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

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...

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)

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

Bedroom floor (part 1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

Heat

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

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

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

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

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

It's in and it works!

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

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

It's getting door-ier in here!

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

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

Doorway (ish...)

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

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

Drywall

We passed our insulation inspection on Monday. Yay!

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

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

more insulation...

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

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

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

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

Insulation

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

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

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