It's been just over a month now since our last post. Sorry for letting the time slip away! We've had quite a full schedule between the house repairs, my office deadlines and our trip overseas in between. Looking back at our last couple of posts, I realize quite a bit of work has happened. Here's a general summary of what we've done:
- Exterior: We completed the exterior board and batten siding as well as all of the window, door, fascia and skirt trim work. Both of our dads painted and sealed the front of the house. Carmen's parents have popped over a few times since to continue paint and sealing around the side of the hosue. We're about half-way down the long side right now. Carmen and I have generally landed on colors for the exterior of the house. We've got a nice green color picked out and will likely go get a pint of each color to test out this week.
- MEP: Fitch Services has completed all of their work on the HVAC, electrical and gas work. We now have a functional 13 SEER heat pump with a variable speed air handler. It's a good deal quieter than the old system. We moved the location of the heat pump around to the side of the house where the shed used to be. It fit there quite nicely. We'll screen it in at some point. Paired with the new HVAC is a new 200A electrical panel by the back door. It's huge! Apparently some new code regulations are responsible for the larger size. Seems completely unnecessary, but the panel is nicely mounted, so we're fine with it. Also installed was the new electric water heater, a short-style, which we pushed down under the stairs. That worked out really well and will leave us plenty of room for the W/D once I open up the doorway for it to fit through. Last on the list was the gas, water and sanitary connections for the W/D, all in place. The next step will be to have electrical outlets installed for the dishwasher and range as well as a few re-located outlets for the fridge and microwave. We'll also be installing the dryer vent around that same time.
- Interior: Lots to do. After the electrical gets completed, we will install the insulation - hopefully this will start next weekend. I'm hoping to start drywall Labor Day weekend. Any expert mud-ers out there? Carmen's cousin Roger is going to come out on the 17th and attempt to knock out ceramic tile on the floors, which we have on order from Lowes. Its a dark gray tile. We hope it will be nice durable floor and we'll find some nice area rugs for the kitchen and living room to add some color.
- Kitchen Cabs: Bought and picked up! The day after we got back from France, my dad kindly turned around braved the I-95 Saturday vacation traffic. I left the house at 9am and got back at 9pm....whew. That after getting in from a full day of travel the night before at 11pm. It was a good time with my dad and a productive trip. We have everything but the microwave, cabinet legs and countertops which were all temporarilty out of stock. Apparently the earthquake in Japan knocked out the supply chain for the countertops....dang!
- Trash pile: Gone! Thanks to some hard work from John Hunt, Lew Brown and a gracious neighbor, we knocked out four truck loads Saturday morning. All the trash is gone. The homeless gentleman who was picking scraps will be disappointed, but the debris had to go!
In between all of this work at the house we took our long-awaited trip to France. Praise God, it was an amazing trip. Norah did amazingly well on the airplane. Our hosts were great. The accommodations were awesome both in Bourg St. Andeol and in Paris. We were really happy to be able to do it as a family. There are some great memories. Carmen has posted some photos on her facebook page. You can check them out here: album 1 -
Here are some recent photos of the house:
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| Debris pile (once on the side of the house) is gone, front of house is primed and sealed. |
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| New header from kitchen to living room is in, clutter removed, walls cleared off and ready for electrical work. |
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| You can see from this photo that the kitchen wiring is in a state of disarray....soon to be fixed! I moved all of the tools underneath the stairs to keep them out of the way. The interior is ready to go. |
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| Another shot of the cleaned up and cleared out interior from the living room. Earlier today this room was filled with OSB, Hardie Panel and wood cut-offs. |
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| In this shot you can see the new heat pump on the side of the house, the new window and door trimmed out, the new electrical panel and meter (left center) and the leftover siding and sheating under the tarp. Hopefully the leftovers will go a long way toward the shed I hope to build this fall.....I've got to have somewhere to put my tools! |
2 comments:
You're doing such a great job Justin! So proud of you! great pictures and renderings. The space is going to be great!
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