We are expecting another 2 feet of snow almost tomorrow – after the 5 inches today. Honestly I just don’t know where we’re going to put that much more snow. The banks are so high that when I shovel, it mostly falls back down at me!
Luckily I am able to work from home during all this snow so I don’t have to venture out of the house except to shovel and snow blow. Today I figured out how to start the snow blower so I can at least help with the snow removal more now. Previously I mostly just shoveled the stairs/walkways and around the car. Today I cleared the whole driveway, leaving just a bit for Ryan after running out of gas and not wanting to go down to the basement for more (it’s cold down there).
I do hope all this snow does not delay our insulation friday – we need to order oil again (once a month right now) and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m hoping once the insulation is in I can drag out the oil deliveries for 2 months at a time – maybe???
No house progress this weekend as we were back in NY visiting family however we did get a date for insulation – this coming friday! Which means I’m going to have some busy evenings getting this ready (need to move things out of the way, need to get all the nails out of the wall, need to make sure wiring is out of the way and need to run one last switch).
It’s very exciting and I do hope it does not get delayed!
On the quilting front, I got mom’s quilt all quilted and gave it to her this weekend, I did not do the binding because after talking to her she said she could do that part. I have some curtains to make for my sister up next, then some shades and a valance. It’s good practice for my own house which isn’t quite ready for shades/curtains but I do plan to make them eventually!
Nothing could beat Saturday, we got so much done. And sunday we didn’t even try. We slept later on Sunday, we played video games, we relaxed. It was great. I did run the vacuum through the house (including the shop vac/demo area) – to get any lingering dust. And I started a puzzle 🙂
Monday however was much more productive. First we got up early and went to the dump – it was closed – so we left and went over to get the truck serviced (oil change etc). Finally home we worked on the outside wiring, we put up the front exterior lights and put a wire for a porch fan.
Front light blocks are up!Wiring on inside for front lights and fan
Then I put 3 coats of shellac on ryan’s work table (throughout the day). That’s all ready to be used (although we have been using it already).
Ryan's work table for making cabinets
During the table shellacing, Ryan went across the street where the duplex was being auctioned – the bank ended up buying it for a crazy amount (they don’t want to lose anything) but I just don’t see how they’ll sell it for that much.
Finally we ended the evening watching some movies while I worked more on my puzzle – I got this one for Christmas and it’s very colorful!
After a nice long weekend (and it really did feel long for a change – which was great!), it’s back to work, although I am working from home today due to the snow – and it’s still snowing out! I think we’re past 6 inches now. I may have to figure out how to start the snowblower later and clean up the driveway before ryan gets home. Or I’ll leave it for him 🙂
We had a very productive day today, it started nice and early but at 8:30am it was only 3 degrees outside and a little too cold to tear down the porch ceiling. So we started with an indoor project first.
We made the blocks for the front exterior lights, then Ryan routed around the edges to make them look nice and I primed them.
Blocks being sandedRyan making the edges look niceBlock ready to be primedBlocks primed and ready to go up
Ryan even took down the siding that needed to come down while I got these primed so tomorrow or Monday we can install them (hopefully it’s a little warmer one of those days).
After the blocks were primed, we decided to do a dump run (cardboard has been piling up since xmas) and a home depot run. At home depot we bought some supplies to make a portable closet! An hour later we had this little contraption all finished up:
Portable temporary closet
I forgot to take a picture after we added the shelves to the bottom to store my shoes and our jeans. We got the closet emptied out completely and sealed the doors (closet and bedrooms) so we could demo our closet. We decided about a week ago that we should do our closet now so we could insulate the exterior wall it shares with the stair well. Also it moves our closet renovation up the priority list which we would both love.
So a few hours of demo later including cleanup, a truck full of wood, 6 bags full of plaster and our closet is no more:
Closet all demo'dAnother view of our closet
We plan to move the door so it’s centered and we can put bars on both sides of the closet with shelving along the back when we refinish it. We also got some cedar from my dad that we plan to use for the walls. Plus taking out the ceiling gives us a couple more feet of space in there (it was a low ceiling).
All this was done by 6pm (including cleanup). So we’ve settled in to relax for the night. Not too much left to get done this weekend, the electrical but we got the blocks already done which was the hardest part. Hopefully the dump is open on Monday because we have a couple loads to bring over!
I think we’re taking most of tomorrow off to relax (maybe some quilting??) but if it’s warmer we may do the outside electrical wiring to get it done. And we still have Monday off to enjoy!
Well this 3 day weekend to work on the house couldn’t come along soon enough! We should be able to wrap up the electrical now that the exterior lights arrived and we’ll be ready for insulation. And none too soon because we just filled our oil tank after one month of using the heat consistently and that was 344 gallons of oil over December – yikes!
We have someone coming today to give us a quote, hopefully they can do the spray foam when it’s this cold out. If we can’t get it done soon I may be convinced to put up some fiberglass insulation temporarily – anything to keep the breeze down in here 🙂
On a side note – hello winter – we got a raging snow storm this week. And of course our snowblower wouldn’t start! So all day Ryan tinkered on and off with it and I shoveled on and off a bit (front walk and bottom of the driveway). Finally we went and got a new sparkplug and that fixed the problem – we also changed the oil as it needed it. So by 5pm we were snowblowing the 2 ft of snow that had fallen – not an easy feat! But alas it was done and now our snowblower is happy again (we hope).
So 3 day weekend here we come, got some old projects to wrap up (wiring) and some new projects (demo the closet) all in prep for insulation. Hopefully we’ll get a little relaxing time too. Man my hands are cold – back to work!
Today was our last day off and it was a day full of wrapping things up. In the morning we ran errands, after lunch I spent some time setting up our new router which arrived.
We finally dragged ourselves into action and got some wiring done. We wired the the cable/ethernet lines in the livingroom, the switch for the recessed lights in the cupola and ran a feed line to the sconce lights in the stairway.
livingroom cable drop and subpanel line run to basementRecessed light switchSconce light feed
After I got all the wires secured I hooked up the tvroom ethernet lines to the patch panel and put the new router and modem in the basement. Finally I hooked up our new Roku player (wired through the patch panel) so now we can watch hulu plus and amazon movies on TV without hooking up my computer. The Roku player was a gift from my brother for Christmas.
Hopefully our exterior lights will arrive before next weekend so we can get the boxes up for those. In the meantime I need to find someone to get an estimate on insulation – very close now!
Two trips to home depot today and we made some good progress on the electrical. We got the front hall light circuit feed run.
Front hall feed goes to a triple box
The blocks for the outside lights put together (Ryan got to use his pocket hole kit).
Blocks for the outside front lights
We also ordered the front outside lights (the one we bought originally for the side was discontinued so we had to pick something new). We went with these:
Then we put up boxes and wired the sconce lights in the stairway. We still need to connect them to the center light at the top of the stairs but that involves getting up in the attic so we put that off until Sunday or Monday.
Sconce light boxes installed in stairway
The checklist is finally getting smaller. Sunday we’ll remove the porch ceiling in the front that’s still up, that way we can run the wire for the exterior fan. We may wait to put up the exterior light boxes until the lights show up to make sure we get the right type of box installed. We still have to run the cable/ethernet lines in the livingroom as well but they’re pretty short since they’re right above the patch panel. We ordered a new wireless router too that I’m hoping to put in the basement (it’s much stronger), can’t wait for that to come Monday too!
A good New Year’s Eve day! Now I just need to bake a pie and clean up the house a bit since my brother is coming over Saturday night after our family Christmas celebration. Then we’ll watch a movie until midnight (very exciting) 🙂
It’s been a slow 2 days around here this vacation. Wednesday started out strong with some electrical work, we finished the outlet circuit in the livingroom. I then planned out the lighting circuit for the front hall which is pretty complicated because it goes up the stairs with a 4 way switch.
Ryan’s cold was hitting him hard so we took the rest of Wednesday to watch movies and relax. Today we finished up some shopping for Groudas Family Christmas this weekend. Then Ryan made his router table while I baked some cookies for the neighbors that plowed our driveway while we were back home for Christmas.
Router table, just needs its wheels
Tomorrow we will work on the electric some more and I’ll get the house cleaned up a bit. Saturday is our extended family christmas and then we have Sunday and Monday free to work on the house and relax before it’s back to work!
My brother-in-law has started his own plumbing business and we’re just now getting his website up and running. I’m still awaiting more feedback from him and some more information to add to his site but the more I link to his site the easier it will be for the google bots to find it 🙂 JRD Plumbing LLC
The website is pretty sparse at the moment, i really only whipped it up Sunday evening but it’s a start!
I can’t believe it’s only Saturday night, we’ve had such a great weekend already. Of course having a cold isn’t great but it’s mostly an annoyance at this point, making me sniffly and tired.
Ryan’s parents came out to visit Friday night we had dinner, watched movies, baked some cookies and relaxed this morning. After they left Ryan and I ordered our front hallway lights (chandelier and sconces) online.
I was pretty worn out after that so we took a nap while watching It’s a Wonderful Life, getting into the Christmas spirit! The nap was great, I woke up so refreshed, not cured of my cold but definitely a bit better. I helped Ryan build his work table for building cabinets, he’s also planning on building a router table but we started with the work table.
Ryan's table on wheels!
His table is a great size for a kitchen island too, so I persuaded him to roll it into the kitchen to help me bake cookies! In a few hours I had the annual neighbors’ cookie plates all wrapped up and ready to hand out tomorrow:
Christmas cookies 2010
This year I went with gingersnaps, sugar cookies and inside out chocolate chip (white chocolate chips in a chocolate cookie).
So a little more baking in the evenings this week (still got to make greek cookies to bring home) and a few presents to wrap that arrived today and I’m ready to go.
Tomorrow if I’m feeling up to it I’ll work on the electrical a bit. I’m hoping the sconce lights don’t take long to arrive because I need to figure out what kind of box will work with those before wiring them.
And I’m off to relax for the rest of the evening (which means take NyQuil and go to sleep) 🙂
