September has been another busy month for the Waltons here in Charlottesville. Carmen is back at St. Anne's Belfield teaching 7th grade math. So far so good on that front. Childcare gets a little more complicated during the school year, but the Grandmothers are faithfully chipping in every week and we have some great sitters/friends for the remaining days. Work at VMDO has been busy with my project deadline pushing into the second week of September. I then had to jump onto another deadline, but have been able to kept the hours manageable feeling the need to push forward on the house.
As for the house work, we ended up expanding the scope of renovation downstairs to include an almost complete re-wiring thanks to a co-worker of mine, Paul Lockerby, who has been an absolute rock and mentor over the past few weeks of work. After he had convinced me we should take the time to really do it right - and that he was going to make sure it would be - I decided to go ahead and remove the ceiling in the kitchen and re-design the lighting. Figuring out the circuiting was quite a task since there were so many things on each circuit - a symptom of the old 100amp fuse panel we had replaced. In the end we added 7 new can lights in place of the old busted (and all different) ceiling mounted glass and brass lights. We installed the new range, hood, fridge, w/d, dishwasher and disposal receptacles. We re-spaced existing and added new countertop receptacles and installed receptacles behind the wall cabs for countertop lights if we would ever want them. We re-positioned one of the ceiling boxes to use for a pendant over our kitchen table as well. Last, we added a motion detector light on the side of the house....it's really dark over there at night. When installing the run for the range, we had 50' of 8-3 wire (expensive stuff) and literally only had inches to spare even after cutting some diagonals...thank you Lord! If we had come up short, we likely would have had to scrap the whole thing and buy another!
Beyond the electrical, Carmen's dad, John, my friend Mike Robinette and myself finished out some framing and installed all of the insulation last week. This past weekend Paul helped me get started on the drywalling. John was the hero of that day for bringing home the drywall lift. Try hanging a 12'x4' sheet of drywall over your head without one! Paul had never used one, but left a believer. It's an awesome machine. We finished the ceiling in one day of work, even with all of the cuts for lights and vents. John has been great about getting all of the right materials and tools at the right times and asking good questions. It certainly helps to have someone who estimates building supplies daily!
This past week I've been slowly chipping away at the walls and am hopeful for finishing all the drywall hanging by Saturday. Our neighbor, Brandon, stopped by last night and helped me make a lot more progress than I would have on my own. Praise God for his help. In the mean time I've been trying to line someone up to do the mudding, which I feel is a bit of an art and am not keen on using my novice skills to do. A few things have fell through, but I'm hopeful of two guys John has lined up to stop by over the next two days and draw up estimates for the work. If all goes well, we will have the downstairs mudded and sanded before the end of next week just in time to install tile the weekend of October 8/9, courtesy of Carmen's cousin Roger.
Of course, everything is moving a little slower than anticipated, but we're still plugging along and progress continues to be made. Please keep us in your prayers that the Lord will keep providing wisdom for all the decisions we have to make along the way and that the right people would come at the right time so we can get things finished soon. We have now been out of the house for more than 20 months, so needless to say, we are itching to get back in!
Here are some of our latest photos:
Photos through 09/12
Photos through 09/28
Thanks for everyone's prayers, encouragement and gifts. They mean more than any of you could know.
Blessings,
Justin
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