Livingroom – Page 4 – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Just a little insulation

Well today did not go as planned unfortunately. We spent the evening last night clearing out the bottom of the driveway and taking nails/screws out of the walls for insulation today. We got the last wire run and everything secured. This morning we moved the radiators and I installed the last cable drop.

The insulation guys, after getting all set up however were having equipment failures. They couldn’t get the pressure they needed and need to do some repairs. So they sprayed just enough that we could put the radiators back and not have to move them again (can’t got days without the radiators in at all!). Then left to come back end of next week. UGG! At least we got the radiators in though.

I’m totally bummed that insulation is not done yet and we’re having some leaks from snow build up on the porch roofs. Ryan is clearing the front porch roof as much as he can. We’re more worried about the roof over the bathroom/gym but it so far has not leaked. We’ll try to clear it a bit but it’s really built up there.

It’s going to be a different weekend than I had planned, that’s for sure. Probably clearing snow and maybe doing some insulation in the basement but probably not putting up crown molding in the gym since we can’t move the stuff out of there into the other rooms yet since they are not ready.

Here are some insulation pictures – what’s done so far:

DSCN0872 — diningroom insulation started

DSCN0873 — livingroom insulation started

The end of vacation

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.

DSCN0827 — livingroom cable drop and subpanel line run to basement

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!

Some more electrical

Once I got the pulled pork in the oven to slow cook all day I decided to start by running the wire from the basement to the attic. This was not so easy as it involved taking up some floor boards and then drilling a hole in the attic (needed Ryan’s help). Finally we got the wire run, we still need to drill a hole to the basement but that’s the easy part!

DSCN0749 — Wire for the subpanel in the attic

They didn’t have copper wire in this gauge at home depot so we had to go with aluminum wire. It’s a 4 wire and we should be able to run 100amps up to the subpanel. We can’t hook this up as we don’t have the subpanel or the 100amp breakers for the basement but we just need it run so we can get insulation.

Next I started taking out the baseboards behind the radiator in the livingroom. Once done, Ryan drilled the holes and I ran the wires for the outlet back there.

It was no easy feat getting the wires around the corners in the cupola. But since we plan on removing the radiators at some point I really wanted an outlet back in the center. I screwed the wires to the outside paneling lightly so they stay in the center when we get insulation blown in this time. This was tricky though because I had to make sure the wires weren’t too close to the outside wall because we are nailing the paneling on next summer.

And now that we can put the radiator back (we should only have to move it one more time now for insulation), I decided to quit for the day and start dinner. A quick check on the pulled pork shows them coming along nicely but not done in time to eat tonight (tomorrow for sure). 2 1/2 of these will be brought to work for pigging out on Tuesday.

After I get cleaned up maybe I’ll play a little more Diablo and relax!

Next weekend (the plan anyway)

fix the car?!
Put up a Christmas tree (got to get the house cleaned up this week then)
Get the lights wired in the livingroom (one switch will be on an outside wall)
Start wiring the front hallway!

Finally a weekend to work on the house!

And already we’ve made 2 trips to home depot 🙂 Although Friday night’s trip to home depot was to just get some weather stripping for the front door and some putty for the outside electrical entrance into the house (to make it water tight).

Today Ryan started removing the baseboards in the livingroom so we could wire, the sections that he removed and then drilled, i cleaned up and wired. We’ve got one more section (behind the radiator) to do and the livingroom outlets will be done. We also measured and bought the wire to run to the attic subpanel. We decided the diningroom doesn’t need any outlets on the small section of exterior wall if we keep the current outlet locations in there.

DSCN0755 — What will be the fourth and fifth outlets

We made a trip to the dump to finally get rid of the last of the wood from the porch project that’s been laying around.

I ended the day by getting 3 boston butts brining (to slow cook tomorrow for pigging out at work!). Then I made up a chocolate pie for tomorrow (just to enjoy).

Hopefully we can run some more wire tomorrow, finish up the tvroom outlets, run the subpanel wire and maybe wire the door bell. Next weekend we can start on the front hallway/staircase which is mostly lighting. It feels good to be able to work on the house again!

Now that’s a busy weekend

Mom and Dad came out Friday night so we could get an early start on Saturday. Friday night Ryan and I got some of the wood off around the diningroom windows and got the room ready to go.

I set up the camera on Saturday to take a picture every 10 minutes of our progress and I made a short video of the window install. We managed to get the 3 diningroom windows installed and the last livingroom window closed up before dinner Saturday. I’ll let the movie speak for itself 🙂

(note these may only work in windows)
Diningroom Window Install – click for movie

Then we moved onto the front door project – again I set up the camera to capture our progress. The door project actually went through dinner, then wrapped up for the night and we finished it up just after lunch on Sunday. The door looks amazing and tonight I’ll get the sidelight and frame sanded and stained if I can get off the couch again 🙂

Here’s our front door video:
Click for Front Door Install movie

What an amazing amount of work we got done this weekend and we never would have gotten this amount done without Dad’s help. It was great that mom and dad could come out and help with these projects, it made everything go a little faster with an expert’s help. I am hurting now though, my feet can’t even hold me up and unfortunately a headache is rampaging. Time for some tylenol and a nap maybe and I can get back into some work.