December 2015 – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Electrical

The weekend before christmas I got to work on the house a bit! Suzanne watched the girls on Sunday and we got some wires run – fan boxes installed in 2 of the 3 bedrooms (and hooked up to switches!). The benefit right now is that we finally have light in those rooms (previously no lights)!

We’ve decided to take down all the exterior wall sheetrock so we can properly do spray foam, we had done enough demo that it’s not really that much more. In the master it’s 1 wall, in the master bath it’s 1/2 of a wall, in Bella’s room it’s 2 walls (the most) and Alex’s room it’s one small wall. Because of the dormer walls and bathrooms already being demo’d – it’s not much more. This way we can do the outlet wiring a bit easier (mostly I just need to confirm the wiring is good and add some outlets to the dormers).

No pictures but progress was made. I’m looking forward to resuming some work – maybe Friday (holiday).

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is ready for the New Year!

Fireplace Insert

This past weekend we had some great weather (what month is this again?!!). Ryan and his dad got the new chimney liner installed and finished the top of the chimney! Next up was installing the insert itself which took basically all day Sunday! It was quite the project.

Other than that project we did get a few other things done – Ryan has gotten the wall to the master closet all framed and the ceiling to the closet. I just didn’t get pictures when it was light out. We started installing the cover on the boat (we have to install all the snaps all the way around!).

We’ve got to do a few small fires in the fireplace before we can fully utilize it but we need to get some seasoned wood first 🙂 Our new heating system is making great progress too! The upstairs vents and returns are all in place, pipes are run. We ordered thermostats and got the wire we needed for wiring the outside unit. We *may* have heat upstairs before Christmas!

Heat and Windows

This weekend Ryan and his cousin got the new heat pump installed on the outside of the house. Ryan’s cousin is making great progress on the duct work in the attic as well and once we get the coolant lines run to the two units (attic and basement) we’ll get some heat going in the house! We are very excited to see how well this will heat the house – of course we need to get the new dormers and attic insulated for efficiency but we aren’t living there this winter so just need it warm enough to work on weekends for now!

Ryan and his dad got the last 3 windows installed downstairs on Sunday! Technically we have 2 more windows but we have to order them and we have to do the sliding doors so we’ll probably wait and do all of those next spring. The upstairs were the important ones to get done! Really great progress all around. I haven’t been to look at the progress but Ryan also worked on the wall in the master bedroom that will go across the dormer to make our closet!

I really love the style window we put in with the divided lites on top. The quality of the windows are also very good – we are quite happy with them! I’m excited for more progress this weekend! Time to get some electrical done upstairs so we can get to insulation after that and then start closing things up!