The first full project we have to do at the new house is some structural work – adding some new supports in the basement to take the wave out of the floors, there just isn’t enough support down there currently.
Ryan started digging (jack hammer) the holes for new footings for some new posts we’ll add in. This past weekend he got 4 holes done, 1 more to go then he’ll pour the footings.
The holes, nice and square!Each will be 2x2x1 ft footing
Ryan is hoping to do the last hole some night this week. It sure is a hot and humid week! We have a 4 day weekend coming up – lots of house work planned!
Well it’s done! We are officially no longer using oil – the oil boiler is gone! That really saves a lot of space in the basement, opening it up a bunch. The gas line is in (they even planted grass where they tore up the lawn – and some of it is growing even without me watering it haha!). The new water heater (tankless) is in and feeding the hot water for the house. The heat works, although it was only on to test it. We have a furnace in the basement that does forced hot air downstairs then we have a gas line that goes up to the attic and runs a furnace up there that has forced hot air through ceiling vents to the upstairs.
The oil furnace is gone!New tankless water heater nicely mounted!
New gas furnaceA view of the main trunk and return trunk.
We also have central air in the upstairs (condenser unit outside) that has been on for a few weeks (no gas needed). So we are very excited to have actual heat this winter – no oil bill (just a gas bill which should be MUCH lower than oil has been!).
We also bought our own heat registers for the floors downstairs, the brown ones they installed were very nice but we were looking for something a bit more ornate to match the victorian feel since the downstairs has so much nice trim work we are doing to keep it victorian. Upstairs the vents are in the ceilings and I couldn’t find nice ones to replace them so we’re leaving the simple white vents up there.
Heat registers (this is actually a return, the registers are smaller)
If I haven’t said it, I’m very excited, last winter half the downstairs didn’t even have heat because we had removed the radiators during renovations. Now every room has heat (the kitchen will be light on heat until we renovate and he comes back and adds a second drop to it but that was our choice since we don’t know the layout yet). The ducts take up a lot of space but surprisingly they fit well in the basement, you can easily walk under them without even bending over so it shouldn’t be a problem. In the attic they are all run to the side (behind what will be a knee wall) and then under the floors leaving the main area open still.
We just have to insulate the attic before winter so the furnace doesn’t freeze up. Technically we could put in the knee wall and just insulate around the furnace but with the spray foam it’s easier to just do a large area. We’ll see what happens, we have time before we have to decide and other projects to finish first.
On my list now is to find someone to remove the old oil tank and then someone to remove the old steam radiators!
Well my last week off of work and Alex got a cold – then passed that cold on to Ryan and I for the weekend. Lovely. So we’ve all had very little sleep (Alex is up every 2 hours at night when she’s sick evidently and prefers to be held). Luckily she’s mostly been in a good mood while sick, it’s just the lack of sleep that’s making me grumpy 🙂
Anyhow, even sick we couldn’t take the weekend off – the tvroom is on track to get done soon and with the couch coming Friday we made it a priority to get the trim done on the walls the couch will block.
So Friday night we sanded the 2 walls the couch will block and I got the first coat of trim paint on them. Saturday we got the rest of the trim sanded and sanded the paint on those 2 walls. I got the second coat of paint on the trim the couch will block Saturday night. So the rest of the trim needs to be painted still but the couch can go in once those 2 walls get a coat of paint (and the ceiling).
Sunday we wired the new furnace and water heater in the basement that will get hooked up Monday. The gas line is officially in (Friday) so we will be running off gas this week hopefully!
It is crazy warm out today! But just in case it gets cold again – we now have insulation in the nursery and master bathroom as well as along the sill plate in the basement 🙂 It was great getting work done on the house while I got to stay at my desk and get regular work done. When they do a good job I like hiring people and this place did a much better job than what we’ve had done before.
Anyway – here are some pictures!
Spraying...Cutting...
And the finished pictures…
Basement sill plate - although the one mistake they made is that there were 2 bays we asked them NOT to spray (i marked under with an X), because we have to still run pipes and electric for the kitchen renovation some day - all well, we'll be cutting that back out.
The master bathroom (we didn't have them do around the windows since these haven't yet been replaced).The nursery and top of stairs.The nursery including the closet.The ceiling in the front hallway (front door entrance) - this part of the ceiling is just a porch roof above so we wanted it insulated.More in the basement - the front and back didn't have actual bays to spray but he sealed up what was there.Even got into the crawl spaces - uck!
I’m not quite sure what percentage of our house is now insulated – what’s not insulated:
the kitchen
master bedroom
upstairs bathroom (the small one)
what will be the washer/dryer room (small section)
back bedroom (sewing room)
attic
Not too bad – we’re definitely more than 50% insulated, probably 65% maybe would be my guess. And I have all the windows open so the smell is already aired out (this stuff didn’t give off very much of a smell anyway compared to whatever the other people used). Oh in case anyone is interested – we went with GreenStar out of MA this time around.
Well this weekend was eventful but not quite productive 🙂 Ryan was away with his friends for a long weekend so after getting the house cleaned up and organized, and doing lots of baking I had a little girl party on Saturday (stitch friends). One of the treats I made was these homemade strawberry sorbet in chocolate cups treat:
Mmmmm - strawberry sorbet!
Fitzy had his cousin Buddy over to play for the weekend and they really are best buds.
Tuckered out on sunday 🙂
Saturday was a long day and after the girls all left I just crashed for the night (after clean up of course). Sunday I had big plans to be productive – but when i woke up I was still tired so the dogs and I chilled for most of the day (I finished up a good books with them cuddled on the couch). In the afternoon I did manage to do one little household item that’s been on my list for a long time…
We have this old switch (turn style) for the basement entryway light and it doesn’t always work (the wiring is old and loose). Since we put in new basement lights when we first bought the house I’ve been meaning to run a new light and switch off of that circuit so I could reliably see going down the first half of the basement stairs with laundry in my arms. Plus this means I could disconnect a bunch of the knob and tube that’s spliced numerous times for this light/switch and an old outlet.
Took a little while but we have a light. This isn’t permanent, when we remodel the kitchen we’ll be redoing this entryway a bit but who knows when that will be so for now we have a light!
New switch (see the turn style one to the right - that's now disconnected)New light fixture (the old one was definitely not up to par)
I also hung up a sheet to keep the dust more contained in our work area (since I’ll be sanding the drawers and shelves of the built-ins as soon as I’m motivated to).
Work area dust sheet 🙂
I spent Sunday evening over at my uncle’s house for my cousin Maia’s birthday. Buddy is going to stay the week with them so he made the trip with me. The dogs must have worn each other out because Fitz was pretty tired most of Monday when I worked from home. He has completely recovered however and thank goodness it was daycare day – he was driving me nuts this morning!
And last night I decided to do something fun and make a baby quilt for Itty Bitty! I actually only intended to get the strips cut but it went so quickly I couldn’t stop myself. This is the same pattern I used for the crib quilt for little Jason but this time I used all flannels. I just have to figure out what to use for backing and binding now. The one unfortunate thing was that I could only use 10 flannels so I had to limit my choices and now i have leftover favorites so I may need another quilt. But after I finish this up I need to make an owl wallhanging. Maybe I’ll make burp cloths or bibs something with my scrap pieces.
Fabrics that I selected for the quiltQuilt top all put together (crib size)
The corners of the blocks definitely do not line up well but the nature of flannels is that they are stretchy so that was challenging and since the quilt is so busy I wasn’t worried about it. Plus I plan to lay it on the floor for tummy time – not exactly important that it’s perfect 🙂 This quilt took only 3 hours to cut and piece (for future reference)!
It’s like all the rain that didn’t come this summer waited to come today – it rained buckets! Of course I couldn’t sit still and do nothing so we decided to do some basement projects.
First We moved all of the poplar wood to Ryan’s shelves which opened up the center floor of the basement finally!! That alone made my vacation worth it, then we put in an outlet for the freezer so now I can finally go to BJs and stock up our freezer!
Poplar all stacked on the shelves finally.New freezer finally running
My patch panel is still in progress but since it’s my other basement project ongoing i took a picture anyway.
Patch panel in progress
Taking another short break, we might work on stripping some more window trim for the tv room if my hands are up to it (they’re a little sore).
