Ryan has been working hard on the front porch (with help from his dad!). The framing is finished up, the roof is zipped (zip system including tape). The soffet returns have to be framed out still – probably this weekend. We’ve also picked out our decking material (Trex) and color (color was a tough one to choose!). I’m sure roof work (soffits) will continue this weekend and I’m hoping to have time to work on the master bedroom/bathroom painting project soon too.
New porch
The porch is 8×8 ft and matches the dormers very well size and angle wise!
Bella modelling for me with a close up
Hopefully it won’t be too long now before we have our new roof on and this will be really water tight!
Now that the master bedroom floor is done and it’s just painting left the focus switched to the front porch. We are adding a front porch to protect the door and match the dormers. The first step was digging some 4′ deep holes for footings and filling those. Mark and Ryan spent a few days digging and then about an hour to finish them up. I wish I had gotten a picture of the open holes, it was impressive!
New footings – we’re leaving the stairs hidden under the porchOne for alexand one for Bella
The inspector kindly came out late friday night to inspect the holes so the footings were done Saturday and on Sunday the framing could be started!
The bottom part is done (we have not yet picked out decking!)
Last night we had materials delivered (finally the rain stopped) and Ryan and Mark started on the roof portion!
They have all the rafters cut I believe and hope to work again tonight on it.
The current push to get the porch done is to get it to the point where the roof can be done. We are having a metal standing seam roof installed in early May and need this porch done (framing) before hand. The decking and ‘decoration’ like post details and railings can be done later. I believe once the rafters and zip are on the roof then it’s doing the soffits and tieing them into the house and then we’re ready for the roofer.
This post is long over due but we moved in as planned and we’ve been a bit busy since then! We had a few weekends off between a wedding and then camping but a little house work progress has also been made.
First – the floors were finished, the painting was finished, the electrical was finished (minus a few lights in these pictures but most are now done).
The first piece of furniture was moved in
Not a lot was done in Bella’s room once the floors were finished. Shoe molding was installed in all rooms, a few minor painting touch ups. The closet door still needs to be re-hung but it’s more convenient not having doors on closets at the moment 🙂
Another view of Bella’s room finished
The first night we were in we had no doors hung and with Bella not being a good sleeper in general plus no doors – we were all up at lot. The next day we hung those doors immediately 🙂
Bella’s room moved in!Alex’s room finished!
Alex’s room is also missing closet doors – hers actually have to be made still. Initially we didn’t have her light or fan installed yet, her fan is in now but not her light (it comes next week – this is the third try ordering a pink chandelier – they kept sending white ones!).
The other side of Alex’s roomThresholds
Ryan made the thresholds for the 2 doors but they haven’t been sanded or poly’d yet (they aren’t actually installed either, we’ll do that after they are finished). But they are made at least! He made them out of leftover cherry flooring.
Alex’s door and threshold – neither are finished
Another project we did the first week we moved in was outfit the kitchen with some new temporary cabinets and a new counter top (not finished yet)
Temporary cabinets
We won’t be re-doing the kitchen for a while now so this makes it much more usable. We can fit most of our stuff in the kitchen now and I was able to unpack the kitchen once I put my large rolling shelves in the pantry.
The next project we did was the first weekend we had lived here. We went out to boston for a wedding saturday but when we got back on Sunday Ryan and his dad finished the siding on the dormers!
Dormers have siding
This weekend we promised the girls some family time so we spent most of Saturday doing fun activities with them (a trip to the museum and then to Huck Finn’s playland). Ryan and his Dad spent the rest of the weekend finishing installing the trim around all the windows!
Widnows (upstairs) are completely done!Front windows oneSide windows
The outside is almost buttoned up for winter. We still have doors to replace but those will be spring projects.
Progress continues quickly as we finished up all the prep work for insulation and they came out last Wednesday to start the job (they are finishing up today with a few small touch ups and cleanup). We are seeing a huge improvement in heat retention even with the heat turned off this weekend (we turned it off so we don’t get any of the insulation spray fumes in the air handlers/filters). We used the fireplace this weekend and today it was still 50+ degrees on both floors! Once we start running the heat again it will barely have to run!
A few pictures I took last week…
My sewing room
All 2×4 walls have 1.5″ of closed cell, then open cell to fill. The 2×6 (new) walls in dormers are just open cell. The attic and basement rim joist were also all sprayed. The only part of our house without spray foam is now the addition section (over the slab) which is the livingroom, washer/dryer room and the un-insulated garage.
Downstairs bathFront entryPlayroomKitchen
Ryan and his dad worked on the house this weekend. They got the ceiling between the old ceiling and new dormer section firred out, ready for sheet rock :
Ready for sheetrock
They also got all the rest of the frieze board/trim installed on the dormers as well as the front of the soffit corners covered with white aluminum!
Dormers ready for siding
The hope was to do siding last weekend but the siding that arrived was the wrong kind so we are now waiting 2 weeks for a special order siding. In the mean time we are getting ready for drywall upstairs – our plumber has started running the lines for the bathrooms and Ryan is finishing up the last bit of framing. I have a tiny bit of electrical (hooking some lines up to the panel box) and we should be ready to go. I think if we were doing the drywall ourselves we’d just be going on it already – our hold up is that we hoped to hire someone because the taping/spackling would go so much faster if it wasn’t us doing it. We’re not hearing back from the one person we found that could do it so we may just have to do it ourselves and hope we can do it quickly enough.
We’ve made a lot of progress in the last month. It’s not easy to take pictures because it’s mostly demolition and wiring but the end goal is to get both the upstairs and downstairs of the main house (not the addition which is the livingroom/garage area) insulated. Originally we were going to do just the upstairs but we decided with the new heating system it made sense to get the downstairs also done at the same time. This meant more demo, more electrical.
This weekend we were close to done on electrical and I had a handle on it. I’ve got exactly 3 small tasks left to do before we’re done and ready now. I got a new outlet circuit run in the playroom, broke apart some lighting circuits (the whole downstairs was on a single circuit so I put the hallways on their own, the others can be modified later as they are on interior walls). I got the small bathroom wired up – I need a double gang box to finish it and I need romex connectors to wire the fans in both bathrooms but I plan to pick those up tomorrow and finish that up.
The sewing room/office outlet circuit needs a new feed (it’s fed off the basement lights which doesn’t work well for us), the fans have to be wired and the 4 wires fed to the subpanel that aren’t hooked up yet need to be hooked up. Then electrical upstairs is done completely (and downstairs exterior walls are done). Next Sunday we’ll finish removing the old insulation, check for any nails we missed in the walls and tie down any loose wires we missed (hidden in insulation). Then insulation will be that week after!
Ryan and his Dad worked on an outdoor project since the weather was so nice – they started getting the soffits covered with vinyl and the frieze boards covered with aluminum. We need a bit more material but it looks awesome so far! We haven’t ordered siding yet (nothing matches that we’ve found yet) but it looks great seeing this come together.
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.
Chimney finished!Insert installed!
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!
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!
Heat pump!!!
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!
New windows!!!
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!
First off – Ryan did an amazing job closing up the second dormer quickly. On the following Saturday he finished the roof on it (Nov 14) while I was out of town.
The windows arrived last friday and that night Ryan got the first one put in already! He put the second one in on Saturday and got them sealed up with trim on Sunday. He also installed the small window over the garage so Alex’s room has 2 new windows now! Both dormers have plywood flooring now too.
New window friday nightFlooring in dormerOther dormer floorWindows installed on both dormers!
I was away with Bella Saturday night through Sunday but got photo updates as the trim went up!
Window has trim!The second with trimThe small window replaced with new trim
We are using Azek for the trim around the windows. The brown siding is vinyl and we haven’t found a perfect match yet (we found matching style but no colors match perfectly) so we haven’t pulled the trigger on new siding yet for the dormers.
Our HVAC equipment is all here and Ryan’s cousin is starting on duct work this week (and they got the attic unit up into the attic last night). Progress everywhere – hopefully soon the outside stuff will be done and we won’t be so weather dependent – it has been COLD on the weekends!
We got hit with rain this week – especially on Wednesday which was the day Ryan and his dad hoped to finish up the dormer. THey worked in the rain but they couldn’t finish the roof shingles in the rain so they just finished up the soffit (closed it in) and Ryan got the window cut. They also put down plywood for floor in the first dormer so that floor is nice and solid now.
Hmm I didn’t seem to take pictures once it was all closed up so here are some pictures from Monday’s progress when they ad started the roof (ran out of shingles) – after this they closed up the front and as I said, as of Wednesday the soffit is closed up and the window is cut and everything is sealed. Just waiting on windows and siding now!!!
Dormer 2 roof going onA side viewOur new (to us) cherry flooring!
I’ll update again after this weekend – Dormer should be finished up (until we get windows which may be next week!) and Ryan will hopefully take a little break sunday as the girls miss him on weekends quite a bit!
It’s not really a surprise that dormer number 2 is going a bit faster than the first – lessons learned and all that! Ryan and his dad worked 1/2 of Saturday and all day Sunday this weekend on the dormer. Saturday morning Ryan went and picked up the wood we had milled into flooring – it’s cherry we got for free from someone my dad knows, and we had it milled – it came out beautiful! It should be plenty to do both of the girls’ rooms! The person that milled it also may be able to get us another chunk of cherry for a decent price to do our master bedroom too so the whole upstairs would be cherry. He also recommended ash as an option for downstairs because it’s very hard and takes stain well and we can get it cheap. That might be our plan now!
Anyhow so the dormer went fast! Ryan had pre-built the front wall so it was a matter of doing all the cutting, then putting the wall up, and doing all the flashing Saturday. Sunday they put up the side walls with plywood, then did the support post in the original roof, and all the roof beams. Ryan took tomorrow off and hopes to get the plywood on the roof before it rains on tuesday. Then Wednesday is a holiday so he hopes to do the shingles since his dad also has the day off. Next weekend will be the buttoning up I’m sure. I can’t believe how different the front of the house looks!
I love it! And there’s so much added room in each of the bedrooms!
Tomorrow I will work from the new house so I’m there in case of emergency since Ryan will be working on the roof by himself! Luckily we have internet at the new house now 🙂
