Xmas weekend

This weekend found us back home with family, no working on the house, no working in general, it was very relaxing.

Now we are fully recovered from work stress and ready to enjoy our vacation this coming week by working on the house!  Taping and spackling to be exact 🙂

I had a very high tech Christmas this year – Ryan got me a Kindle reader which I was very excited to start playing with right away and I plan to go look for a new book to read on it shortly!  My parents got me a photo printer that prints 12×12 size pages for scrapbooking!  My in-laws got me preserving supplies so I can make jams/jellies and sauces this coming summer – I’m VERY excited about that.

The entertainment over the long weekend consisted mostly of new Wii games.  My sister got Band Hero which we tried out right away and my parents got Rock Band 2 and Beatles Rockband which also got some major play time.  My brother got Mario Brothers which is great multiplayer and we tried out the Hasbro Family Game Night (1 and 2)  when we were sick of playing music.  Fun was had by all.

Tomorrow we head home early to unpack and relax and prep for working on the house come Monday!

Drywall is Up!!

What a transformation! My parents came out Friday at 1:30 to be here for the drywall delivery. We did some prep work on the electrical (although I was up until 2am on Thursday night getting things as prepped as I could).

Drywall came around 2:30 and by evening we had the TV Room ceiling and exterior wall done!

Saturday we got up early and by dinner time the TV Room, and Gym were completely drywalled (minus the closet). The ceiling in the bathroom was also done!

Sunday Ryan added extra screws to the ceiling while I tightened all the screws in the walls that needed it. Then we started spackling in the TV Room and taped a few seams. Most of the taping will happen the week after xmas since we are taking it off but it was good to get a feel for what we’re in for!

Pictures:
Tvroom before drywallBefore Drywall TvroomTvroom before drywall facing front hall

Ceiling done:Tv room ceiling done

Tv room after drywall!Tv Room drywall - diningroom wallTv room drywall - bathroom wallTvroom drywall closet wall

Demolition!

Well we’re in prep-for-drywall mode so next on the list was to demo the interior walls adjacent to the walls we’re going to drywall.

We spent saturday morning doing demo, one full truck load of plaster later and we were done. It actually went really fast and wasn’t too messy since it wasn’t plaster and lathe but rather plaster on rockboard.

Then there was some support work that needed to be done in the exposed areas. Ryan went to work on that. We are almost ready for drywall now!

Ryan built this wall around the backside of the diningroom builtins:

Before:Diningroom builtin - back before

After:builtin back - after

Electrical Weekend

We spent this weekend with some electrical projects. Mostly testing out the wiring that has been done for a while to make sure it was done right.

The first project we did was to install the patch panel that I built in the basement. Then we ran the rest of the cable and ethernet drops to both the tv room and the gym. This actually went pretty quickly with 2 people working on it and I can’t wait for the rest of my patch panel supplies to arrive so I can start putting the wires in for good.

Then it was on to real electrical stuff:
First we we had to wire the feeds into the Circuit Breaker box, this went pretty smoothly and the 3 new feeds were in.
Then I came the trickier part: actually turning on the feeds to test them, there was some prep work first to be done and each circuit was different:
– The outlet circuit in the tv room was tested and worked – I wired a single outlet so we had one in that room and the rest were disconnected after testing.
– The porch outlet circuit – which consists of a single outlet on the porch (which we need for xmas lights) – and then a wire that will lead to a second outlet at some point I currently wired as a light in the back of the basement since we don’t have one there.
– The tv room light circuit – this one was tricky, I wired up light bulbs to each location and then wired in the switches which will have to come back out now to drywall but I wanted them for testing. Then i turned it on and everything worked well except for the 3-way center light that will be a fan and light. I didn’t actually wire this correctly and I’m not worried about it because there was no insulation near by to worry about cut wires or anything.

While I did this Ryan started framing in a section of the tv room that was previously not square. The built-in from the diningroom was going to cause us problems so we decided to build a wall behind it to drywall against. We lose a few inches of space but gain a nice square corner. Unfortunately we ran out of wood so this project is not yet complete 🙂

In progress wall: Ryan's wall in progress

Sunday we made a trip to Lowes to get a programmable thermostat which I later installed (hopefully to save a bit on oil this winter). Then I spent time researching the problem I’m having with my car (ignition control module we think). I ordered the parts I need for that repair. Honestly I don’t know where the rest of the weekend went! I know I spent a couple hours doing some cooking and baking for a work holiday event but it sure seems like a short day!