odds and ends

Working on the soffits, sealing them up for the winter.

One of my ideas about heating the house and cooling the house, is the air inside the truss is a good thermal barrier in itself, in winter we will close the soffits so the air that is warming up from the sun beating down on the roof will help keep the cold from the outside air from entering into the attic space as much as it would if they were open and flowing with air.

In the summer the soffits will be opened so the air can vent out and the reflective insulation will help keep the heat between the trusses and the roof deck.


Mary's Christmas gift from last year, we finally got it out of storage and hooked up. it is an Induction Stove, with an extra large Convection Oven and warming drawer.


The tub is still in its crate, but in time it will go in this corner.


The drywall in the bathroom is all hung, we still need a door, I'll have to go out to the greenhouse and pick one out, find its woodwork, and hang it.


The windows and doors are all sealed tight, insulated, and swinging beautifully. I doo still need to work on two lock sets to make them smoother operating, but they are all lockable and we love the code locks, no more fumbling for keeys, just touch the buttons, and the door unlocks.....nice.


The main entry door, Mary has done a wonderful job sealing them all.


Diningroom windows.


Kitchen windows, and our motion sensor porch light.

HEAT !!!

We are playing catch-up once again.


Beating the cold weather, Mary took a few days off from work, to get the most out of the last few days of warm weather, to finish weather-proofing by sealing up the doors and windows. This stuff is much better than the previous stuff we used, it is "Seal Tite" brand, very sticky, and easier to work with. Mary uses the heat gun to get it to stick better.


D'Artagnon helping to keep the place organised, by boxing up the loose strands of wire. Keeping them in one place so I can more easily sort through them finding the right size needed.


The boiler unit. I had to remove the burner, and replace it with an LP conversion kit. Rather easy if you dont rely exactly on the written instructions... somethings just don't translate well, and I really don't know what the original language was... But I did follow the picture instructions, and all went smoothly.

This is a dual boiler, it has separate boiler lines, one for the closed loop radient floor system, and the other line is for usable hot water.


Here are some corner cabinets, not sure if we are keeping them or not, we designed the house so we didnt have wasted corner space... so they and the lazy susan corner cabinets are for sale.


We bought a whole kitchen set, that we will use until we are ready to buy, and permanently set the cabinets we really want


Kitchen sink base. we are building up the height of the counter, and cabinets, so us tall folk don't destroy our backs bending over to do dishes. we are removong the black kick board as well, and will put in a 7" high drawer on rollers under the cabinets. called a kick drawer, you hook your toes under the bottom ledge and pull the drawer out that way. seen the idea in some high end cabnetry booklets.


Water distribution network, we were building it out of sweat fitted copper, but PEX works so much better. of all the connections on the water lines, I have not had even a single leak useing PEX, But I have had problems with the teflon tape connections.

Blue is for the indoor cold water, the red pipes are the indoor hot water.

I also ran the Black Pipe for the LP gas lines as well. The boiler and the dryer are both gas. Had it tested, and came out no problems.


Heree is the radiant heat system, kinda neat how its all together, just had to connect the two panels, and run the pipes to the manifolds around back of the unit.


The only problems we have had with the Radiant system is with the manifolds... Menards is slow in ordering what is needed, waiting on parts... come to find out also that sometimes the instructions mention parts Menards and the United States don't get, for example: there is an actuator that when the power goes out, the valves all open rather than seal closed... we can only get it from Canada or Ecuador.

But we needed heat, we were haveing 20 degree nights, and heavy frosts, so I had to spaghetti rig the whole system through two pumps, since we didn't have all the parts neccessary for the other two manifolds. once they com in, and i can smuggle in from Canada the right actuators, then the mess should mostly go away.


The water is flowing nd all is good, one leak up top from a brass fitting, but the place is warm... perfect.


The whole North side is sealed and all the doors and windows are uncovered. 8 foot doors, 6 foot windows.




Looks like Noahs Ark.

Catching up on the blog. WOW 30 days... time flys.

Sorry it has been so long since I updated the blog. wow, where to begin.

We put in several outlets, ran phone line, and cable to the two bedrooms, put up several sheets of drywall, started setting up the radiant system, cut holes in the roof for the septic system vents, set a toilet, took it out bought a new toilet and set it,building master valve assembly for the water distribution, took down the fence around the garden, set some pavers between the driveway and the sidewalk to the shed and kennel. Wow, I think there is more, but my brain is mush. Oh, we got a grandbaby along the way too.

In absolutely no particular order. I will add more pictures tomorrow, I promise.


Here I am up on the roof putting in the septic vents, get to see our roofing shingles better as well.


Ah the bland colors of fall.



A new Grand-son


What 12' walls look like with drywall. the bathroom is on the other side, and storage room above.


The other bedroom wall drywalled.


Oh yeah, something I forgot in the list... I had to build from scatch new door frames for our two french doors, using ACS lumber, a table saw, router, a hammer and chisel, and viola, better door frames than the ones that came with the doors.


Handy little tool for routing out spaces for the hinges.


See they fit perfectly.


Me and D, looking for interesting rocks, when our dog Riley ran up to the edge of the cliff with a twinkle in her eye she wanted to jump into my arms I am sure of it, she jumped and I got out of the way, she ran around the hill and back up onto the cliff, and tried doing it again, funny funny dog.

Bedroom doors

We went out to the Green house... Which isnt green at all, it is just a dry storage facility. And we set up our bedroom doors to get a look at them.

These are the doors we salvaged from a school in Shefield thanks to Matt Allard for that gift.


We are going to strip and restain them, replace the glass with either frosted glass, or a wood panel stained to match. Change out the hardware for brushed nickel handles, and build it out BIG! They are seven feet tall, and seven feet wide. We will build working window transomes above them, and hopefully an arch with a pendent light hanging in the middle for effect.

!! BIG DREAMS !!

Windows

We are sealing up the windows finally, before it gets too cold for the stuff to seal correctly, and WE WANT IN !!! before winter.

So we cut back the 'Typar', and seal any cracks or gaps with 'Window and Door Great Stuff'. We then leave it for the following day so it dries completely. We then chip the dried Stuff of down to level with the window frame.

We then put this Black Tar Tape all around the windows, starting with the sill, then overlapping the sides, then the top. That way water has a much more difficult time getting into the windows framework. I just hope the water has as difficult of a time getting in as I had sealing it up.


Then we go around and re-Typar around all of the windows, again starting on the bottom and overlapping pieces working our way up.

The Bathroom - We Have A Working Toilet !!

We have a working toilet, and a sink with running cold water !!! It only took us one year and twenty-two days is all.


The mighty duo of Kyle and Jen, working on setting the short wall studs above the bathroom on a Sunday no less.


!!! I LOVE PEX !!! This waterline is running to the toilet, notice it is red, it will in time have warm water filling the tank, thus clearing the waterline from the point-of-use to the sink, so once you get to the sink to wash your hands, there will be instant hot water. Should also stop any sweating toilet syndrome.

With pex, I have had:
Zero leaks
Zero mess
Zero mistakes
Zero problems

Now I cant say that with compression fittings, they leak all over... until I replace them with pex.


Cold Line coming into the bathroom under the sink, it branches off to the sink, and back into the concrete to the point of use on the other side of the room, the red line comes back from the point-of-use, and will branch to the sink and toilet. The tub will be on the other side of the room backed right up to the point-of-use in the closet.

Drywall is up around the toilet, since there are no electrical boxes nearby, And it adds abit of privacy, but not much. Notice how shiny and bright white the toilet is, it has a halo, it must have come from Heaven. Does this now mean I can literally take a HOLY S#!T. Sorry, that was bad. :0)

Bathroom Walls

Now that we have the lumber for the walls we are begining to put them up. We are starting on the bathroom first. The walls in the house are 12 feet tall, but in this bathroom they are only 8 feet tall, so we have about 3 and a half feet of storage above.


Kyle has been helping for the last few weeks, here he is setting the joists for the bathroom ceiling and storage floor.


Here will be the curved wall in the master bedroom, but in the bathroom, it will be a square corner. Thats why it looks cobbled together, once the drywall is on, you'll never know.


Now that the walls are inplace I can start working on finishing the plumbing. Need to run the sewer vents and connect them before they go out the roof. And I am getting the potable water system in as well. There will be a point of use hot water heater in the bathroom closet. And then set the toilet, sink and tub.


Mary has been busy staining the wood for the ceiling, the wood is pine, with a Minwax - Pecan Gloss stain.

Walls

We have the materials now to start on the inside walls. The studs and drywall were delivered this last Saturday.

Handy truck to have around.

We bought 250 sheets of drywall, and had the guys carry them in two-by-two. Nice guys to work with, real chatty, but got the job done in good time. It did start downpouring as they were bringing in the drywall, but they were nearly done by then, and tarps come in handy.


One pile over here in the diningroom, being held to the floor by the container filled with: 13 catapillars, three leaves, two rocks and a yellow pick-up truck.

And two piles over here, in the livingroom.

Busy week coming up. Goodthing Mary has the week off to help.

Porch is Poured

So lets start off with a picture totally unrelated to the building project, except that we see this hawk and several others, fly overhead nearly everyday.

Now on to the project...


Knapp Concrete got out to finish pouring the porch on Friday, after a long week of rain, about 2 inches of rainfall total. They backed the cement truck up as close as they could get it and they moved over half the porch with a power wheelbarrel.

It looks desceptivaly narrow. It is in actuality 12 feet deep on both sides of the house. It has a very fine brush stroke for traction. We are going to let it cure for as long as possible before staining it, some stains say to wait 28 days for it to cure before using their product... cold weather is upon us... so we might cut that a bit close.

Another project we have been working on is setting the Doors. The Doors are 8 feet tall, kinda get a feel for their height from D'Artagnon standing there. This picture was taken before the porch was poured, so he is abit shorter in comparison.

There that's better, now he has Cement beneath his feet.


We have the single doors set and the lock-sets and handles on, we have only the one double-door in, but it isn't plumbed yet... but it sure feels good to have real doors.


We have most of the plastic off the floor inside, it is where it is, because we are still trying to slow the cure of the concrete, there are a couple of spots where the pipes were real close to the surface, within an inch, and more than likely they will crack but we are doing our best.