addition. I got started in the morning and Grace helped me finish it up when she got home from work in the afternoon. After dinner we headed to Home Depot for supplies for Saturday's project. When we got back from Home Depot I caulked until midnight so that it would be ready for touch-up paint next week. We are very pleased with the way it turned out and are looking forward to trimming up the windows soon.
The reason for the above mentioned trip to Home Depot was to purchase materials for the tub surround. It's expensive stuff. We almost made a very costly mistake during installation but we figured out a way in which a three dollar piece of trim will hide a potentially hundred dollar blunder. The surround turned out great too. It still needs to be caulked and trimmed but it's starting to come together.

Painting

2010-01-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

We painted today. Grace had been applying primer and painting the ceiling white over the course of the week, but today we painted the bedroom walls. It's only the first coat but it looks good. (Best part - it only took about an hour and now we can't do anything else in there for the rest of the weekend!)

One important thing that we learned was that high quality paint significantly reduces the quantity of paint that you need. We bought five gallons of paint and we finished the closet and bedroom walls with only one gallon (and the first coat takes more paint than the second.) So if anyone out there needs two, possibly three, gallons of Behr paint for cheap let us know. It's a neat color (the picture doesn't really do it justice). It's called "Toasted Almond" which, of course, tells no one anything about what color it actually is but that's what it's called. We thought that since we love both toast and almonds that this color would be great.

Texturing

2010-01-16T13:43:00.001-08:00

The texturing of the bedroom and closet is finished! In spite of what the pictures seem to imply, the bulk of it was done by someone else. A friend from work came over yesterday and textured the whole closet and the bedroom walls, but then we ran out of texture (and we came dangerously close to running out of beer since another friend from work came over too...). We finished off the ceiling this morning and it looks great. The look we went for was a favorite of ours, the ever popular "however it came out" and we nailed it!

The bathroom wasn't quite ready so we hope to finish that early next week.

Here's a picture of Grace scraping the last of the mud into the hopper. We mixed just enough to do the ceiling.

And here's one of me spraying the stuff on to the ceiling.
Kind of a cool process...

Sanding

2010-01-08T16:41:00.000-08:00

I spent the day sanding drywall. Every square inch of me has a layer of drywall dust on it. My arms are about ready to fall off. (We used quick-set, super hardening mud on the ceiling - very durable, very difficult to sand...). Grace will put a final finish coat on tomorrow, then one more "quick sanding" and then we hope to texture next Friday.

Daniel McGinn

2010-01-04T17:34:00.000-08:00

Daniel McGinn is the author of a disturbingly entertaining book about all things relating to real estate. He's a journalist for Newsweek. The book isn't particularly scholarly but it's not fiction either. If you watch more than two real estate shows on HGTV per week, or if you have ever gone to a real estate open house with absolutely no intention of buying, or if you compulsively grab the free real estate listing books at the grocery store - you should read this book.

Surprise!

2009-12-26T13:15:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-18T12:32:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-11-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-11-20T18:39:00.000-08:00

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...)

2009-11-14T15:57:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-11T21:29:00.001-08:00

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...

2009-10-31T16:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-24T15:43:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-10-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

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...)

2009-10-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-08-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-03T21:49:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-07-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-07-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-04-28T20:16:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-04-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-03-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-03-07T12:44:00.001-08:00

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!

2009-03-06T17:00:00.000-08:00

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...)

2009-02-27T16:23:00.000-08:00

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!)

2009-01-31T14:59:00.000-08:00

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....

2009-01-10T10:43:00.001-08:00

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...

a setback...

2008-12-17T19:40:00.001-08:00

Pictured below is the result of a ridiculously strong, bitterly cold northeast wind meeting with a partially sided addition... We kind of watched it happen but it was WAY too cold and windy to do anything about it. There are sections of Tyvek in the neighbor's pasture too... We'll fix it once the weather gets a little more cooperative. The weatherman says what we've got happening now weatherwise (cold, snowy, blowy) is supposed to continue until after Christmas.

The extreme coldness and shortness of daylight is also affecting progress on our "diversion" - not a whole lot has been accomplished. The weather is more suited to hibernation than construction...

a diversion (continued...)

2008-11-28T12:07:00.000-08:00

I fear this "diversion" might eat up our winter... Be that as it may, we managed to shoe horn the shower stall into the suite bathroom this morning. If you look closely at the shower stall you can see the reflection of the window we had to remove and replace. We did it. We had less than an inch of wiggle room. Oh, in case you were wondering why we have no pictures of the window removal, shower stall shoving, etc. - it is due to the fact that our photographers were out Black Friday shopping. They arrived home just as we were finishing up... Coincidence? I think not!

Next item on the agenda - rerouting plumbing, then rerouting electricity. I hope to hit Home Depot in Abbotsford tonight to get the necessary supplies.

a diversion...

2008-11-27T12:16:00.000-08:00

You know of course that part of the addition involves a bathroom... I desperately wanted to put our jetted tub into said bathroom. That involved doing the following to the bathroom in the suite...
You are looking through the doorway to where the sink and vanity used to be. In the back corner there was a cupboard for linens, toiletries and various sundries.... Did you notice how the doorway is actually "doorway plus"? (There are a couple of feet of extra wall taken out of the bottom so that we could get the bathtub out of there...)

As you can see we didn't take the toilet out.... Beside the toilet is where the tub used to be...

Grace found a cheap, new shower stall on Craig's List with the hardware and everything. It's a nice big one - 36x36! We figured out that we would be able to get it into the bathroom since we already had to 'expand' the door opening..... Yeah, we can get it into the bathroom all right - the problem is we can't get it into the suite in the first place! The suite has two doorways - neither of which will allow the ingress of a 36x36 shower! But wait; all is not lost! Observe below:

If we take this window out and remove a few pieces of 2x4 we should be able to fit the shower stall into the suite. That's tomorrow's project...

All of this trouble and work for this:

more siding (horizontal...)

2008-11-13T17:32:00.001-08:00

I was going to take Monday (Nov. 10) off so that we could put some siding up - the kids didn't have school and we figured we could get some work out of them... Unfortunately Monday morning looked pretty menacing (like every other day for the past two weeks) so I went to work. Even more unfortunate was the fact that once I got to work the weather cleared up and it turned into a surprisingly pleasant "would-have-been-a-good-day-to-work-outside" day. Well, Grace and the kids did anyway - actually just Grace and Jesse and his girlfriend, Lisa. (Thanks, Lisa!) They managed to get all of the bottom siding on. Grace painted it today. (It looks stripey in the picture but that's because she hasn't painted the little channels yet. (I couldn't live in a stripey house...) They're painted now. Looks nice!)

Siding (part one)

2008-11-01T12:12:00.000-07:00

Grace went to Builder's Alliance the other day and ordered all of the siding we'll need for the addition. To match our existing siding we got 16 foot and 20 foot lengths of cedar channel siding for the bottom four feet and then 4x8 sheets of Hardy siding for the top. We're glad that Builder's Alliance delivers for free (I think they're getting sick of having to drive all the way to our place with partial loads though...)

The cedar siding has to be primed on both sides before it's installed so we laid the 16 foot long pieces out in the addition and the 20 foot long pieces out in the barn and started painting. Kind of a pain. It worked out all right except that Riley and Norman walked all over the pieces in the barn with muddy paws.... (Thankfully it was before I had any primer on them.) They do take forever to dry though so it will be next week before we are installing siding.

Windows!

2008-10-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

We installed four windows this afternoon- two on the east side, one on the north and one (the bathroom) on the west. Grace picked them up yesterday along with a few other supplies we needed so once I got home from work we were good to go. Below you see Grace preparing one of the rough openings for a window. The black stuff (with GRACE embossed on it) is rubberized adhesive flashing. The bottom picture shows me nailing the window to the house while Grace and Jesse are holding it in place on the inside. It actually went very quickly and smoothly - which made for a nice afternoon but not such an interesting blog post.

One of the miracles of science...

2008-10-22T18:59:00.001-07:00

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it with my own two eyes but Tyvek HomeWrap by DuPont is one of "the miracles of science". Wow! Now that may or may not be the case but I can tell you that the stuff is a pain in the neck to wrap a house with if your stapler decides not to cooperate... It's slippery and unwieldy. The mad scientists at DuPont cut it to a length which puts the top just out of arm's reach but it's not tall enough to cover the whole side in one pass... Oh well, least it's done (mostly...)

There's Norman "helping" me....

And here are the windows which we hope to be installing before the end of the week.

I guess we would have to admit that we've been a little lax regarding working on the addition lately. Getting a roof on the thing really took a lot of pressure off - maybe a little too much... We have done some stuff - we rerouted the furnace exhaust (which had been venting into Jesse's bedroom - thankfully, we caught that before we ran the furnace (too much...)), Grace also drew out all of the interior walls as well as bathroom fixtures and our bedroom furniture on the floor using sidewalk chalk (- kind of cool to see...)

Next time I hope to show you windows - installed!!!

Let it rain...

2008-10-06T16:38:00.001-07:00

...because we've got a weather-tight roof on our addition!

The roofers came this morning at 9 a.m. and by 4 p.m. they had accomplished more than Grace and I could have done in two weeks - added bonus: no worries for Grace and no "additional" strain on our marriage. Yay!

Roof sheathing inspection

2008-10-03T22:52:00.001-07:00

We passed our inspection today! That means we can put shingles on the roof next week - (or rather, pay to have someone else do it...) Then things can dry up and we can get busy doing "inside" work - i.e. plumbing and electrical. I think we'll take a bit of a breather this weekend and plot out a plan of attack.

Pictures from last Saturday...

2008-10-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures of what we accomplished last Saturday morning. I didn't get a chance to post them due to the fact that we were only supposed to work until about 10 o'clock and we ended up working until well past noon. (I had to catch a plane to Ontario at 2...)

We were putting fascia boards up on the gable ends. Sounds simple enough doesn't it? Ominous as that sounds, it actually did go fairly smoothly. Below you see Jesse cutting the boards - and the next shot is Jesse and I nailing it on to the barge rafter. We also shored up a few things and checked to make sure we had enough nails in everywhere to satisfy the building inspector.

As you can see I had to straddle the peak of the roof to properly position the fascia board. (Not so comfortable...)

I could have put another picture of Grace with her "worried about people falling" face on, but you can just go back a few posts and look at some old pictures. On Saturday, Grace said to me (and I quote): "I'll be glad when none of my loved ones have to climb up on things anymore."

We're still at it...

2008-09-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

We're still working on the addition. We've been plugging away one or two hours at a time every now and again when we can squeeze it in. If nothing else, this whole process is teaching us patience... We're almost ready for our next inspection after which we can get shingles on the roof and house wrap around the exterior walls. Our photographer is at a soccer game tonight - hopefully I can post a picture tomorrow (or the next day....)

More roofage...

2008-09-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

When I came home from work; I was greeted by this beautiful sight!Sara and Jesse were up on the roof nailing up the last full sheets of OSB. That means we only have to cut a few more pieces to weird shapes to finish up the roof and then we can call for an inspection! Assuming we pass, we can then shingle the roof (hiring it out...) and wrap the exterior walls in house-wrap. Then it can rain all it wants because our addition will be protected from the weather.

By the way, if you were wondering what Grace was doing while the kids were up on the roof - she was on the ground, telling them to be careful...

Roof to roof

2008-09-06T19:18:00.000-07:00

Guess what we did today... Worked on the addition; what did you expect?

We hit a tricky spot today. We had to figure out how to attach the existing house roof to the addition's roof. I think we did OK. We only did the side of the house that no one will ever see - we decided that this was the area we would practice on and once we were good at it and knew what we were doing we would do the same thing in a more visible, public spot. It involved cutting a little more of the old roof off so I was up there with my trusty reciprocating saw again - I got all of the cutting done without any unpleasantness - which was good in one way but it makes for a fairly dull blog post. The picture below shows the fascia board connected to the old fascia board (height-wise it is a perfect match!) I'm getting ready to nail the last of the rafter tails on. Hannah was helping me. (On a side note, I had to take her ladder away once she got up into the rafters; then, just after this picture was taken, Grace came home and I went to visit with her while completely forgetting that Hannah was stuck on the roof... She eventually climbed to the peak of the house, took some pictures and yelled for someone to get her a ladder. Someone did.)

Here is a picture that Hannah took while she was stuck up on the roof. It gives a pretty good indication of our roofing progress to date.

We have been blessed with beautiful weather this past week - we could work on our project for a few hours every night after work. By Thursday, I was missing the rain if only to get some time off.

Someone stopped by today and remarked how quick things were going. Everyone was outside and everyone laughed... Actually we've only been working at the construction phase for a couple of months so I suppose we can't complain. (We still do...)

Finally - the roof!

2008-09-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

This picture requires more of an explanation than I am prepared to give right now. Suffice it to say I have a vast amount of respect for those who put sheets of OSB on house frames for a living...

With a lot of help (Grace, Jesse, Sara, Hannah, Lisa), we eventually got things as roofed as is possible for the time being. (We did some yesterday too...) Actually we can still cover the "tail sections"... tomorrow....

Labor Day

2008-09-01T19:09:00.001-07:00

Labor Day (also Grace's birthday)... We managed to get 12 feet worth of fascia board attached on both sides of the addition today. We had finished the tails and gotten them attached earlier in the week. With the fascia boards on we can begin to put the actual roof covering on the thing which will be a great relief given the rains of Noahic proportions we've been having lately.

We only worked for the morning since Grace had to work and the rest of us went to a church picnic. Still it seemed to be a productive day. We've got to figure out how we're going to finagle a greek return out of this thing yet - I'm pretty sure that's going to take some doing...

Below, for your viewing pleasure, are photos of us installing the fascia board.

Another funny picture

2008-08-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

I was just scrolling through the zillions of pictures that have chronicled our endeavors thus far and I came across this one... By the way, Hannah takes the bulk of the pictures you see in here; Sara takes a few too.
This was taken on Monday afternoon, that's one of our barge rafters that everyone's clinging to - Paige is bored, Grace is hanging on for dear life, I'm trying to hammer in a nail and Sara is just fooling around... Hannah took the picture - I don't know where Jesse is... At least Norman hasn't shown up in too many of the roof pictures!

Today, Grace and I put the rafter tails on the east side. (Mr. T. came by on Tuesday and showed us how to do it.) I was told that by the time we were done it was too dark for pictures - but I suspect laziness... You'll just have to take my word for it until we have photographic proof.

A story in pictures...

2008-08-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

In honor of my brother - who made a wildly inappropriate comment regarding Saturday's post - tonight's installment comes to you in the form of a story in pictures.

What is Grace so concerned about?

That doesn't look too dangerous or scary....

Wait a minute - back up a bit.....

Oh, I see......

I do my own stunts folks! It's all smoke and mirrors. Although I could never convince Grace of it, it wasn't really all that precarious. The only danger was to my rear end which sustained a couple of wedge shaped indentations - one on the left cheek, one on the right. (Sorry, no pictures...)

We have safely installed our barge rafter (that's the one that sticks out beyond the wall - it's two feet out.) A ladder of lookouts supports it - and gave me something to climb and sit on...

...and so on...

2008-08-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of us getting the last of the sheathing on to the gable wall of the addition. It was kind of a long way up and the 4x8 sheets were kind of awkward so we conscripted Sara and Paige to help. As you can see, the weather was beautiful. This shot shows us waiting for Grace to tie lines to either end of the sheet so that we could pull it up, then I would lean out and stick a couple of nails in it in order to hold it in place.

The next shot shows the sheet in place and I am slipping the line off of one side prior to nailing. If you look closely you can see a bunch of hands holding the sheet up.
We got the whole gable end covered and after Grace went to work I trimmed the sheets to size with the reciprocating saw. It looks good.

Next week we tackle the roof.

On a side note, Erin came over today and remarked that the addition looked way better in real life than on the internet...

...and so on...

2008-08-22T20:58:00.001-07:00

It didn't rain today. That might not seem amazing to you people who are so blessed as to live in an area where it doesn't rain an average of 372 days per year but it was a welcome relief for us. Actually we've been doing OK weather-wise but it seems like we haven't been able to sync 'time to work' with 'not raining' too often lately. So since today was dry Jesse and Grace finished the gable end wall and began sheathing it. When I got home from work I just had time to make a few cuts with the circular saw and then it was time to eat and then it was too dark to do anything. Here's hoping for nice weather tomorrow - maybe we can get some cover on that roof skeleton.

Below is a picture of Jesse posing by his handiwork.

Back at it again...

2008-08-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

It's seriously been two weeks since we've done anything at all on the addition. It wasn't because we had given up or were sick of it (although I think it was a nice break...). The reason it's been so long is due to the Northwest Washington Fair. The last part of the week of the 3rd was spent preparing for the fair, and the week of the 10th was the actual fair. Now we are all faired out and ready to get going again.

We figured we should kind of ease into it again so we revisited the gable end of the addition and tried to finish the stud wall there. Hannah took this picture pretty early on in the going so nothing has actually been accomplished; I think we are still in the (mis)measuring stage - but things went well.
We've still got our sweet construction skills. One kind of ominous thing I did notice though was that there are fewer hours between getting home from work and it becoming somewhat dark... No pressure...

Vacation (last day - really...)

2008-08-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

I took one last day off thinking we could really push it and get a lot accomplished - I was wrong. I think we're starting to suffer from a slight case of 'addition burn-out' (plus it was ridiculously hot today.) I managed to get four short studs installed in the gable end today. That was pretty much it. It doesn't even warrant a picture since the changes were pretty miniscule. I'm almost looking forward to just plugging away on the addition for a few hours after work every night again...

Vacation (reprise)

2008-08-04T21:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm not technically on vacation - but I'm not at work either (I have my boss's blessing to work on the house. Tomorrow too!) We have to get this addition enclosed before too long.

We were barely started this morning when who should show up but Mr. T! Yay! Mr. T. saved us a world of grief in the short span of two hours. He figured out all of the angles, etc. necessary for making our new roof join with our old roof. Never in one million years could we have figured that out. He used his speed square magic again. I wanted to get a picture of him using that thing but apparently flash photography is strictly forbidden during the speed square magic process. I guess the carpenter's guild doesn't want the hoi polloi to horn in on their racket...

Anyway, Mr. T. figured it all out. Grace and I are both pretty sure that he saved our marriage. Thanks, Mr. T! Below is Mr. T. in action. He let me hold the dumb end of the chalk line as well as the dumb end of the tape measure a couple of times... Once Mr. T. left Grace and I got to work. We did some blocking and collar ties. By day's end we had a good feeling about things. It's nice to finish the day feeling fairly confident that tomorrow you won't have to rip down and tear up everything you've done! Below is the end result of today's work.

Vacation (day 6)

2008-08-02T22:30:00.000-07:00

Back on track.... Mr. T came out this morning and showed us how to figure out all of the angles, etc. for our rafters. Actually, he didn't show us how to do it, he pretty much did it for us - even better! (On Friday we made kindling and scraps out of several 12 foot 2x6's.) Oh, we also had the pitch of the roof wrong - Mr. T fixed that too. He did all of the this with a speed square, which apparently is the most amazing invention since fire. I've owned one for years - all I can do with it is make straight lines for cutting...

We managed to get all of the rafters up and it's starting to look like an actual house now!

I was starting to get kind of sick of the whole process. I wanted to call it a day way earlier than Grace did. Then she cranked up her womanly charms and enticed me to keep on working. Come on... you know what I'm talking about.... That's right. She let me buy some new tools! I got a couple of pneumatic nailers - a little palm one (which is a zillion times handier than I thought it was going to be) and a big, burly Bostitch (I'm pretty sure that it can spit out railway spikes!) Now I can keep going. Thanks, Grace!

Vacation (day 5)

2008-08-02T09:58:00.001-07:00

Too frustrating to write about...

Vacation (day 4)

2008-07-31T17:51:00.000-07:00

The truck from Builders Alliance pulled up while we were having our coffee this morning. After we helped him unload, we finished up the stuff we didn't quite get done yesterday (- nailing on the last few pieces of sheathing...)

Then it was on to today's project; getting the ceiling joists up. Getting 13 twenty foot long 2x8's to a place 12 feet off the ground was quite a feat - especially when the only help we had was from Sara and Hannah (plus Norman was laying right in the way...)

Once we got the joists up there we had to stand them on end and secure them to the top plate. We got them all up there - with Norman's help as you can see from the picture. We were just starting to figure out how to get the rafters and the ridge board up there when it started to rain.

It's still raining now. Hopefully it will be better weather tomorrow.

Vacation (day 3)

2008-07-30T19:30:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm all better and so is the weather...

This morning began with me up on the roof with my trusty Milwaukee Sawzall reciprocating saw. This time though, I wasn't "fixing" something that I did wrong; I was actually doing things according to plans. By the way, did you ever see the cartoon where the character used a saw to cut through the branch he was sitting on? I'm pretty sure it was Wile E. Coyote. I was just wondering - it really has no bearing on my story. Honest.

Anyway, I was happily sawing (Grace might disagree about the 'happily' part) - waiting for the roof to cave in. I had taken every precaution. Tools, children, dogs and other livestock were removed from the 'drop zone'. Grace had carefully and sturdily propped everything up to prevent any chance of premature droppage. Things were going along swimmingly.... Witness below, I am carefully cutting away...

The picture below finds me in pretty much the identical position albeit a large section of the roof is no longer attached to the house. If you will look closely, you will note that I am still holding my saw. Even closer inspection will reveal that there is no longer any electrical cord coming out the saw... You see, in spite of our careful preparations we failed to consider that the roof section would spin around a couple of times on its way down. Oh it spun, my friends; it spun.... In the course of its spinning it wrapped up the cord of my saw and yanked it right out... Thankfully, I had the presence of mind not to fall off the roof. Everything worked out OK - with the exception of my reciprocating saw which I will fix this evening.
On a side note, our photographer came within seconds of capturing all of the excitement on video! We had a short video of literally seconds before the cacophonous crash and a short video with dust still hanging in the air. Why, you ask, is there no video of the event itself? Well apparently there was a pressing need to video one of our dogs licking himself in an inappropriate manner at the exact second the roof fell. (I'll just leave it to you to guess which dog it was...)

By day's end, this is what we had accomplished. Grace is working; I am drinking a beer... Tomorrow morning the lumber for our ceiling joists and rafters is coming. Gonna be fun!

Vacation (day 2)

2008-07-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

Rainy & sick....

Walls (part 2); Vacation (day 1)

2008-07-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

I suppose it doesn't say much about one's construction skills if the most important tools one possesses are a reciprocating saw and a wrecking bar... That was us today. We got off to a rousing start. We got Jesse out of bed at seven o'clock and had him help us stand up the east wall. Smooth as silk, no glitches whatsoever. Then we cut another 'wall access slot' into the existing roof and got the west wall in place with just Hannah's help! We were unstoppable! Then we laid out everything for the final wall.... Things went downhill fast

I won't bore you (or embarrass us) with the details. Suffice it to say that eventually everything got put together as it was supposed to be assembled. We managed to get all of the walls standing. They're square and straight - and in the end, isn't that really all that matters?

Vacation continues tomorrow...

Walls (part 1)

2008-07-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

You would think that two reasonably intelligent people could figure out where the studs for a wall would have to be situated so that the exterior sheathing would meet up properly at the seams. If you thought that then you weren't thinking of Grace and me... We thought we were home free when we discovered how tall the studs would have to be. We cut a bunch of 2x6's to length, laid out a bottom plate, measured and marked the plate so that we could nail the studs on, figured out that we'd done it wrong, scribbled over the marks, remeasured and remarked, rediscovered that we'd missed again.... Our bottom plate looks like some insane, pencil wielding graffiti artist sabotaged our project. Eventually we got it right - for one wall. Then we repeated the process for the next two walls. Grace hauled out her trusty clipboard and calculator and saved the day.

Below you can see the west wall of the addition laying down on the subfloor. Once we get the sheathing on we will stand it up, brace it, and nail it in place. We also had to figure out exactly where the bathroom and closet were going to be. We had to make the bathroom a little bigger than the plan since we are going to put our jetted tub in there. (Thankfully we never really finished the bathroom in the suite so it won't be too hard to get it out of there and into the addition. Score one for procrastination!)

Determining where the windows went along with all of the accompanying extra lumber that goes into installing a window properly took a little time too. Grace and I are standing in our bathroom window in the picture.

Just another Saturday...

Tearing off old siding...

2008-07-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

Grace and Paige pulled off a bunch of siding today. In doing so, as you can see below, they discovered an old opening for a window. The window was hidden behind the chimney. Kind of makes me wonder how many times this place has been renovated/added on to. Oh well, one more time...

During the course of their siding-pulling-off it became necessary for them to heartlessly tear down a swallow's nest. (I would never have done that... That's just plain mean.) Anyway, inside were three very small, pointed speckled eggs. I'm pretty sure that eventually Norman ate them. I don't feel too bad - I know those swallows already raised one brood/herd/flock this year - it wasn't more than four days ago that hideously ugly baby swallows were sticking their heads out of that wad of mud stuck to the wall. They were also pooping all over my subfloor. It was a pretty amazing nest though.
Once the siding was off, we had to figure out how tall our walls had to be in order for everything to match up with the existing house. Grace was pretty stoked about this - I, on the other hand, thought we should just make them whatever height as long as it seemed like we were making some progress. Thankfully, Grace prevailed but when neither of us could come anywhere near to having anything close to a clue about how to figure it out, we decided to call Mr. T. (Not *the* Mr. T (my favorite theologian/philosopher) but Mr. Rick T - designer of amazing log homes.)

He and his lovely wife graced us with a visit and he quickly figured out that our studs have to be 100 inches long. (There was a lot of complicated math involved and I'm pretty sure that quantum physics and cold fusion came into play - I could explain it all to you but you probably wouldn't grasp it...) Truthfully, a lot of it went over my head, which just gives me an excuse to invite them over again once I need another number. Thanks Rick & Joyce; it's Al good.

Subfloor

2008-07-12T16:12:00.001-07:00

It's 4 p.m. on a very hot Saturday afternoon and I just finished putting the last screws in our subfloor. Grace and I got started around 8:30 this morning. We were somewhat hampered by the fact that I only had one working battery for my impact driver; and that battery seems to be on its last legs too. (My beloved children failed to pick up on my subtle Father's Day hints...) We had to stop every once in a while in order to let the battery charge and at one point I had to put it in the fridge to cool it down before it would even take a charge. (I had to make a little room for it so I cleared out a beer or two.) We managed to get all but the last two 4x8 sheets on before Grace had to leave for work. I figured out a way to do the last two myself. (It got pretty hairy; I'm glad there are no pictures of that....)

Anyway, the adhesive is globbed on, the sheets are down, and everything is securely screwed down. I'm going for a swim.

Man (and woman) handling a sheet of plywood into place.

...and there's Norman - he's either supervising or checking out our shapely behinds...

Rim board; floor joists

2008-07-07T22:25:00.000-07:00

If you had told me on Saturday that by Monday afternoon we would have half of the floor joists up I would never have believed you. All right, it's well past 9 p.m. on Monday night, but we do have half of the floor joists in place.

I came home from work this afternoon to find Jesse hammering joist hangers on to the ledger board and Grace dragging 16 foot long 2x10's to the foundation. While I went for a swim, they got the rim joists up and by the time I was back we were measuring and cutting and hanging and nailing. Very satisfying! The more lumber I can get between me and that foundation the better!

Grace did have to make a trip to Home Depot in Abbotsford for a few pieces of lumber. I had her pick up a few new saw blades for the circular saw too. (I don't think we've ever changed the blade on that thing and it's over ten years old! We weren't cutting our 2x10's so much as we were burning through them. A new blade makes it seem like a hot knife through butter. I love butter.)

Grace is going to do some blocking tomorrow morning (and then she has to work.) If there is a kid home who is strong enough to lift a 16 foot long 2x10 maybe I can finish it up tomorrow.

LOOK! There's Grace!

(She's the one obscured by that big fleshy thing in the foreground...)

Anyway, you can see some of our progress in this picture.

Moving on up

2008-07-05T18:14:00.001-07:00

Norman was here...

I've got a pretty extensive collection of tools that look similar to this. I suppose it serves as a reminder not to leave tools laying around - even for a minute...

We are pretty much done with things foundational! The backfilling is all done - well maybe another wheelbarrow or two here and there but at least we can walk around without falling into holes.

There's Norman inspecting the backfilling job that we did on the inside of the foundation. (You can also see that we removed some of the exterior siding from the existing house. We'll probably take another layer off yet.) Back to backfilling, we did it all using shovels and a wheelbarrow. It was a lot of work! Apparently other people use tractors or similar heavy equipment to do this kind of thing - apparently we are not other people... If our foundation had been even one millimeter bigger than 16x20, I would have rented a tractor. It was amazing how trenches that were ridiculously narrow when I was trying to pry forms off were suddenly ridiculously wide and deep when I was lugging load after load of dirt to them. We are also wondering where in the world all of this extra dirt came from and what we are going to do with it.

There's the sill plate. We made sure that the foundation was square and then figured out where to drill the holes for the anchor bolts and then placed the sill plates on. All of a sudden it looked like we were making some progress. We could actually envision this mess becoming a bedroom. We have to put the washers and nuts on the anchor bolts, and then rim joists have to stand on end on the edge of the sill. Joist hangers are put on rim joists and the floor joists go in the hangers. Then the subfloor goes on. We have all the materials to get us up to the subfloor part. We'll see how things go but we hope to get that done by the end of next week.
We made a pony wall in the center to give the floor joists extra support.

Once again, Grace is conspicuously absent from any pictures...

Foundation... continued...

2008-06-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

There's a lot more to this whole foundation thing than we thought. (Actually we didn't give this part of things too much thought at all. We do know that it is important to do this stuff well though.)

Grace, Paige and Hannah actually did most of the work this week since I was working some pretty long days. Last Saturday I brushed a sealant on to the foundation where it will be below grade. (That's the black stuff that you see on the foundation.)

Over the course of the week, Grace picked up several utility trailer loads of gravel, some PVC pipe and some landscape fabric. Then she laid down the fabric, threw a couple of inches of drain rock beside the footing, laid out the pipe, covered it with several more inches of rock and then folded the fabric back over her creation. This is to whisk water away from our foundation and into a small french drain that I have yet to dig. (Actually, now that I think about it I'm going to get Jesse to do it...) I helped shovel in the gravel - it's pretty sweaty work. You can see the (almost) end result in the picture below - the fabric isn't folded back over yet.
I know you wouldn't think that Grace did this - if only because she doesn't show up in the pictures. There seems to be a fairly stringently enforced rule about not taking pictures of Grace while she's working on the house. I'm going to try to bend that rule more in the future

There's Norman in his typical supervisory capacity...

We hope to take siding off the house tomorrow; as well as finish up a few foundation details. (We have to backfill yet...)

Tomorrow we are getting a bunch of lumber and hardware delivered. We're not quite ready for it but we don't want to have to wait once we are.

Foundation

2008-06-19T18:14:00.001-07:00

Our foundation is poured and we are, for all intents and purposes, on our own. The main problem now is that things haven't quite progressed to the point where we feel a great deal of confidence in our abilities...

The foundation was poured on Tuesday and we stripped the forms on Wednesday afternoon. I told the contractor we would take the forms down; I didn't know how much work that was going to be. Everybody pitched in and we were done in about three hours or so. It went all right - with the exception of snapping a 2x4 which I was using as a lever to loosen one of the form boards. It broke; I went head over heels to the bottom of the stem wall. I think I hit every stray rock, board, and leftover chunk of concrete during the course of my fall. Thankfully, I only ended up with a scraped up elbow and an oddly shaped bruise on my left butt cheek. I was kind of stiff at work today but I got through it. Hopefully this isn't a portent of things to come in regard to this project.

There's Grace (and Norman of course - Riley's there too). I'm inside the foundation. This is a prelapsarian picture - my elbow and buttock are intact at this point.

So now the forms are all down. The contractor has collected them. Grace has called B&P about foundation sealant and drainage. If it doesn't rain tomorrow she will brush the sealant on - then we'll do the whole drainage thing and some back filling on Saturday.

I can't wait until we get to deal with lumber and nails and things...

Footings

2008-06-12T18:38:00.001-07:00

Forms

2008-06-10T20:06:00.001-07:00

The forms for the footings are up. Rebar is in place. All we need is concrete and we're good to go.

And there's Norman inspecting the forms. (Don't let him fool you - he doesn't know a thing about forms or concrete. Maybe more than the other dogs though...)

Two down; one to go.

2008-06-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

As you can see I got the flashing above the barn doors done. If you look closely through the right hand window you can even see one of the lights in the barn. That just leaves rain gutters and then we're actually finished that project. (A new gate and fence is a separate project altogether.)

I'm very pleased with the way the flashing turned out. I made it out of three 8 foot sections of aluminum; I broke a one inch flange on the top so that I could secure it to the barn and there is a lip on the bottom that parallels the wall. It looks sharp and should go a long way to keeping things drier in there (- rain gutters would go further in that regard but I have to do a little modifying in order to make that work... It'll happen.) I still have to caulk the seams around the flashing but I have to wait for a dry day - today was not that day.

I also finished my workbench this week. I used it for working on the flashing, cutting the blocking, etc. Was it ever sweet not to have to work on the ground or on some ersatz table constructed of rickety saw horses and a warped piece of plywood! It's like I've died and gone to DIY heaven! I haven't got a picture of my workbench but here's the one from the plan. Obviously, it's not in my barn (it's WAY TOO NEAT & ORGANIZED!! That guy couldn't lose a tool if he tried!); equally obvious (if not moreso), that's not me in the picture (nowhere near good looking enough); nevertheless, that is what my workbench looks like.

I've been working quite a bit on my workbench and the flashing this week because on Monday the concrete guy is coming to set up forms for our footings and foundation. This afternoon I had to square up the trenches a bit and clean them out. Thankfully they didn't totally fill up with water. After the forms are set we have to arrange an inspection and then by week's end we should have a foundation and then - we are on our own.

Here are our trenches - ready for forms, footings and foundations.

Below you will see our dog Norman jumping over the trench. Norman is, without a doubt, the stupidest dog in the history of canine-dom. He has been digging in those trenches for a week; knocking dirt back into them, wallowing in the mud, running up and down the piles of dirt. He's the one who chews the cords off my power tools. He once chewed through an extension cord that was plugged in. He still didn't learn. Last Saturday while I was putting a new plug on my reciprocating saw, Norman was chewing the cord that was hanging off the end of the table. He will walk away with my tools if I set them down even for a second while I'm working outside. I've got several hammers, screwdrivers, etc. that have Norman bite marks all over the handles. In addition to all of these wonderful qualities, he is a veritable poop machine. I wouldn't trade him for anything.

You can also see Riley in the background. You can just see Abbey back there too. They're dumb too - but Norman is seriously unbelievable.

We've got trenches!

2008-06-03T18:47:00.001-07:00

Of course, now it's pouring rain and they are filling with water... Forms and foundation next week.

Tragedy...

2008-06-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

Today I was working in the barn when something horrible happened. I burned out one of the batteries for my cordless set. Maybe I will get something neat for Father's Day... Father's Day is just around the corner you know. Really, it's only a couple of weeks away - not too much time to get a great gift for the handyman dad in your life. Hmm; we'll see... If only there was some subtle way to let my kids know this...

Memorial Day

2008-05-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

Today is Memorial Day so I could stay home from work guilt-free. The only "Memorial Day stuff" I did was to fly my flag at half-mast. For years we've gone to the cemetery to watch the VFW do their thing - we didn't this year; I felt bad about missing it. I think it's important to be reminded of what the cost was and is for the freedom we enjoy and so often take for granted.

That being said, the sum total of "addition work" accomplished in the last week is pictured for you below. Actually we had a couple of guys give us estimates for the foundation work (we've picked one); we also figured out who's going to dig the hole for the foundation. Now we just have to coordinate things so they show up in the right order and within a couple of days of one another - apparently that can be quite a chore. It will be nice when we get to the point where we can start doing stuff ourselves.

I've been working in the barn. I got it cleaned up a little bit and then it went downhill in a hurry during the course of today's work bench project. I went to Home Depot in Abbotsford this morning. I was waiting outside with all the contractors when it opened. I picked up all of the lumber I needed for it. I made excellent use of one of the tape measures I got for my birthday (thanks, K's!). The bench is coming along fine but it's not done. I had to order a bunch of hardware online which should come in by week's end. (Then I'll show you pictures - it's going to be one burly workbench!)

Yeah, that's right! I got my sign done. Safely too, I might add...

For the want of a nail...

2008-05-19T20:13:00.001-07:00

It's been almost a week since I've posted anything and so, lest you think we've just been sitting around or (perish the thought!) that we've given up, I thought I'd better update things.

As far as the actual addition is concerned - a guy is coming over tomorrow to give us a quote on the foundation work. (We're contracting that out.) We did manage to get all of the chimney bricks picked up.

About the title - it's the beginning of a Ben Franklin quote (which he undoubtedly stole from someone else). Plagiarized or not, it's a good quote (look it up yourself...) It has to do with preparedness. I'm finding more and more that we have to know what we need before we start a project. I could have finished off the barn this weekend but I was missing a part for my security light and since I was missing that part, everything ground to a halt. I was in Bellingham on Saturday morning and none of the big box hardware stores had it (I'm sure that Hardware Sales would have had it - but I couldn't get there.) I had to go to Lynden on Saturday afternoon - none of the three not-quite-so-big-box hardware stores there had it either. I knew that MFNHS had it. I knew this because I had picked up the wrong part there on Friday (the right part was in the bin next to the bin with the wrong part in it.) Unfortunately, MFNHS closes at noon on Saturday. So no real barn progress happened on Saturday, but lots of barn frustration happened.

Once I took stock of things it turned out that there was quite a bit more to do on the barn than I originally anticipated. Of course, I should know by now that it takes me a long time to do electrical work. I ran a circuit for outlets - I put in a 20 amp breaker and ran thicker gauge wire. I got some burly outlets too. My cord reels came in today and so I can mount them tomorrow. We're real pleased with the way things turned out. I picked up the critical part at MFNHS on my way home from work and finished up. I did one thing wrong though - I have an outlet that only has power to it when my photosensitive security light is on - I'll have to do a little circuit rerouting tomorrow...

Hopefully, I can build a decent work bench on Memorial Day (next Monday) and start organizing the barn. It sure will be nice to have power out there. Gone are the days of lugging the table saw, chop saw, etc. out to the house in order to cut things! I suppose I'd better replace the cords that my dog has chewed off several of my tools before then.

The wait is over

2008-05-12T19:32:00.000-07:00

Well, there it is. Grace picked up our building permit on Monday afternoon. You might have thought that I would have run to the computer right away and posted about it - but it's somewhat daunting. As I go through the thing it strikes me that I'm a bit like a dog that chases cars - once he catches one what's he gonna do with it? So we've got this permit, now what? For starters, I suppose we have to find somebody who knows something about excavation and footings and foundations. I'm pretty sure that Grace has some leads in that regard.

As I pore over the gibberish of the permit and try to decipher all of the illegible red ink stamps and decode the garish green stickers that our bureaucratic friends have liberally splattered all over our carefully drawn up plans I'm a little overwhelmed. At first glance it would seem that about 74 more layers of difficulty have been tacked on to our addition. We looked it over last night - it's mind boggling; especially if you're not used to doing this kind of stuff. But then we settled down, had a beer, and things began to make sense. Instead of looking at the whole thing in a jumble all at once - we began (somewhat) systematically picking through the thing. We matched up code reference numbers in red ink stamps and on green stickers to code numbers in the little code booklet that came with our package. I still don't understand it all but I'm almost certain that this is the way we've been making and remaking stuff all along. Apparently one of the first things I have to do is make an ugly sign with our house number on it. The numbers must be at least three inches tall and be easily readable from the road. I can do that...

The light show continues

2008-05-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

I took yesterday off work and got busy running a circuit for my barn lights. First I had to figure out what I would need in terms of supplies as well as inventory what I already had. Then I went to MFNHS, while I was in the store a friend of mine came in and asked if I knew that there was a 25 foot long coil of cable on the trunk of my car. I didn't. I had driven about four miles with this stuff on there.

Once I had everything I needed, it went pretty quick. It was just a straight "up and across" 75 foot run with three outlets in it. The thing that slowed me down the most was my tendency to lose tools. Honestly, I probably spent as much time looking for my wire strippers, hammer, tester, etc. as I did wiring. I would put something down and it would disappear - only to reappear in exactly the same place after a few minutes. It's like living in the Bermuda Triangle of Tools. Frustrating.

Here are some before & after shots of the inside of the barn:

This is what the interior of the barn looked like before the lights were installed -

This is what the interior of the barn looks like now -

It's brighter now.

That's just about going to do it for the barn for now - I still have to put some outlets in but I have to wait until the two cord reels that I ordered arrive.

By the way, while I was working on the barn yesterday. We got a call from Buildings & Plans that our building permit has been approved! So on Monday we will load the back of the van up with money and go pick it up! On to the main event...

Let there be light!

2008-05-08T20:10:00.001-07:00

Yahoo! I got a big "OK" on my wiring job in the barn. I actually had everything right - but it was worth waiting a few days in order to have the peace of mind plus it's just not a good idea to take chances when you're doing electrical work. I'm taking tomorrow off work so I can run some circuits.

What I did on Monday & other random stuff

2008-05-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

I took Monday off. Kind of got electricity to the barn - I'm not real confident about a few things so I'm having someone who actually knows what he's doing have a look at it before I declare my endeavor a success. Things went well. A few trips back and forth to my friendly neighborhood hardware store (MFNHS); but I've come to expect that - particularly when I'm doing electrical stuff. By Thursday I should have the verdict on how I did - and get anything I did wrong fixed.

Once I got as far as I dared on electrical matters I turned my attention elsewhere in the barn. I put some trim up around the doors - discovered that I didn't have enough prepainted trim boards to finish that task. GRRR. Thankfully(?) there were other things to do too. There were about 100 miles of seams that still needed caulking so I tackled that. I only caulked about 42 miles worth - I did another 17 miles after work this afternoon. Only 41 more miles to go!

On to things random - I find that blogging inspires me to get stuff done (or at least get stuff started) so that I can write about it. If I had started this blog when we first moved in, by now our home would look like the house in the picture below and I would have written blogdom's equivalent to War and Peace.

Next, random item - Books I have found absolutely invaluable throughout this whole ordeal:

1) How to Build a House by Larry Haun & others. Taunton Press, 2002. This is put together by the folks from Habitat for Humanity. Love 'em or hate 'em (why would anyone hate H4H?) they build good houses. They also put together a terrific book that literally shows you how to do everything from foundation to shingles.

2) Renovation, 3rd Edition by Michael Litchfield. Taunton Press, 2005. Encyclopedic in its scope; detailed in its presentation. With this book, a few tools and a little confidence you could redo, recover, rebuild anything pertaining to your domicile.

3) Wiring a House by Rex Cauldwell. Taunton Press, 1996. This guy is good. He's a master electrician who can explain things to non-master electricians. He throws in some theory too. Most importantly: a veritable cornucopia of pictures and diagrams. I've done most of my wiring with this book open to one page or another.

4) Graphic Guide to Frame Construction by Rob Thallon. Taunton Press, 1998. Again lots of pix and diagrams. Complements How to Build a House nicely. It's got a little more detail.

Did you notice how all of these books are from the Taunton Press? I love the Taunton Press. We've got books from them on all kinds of subjects. They are consistently worth every penny we spent on them. Good, practical, no nonsense "how to do whatever you want to do" books - with lots of pictures. It's not that I'm illiterate; it's just that I like pictures. I like to be able to see what something is supposed to look like when I'm done with it -- that doesn't necessarily mean that my finished projects always conform to the pictures.

On finishing projects

2008-05-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

This morning, while we continued to wait for our building permit, my wife and I reviewed the photo album which chronicles all that we've accomplished on our humble abode thus far. Everytime we came to the end of a section I heard this refrain echoing in my head "we still have to finish this or that little detail." It's true. We're great idea people. We're super, full of energy starters but we suck at actually bringing projects all the way to completion. Mind you, as a rule, the things left to do are fairly minor and visitors might not even notice them but the unfinished things are there. They taunt us and dare us to tackle them. Generally we are pretty good at just ignoring their tauntings and darings but once in a great while, we say, "Enough already! You're going down, little unfinished detail!"

Today I set myself to finishing our barn. Well, OK - not "finishing" per se but at least getting one of the biggest unfinished details out of the way. I had to get electricity out there. I've known how I was going to do this for a while but never found the energy for it (mainly because it involved digging a 25 foot long 18 inch deep trench. Last week, while I was tearing down the chimney and fighting off bats, I had my son and his friend dig the trench for me. Today I went to my friendly neighborhood hardware store, purchased 75 feet of direct bury cable, spliced it on to the existing cable and got all the way to the barn.

I had to fill in the trench afterwards so I dumped a bunch of the chimney bricks in it. I also threw some beer cans (empty), and some dog poop in there. To quote one of my favorite philosophers/theologians Mr. T, "I pity da fool" who has to do an archeological assessment on that area. Indiana Jones is in for a big surprise if he sinks his 4x4x24 hole in the wrong spot.

But I digress. We still don't have power to the barn but it's close. (I need some parts yet and, mercifully, my friendly neighborhood hardware store closes at noon on Saturdays). I might take Monday off and then I'm sure I can get it done. Then I might finish some of those other things (but probably not...) Seriously though, if we're going to do this whole addition thing, we've got to learn how to complete a task.

This is our barn. You can't tell from the picture that it doesn't have electricity but even I can see at least three things that need to be done yet. If you can find them, you might win a fabulous prize!

We've been archeologically assessed!

2008-05-02T17:28:00.000-07:00

We have passed our archeological assessment! I quote from our handsomely bound report, "the archeological survey and examination of sediments at Heron Lane did not result in the identification of any intact or diagnostic archeological resources." Most importantly, the archeologist "recommends the project be permitted to proceed." Yay!!!

We got a nice, eleven page, spiral-bound copy of the report; replete with a beautiful color photograph of our home on the cover page. There is also a stunning color picture of a two foot deep 4x4 hole with a tape measure in it. A final picture shows the side of the house where the future addition will be. This last picture actually shows where the addition will be better than my picture does at the beginning of this blog (but I'm not going to change it.)

So now Buildings & Plans and three native tribes get to peruse the report. In the meantime, we will keep waiting.

By the way, I wasn't home when the assessment was being done, but I'm pretty sure it would have looked like the above picture. Indiana Jones and his little helper are using that flashlight to plumb the mirky depths of one of the 24 inch deep holes they dug. They are no doubt hoping that the Philosopher's Stone or the Treasure of the Knights' Templar will be down there - but alas, it's not to be. Keep searching Indy!

Some ground rules...

2008-04-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

It's Monday; it's raining; still no permit. The sum total of "addition work" accomplished today - some of the bricks got picked up. Given this break in the action, I figured I'd better lay down some ground rules for all of you people in blogdom before things get totally out of hand (yeah, we're teetering on the brink now... Chaos, mayhem!)

RULE 1) Your comments are encouraged. Comments such as; "Hey, way to go!"; "Looks real good!"; or "You guys are sure working hard!" - these are allowed. You don't necessarily have to use those exact words but feel free to use the above suggested comments as templates. Such comments will be rewarded with a comment response from yours truly along the lines of "Hey, way to follow RULE 1!"

RULE 2) Advice about how to do stuff that we've already done is strongly discouraged. Considering that by the time you see this stuff it's already finished - what's the point? So don't post remarks such as; "I see you did X in this particular way; you should have done it this way." When you build your own addition feel free to do it your way; we've already done it our way (dumb as our way may have been.) Also forbidden under this rule are comments such as "That picture shows you doing something kind of unsafely." When viewing pictures of us working on the addition always remember the following: The camera not only adds ten pounds but it increases any danger (real or imagined) by a factor of five. Comments which violate this rule will probably still be published (unless they are not) but you will be reprimanded along the following lines, "Hey buddy, maybe you should reread RULE 2!"

RULE 3) No comments pertaining to even the slightest change of the agreed upon design of the addition will be tolerated. The design, simple though it is, is the result of (literally) years of painstaking, agonizing deliberation by my better half. I participated in the process by agreeing with everything she proposed. Yeah, don't even bother trying to sneak in a comment that violates RULE 3. Ain't gonna happen.

RULE 4) If there is ever a post in which something like the following is put forth - "I wonder how we do this next part" - feel free to immediately post comments which outline in great detail how to do that particular thing in an extremely easy and economical way. In the event that your advice is taken and it actually works, we will be forever in your debt. (We'll be forever in your debt because we aren't going to pay you anything.) Seriously though, you will be rewarded with a comment along the following lines, "That's a great idea; thank you so very much. Why don't you come over a show us how to do that in a little more detail? We will feed you and give you beer."

RULE 5) I reserve the right to suspend any of the above rules at any time if I feel like it. I'm not taking them very seriously so I don't really see why anyone else should (with the exception of RULE 3).

Day 1: About those bricks...

2008-04-26T23:16:00.000-07:00

Note, if you will, that there is a chimney on the side of the house. If we left this chimney up it would be right in the doorway of our new bedroom. We decided to dismantle the chimney.

I bought a new mini-sledge hammer and a cold chisel at Lowes, leaned our extension ladder against the house and began chipping away.

Things were going quite well. The bricks were coming apart without too much effort. There were not too many pieces flying into my face.

Once I got to the spot where the chimney met the roof, I had to work from the ground which was not necessarily easier - just different.

You can't really tell from the picture but there is about a 1.5 inch gap between the chimney and the exterior siding. Apparently that is more than enough room for a bat....

I was taking down bricks without a care in the world when suddenly a little brown bat was snarling at me. It was about six inches from my face. I screamed like a little girl, which brought the whole family and our three dogs running to see whether I had finally fallen off a ladder. They were only mildly disappointed to see that I hadn't toppled off a ladder. Their disappointment was tempered by the news about the bat. The whole "dismantling of the chimney" project ground to a halt while we caught the bat.

Long story short, we caught the bat. They're pretty cool little animals. Nasty looking though.

The chimney is down. I didn't find anymore bats - just the remains of one unfortunate starling. Now we just have to wait some more....

By the way, we let the bat go earlier this evening. They are so cool to watch in flight!

Day 1: Prep work

2008-04-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

See those black lines? Soon(?) they will be the walls of our new addition. (The bricks are another story which I will get to shortly.)

Where to begin.... Five years ago, our family moved into a house that was truthfully far too small for us. Not only was it small but it was something of a "handy man's special". Well, for five years, we've been renovating, replacing, rewiring, re-everything-ing; and now we're going to try to add on.

We are going to build a 16x20 addition. It will be a master bedroom with a bathroom and walk-in closet. It seems to be a fairly modest undertaking and given the experience that my wife and I have accumulated over the past years; I'm sure we can do it.

That's not to say that we won't be faced with some challenges.

First of all, I labeled this post "Day 1" but in reality we've been at this for a long time already. We've actually had plans drawn up for a few years and even got so far as to apply for a building permit; but for whatever reason, we decided to put the project on hold at that time.

Now our plans have been resubmitted. We've made numerous trips to our county's Buildings & Plans Dept. and we are waiting....

A few days ago we got a letter from Buildings & Plans. We were excited! We were sure that our permit had arrived! We were wrong. B&P informed us that we lived in an area of "international cultural and historical significance". They told us that before the permit process could continue we would have to have an "archeological assessment" done and then several tribes and committees would have to review the findings. We called one of the approved archeologists and he came, dug two 4 inch by 4 inch holes, found nothing, presented us with a bill, and left... You can't see them in the picture because they are covered by bricks but there are two small dirt patches in the black rectangle - each filled in hole is about $350. I'm going to encourage my kids to become archeologists!

I'll get to the pile of bricks in the next post.