As he hoped our contractor was able to finish laying in the floor by the end of the day Tuesday! So the floor and the sheetrock in the cupola are done! And it’s not even the end of the week yet, we still have Friday (and today) for more progress. Our contractor is coming back today most likely to start on the 1/2 walls and a few small areas of floor that need patching. Friday hopefully most of the sheetrock can be finished in that room entirely and even part of the front hall. Then we’ll take a break on progress so we can have our tree up and use the room for a week or two. Then we’ll get back to finishing the room (taping/spackling/trim etc).
Floor finished – all original flooring from this spot and upstairs that we removed previously.
I’m very excited to use the room for xmas. And pretty soon we’ll have a fully useable finished playroom!
Saturday our neighbor finished up sheetrocking the cupola, it’s great having that done in time to put up a xmas tree this year! Our contractor got the rest of the floor cut out in a feathered pattern for re-installation.
Cupola sheetrocked
Sunday during naptime I got the lights in the livingroom wired down to the panel box and switches and pigtails all installed so there’s work light now after 4pm 🙂 I also put a temporary light in the diningroom which has had no light for a while 🙂 I cleaned up some wiring in the basement too although that’s an ongoing project. Eventually I’ll do a full panel box clean-up, make everything nice and tidy. I think we’ve finished wiring pretty much everything that is downstairs, except the microwave outlet. So anytime I have a free day with daylight to do it I can do that project.
Flooring progress at lunch time.
Today our contractor is back and he’s putting in the floor again. We have the saved stuff he pulled up (what was saveable) as well as what we saved when we pulled up the upstairs diningroom. It’s going great so far for such a tricky fill in job. He has to leave early today but he’s coming again tomorrow and I think based on the progress he’ll be able to finish tomorrow no problem. I think our neighbor is coming over Friday to start taping maybe, that would be great.
Our plan is to get our tree on next Monday and it will only stay up for a week this year so we can get back to finishing this room. Luckily we’ll be home a lot that week to enjoy it at least.
The contractor and neighbor were back over today while I worked from home. They got the ceiling of the cupola prepped and sheetrocked and then my neighbor started the walls while our contractor planned out our 1/2 walls he’s going to build and went and got materials.
We ran out of sheetrock so that’s item one for my neighbor tomorrow, then finishing up the walls in there. Our contractor is going to start working on feathering in the floor again. I plan to do some electrical work and maybe some grouting prep?
Ceiling done – well done!Wall on left of cupola is done3 walls mostly done (ran out of sheetrock) 🙂
I’m very happy to see progress on the weekends again. I think we can see an end in sight (far away) again, it was looking dismal for a while!
We hired our contractor and our neighbor to do some work part time for us on the front livingroom and they got started Friday, Saturday and Sunday this weekend so we have some great progress to report.
FRIDAY:
Our neighbor’s first job was to move a ton of stuff to the basement, clearing out the front livingroom, this took most of friday outside of any help he had to give our contractor.
Our contractor’s first job is to repair the floor in the cupola, it was slanting badly, very noticeable once the radiator was removed so he pulled up the floor friday, including the subfloor.
SATURDAY:
On Saturday Ryan finally had time to work on the house! After months of working weekends he had one off. So after Alex’s gym class he got working on tiling the shower. Our contractor had picked up materials to repair the joists in the cupola and my neighbor came over in the afternoon and started sheetrocking the livingroom outside of the cupola. Oh and I got to do some electrical to get the fan wired to the new switch.
Floor repairs startedPrep for drywall done and this corner drywalledShower tile progress from SaturdayStarted the floor Saturday
SUNDAY
Sunday we went out to breakfast (like usual) and stopped by home depot to get a new door for the bathroom. We decided to go with a new door because it’s an upstairs out of the way door and I wanted a smaller door since it opens out into the hallway.
Ryan then hung the door (i helped during naptime!). Our contractor continued work on the floor and our neighbor sheet rocked the other wall in the livingroom.
Floor repairedAnother view, ready for insulation.Bathroom door installed (although we then removed it to actually finish tiling) 🙂 So here’s the frame.
Next up our contractor insulated the floor and put down the new subfloor with help from our neighbor. Ryan continued tiling and I did some cleanup.
Subfloor almost done, just one small section to do and then replacing the flooring!
Ryan finished the shower tiling by Alex’s bedtime so once I put her down I helped and we finished the floor by 9pm. It was tough, and very cold outside cutting tiles but it’s done!
Shower left wall doneShower right wall doneFloor done!!!!
Next up on the bathroom is to get the trim done (including baseboards). Then painting trim and grouting, okay really we have to remove a bunch of thinset from the grout lines first in one section, that will take a while. We’ll see if we can get some prep done before next weekend so maybe we can get it grouted next weekend? Here’s hoping Ryan doesn’t have to work next weekend, that would be great.
Our neighbor is going to continue to work Fridays, they are going to sheet rock the cupola this friday, the goal is to have the floor fixed before xmas so we can put our tree in that area with sheetrock up (unfinished) and a floor! Then in January we’ll get that room finished up hopefully. Eventually this room will be Alex’s play room, i’m VERY excited!
Well the bumpout is going very smoothly so far. They got the panels all boxed out, the MDO all cut to approx size and pre-primed. They have to fussy cut the MDO to install it next but I’m impressed by one day of progress. The goal is to get this part of the bumpout finished, leaving the high part for later (caps and the peak). Next they’ll work on the cupola panels as well as siding the backside. Once the backside is sided they will move the pump station over to the bumpout so they can do the caps and peak with that. The staging will get moved to the roof for the higher part of the cupola. I think it’s a good plan. Hopefully our attic windows come soon (due some time next week), because they will be ready for them by then for sure unless it rains a lot.
Panels all framed out, all the way up. It’s hard to see but there are 3 rows of boxes between the windows. Next up will be MDO to put in the flat sections.It was hard to get a picture of the sides, but I like how the thin vertical section will still have 3 boxes to match the other sections.They rebuilt the structure and patched in the bottom of the soffit nice and tight and puttied it up. Looks great. Scraping has moved around to the bumpout portion now. Coming right along!
They are waiting on paint until they see some good dry days which makes sense.
Also they did 2 dump runs and a recycle run and the yard doesn’t look too bad.
Tuesday got rained out again but Monday the rain held off so they were able to get our bedroom windows all installed and a good start on scraping down the soffit over the backside.
Soffit scraping started, coming along nicelyBack side of cupola window progressFront side – looks good!Bedroom windows from the inside. They did a good job removing the trim and not really messing with the plaster. This is good because it may be a while before we get to renovating our bedroom.
Now the inside work is done, they are starting on panels on the bumpout today. At the pace they are going i’d say they may get all the panels on the bumpout done, maybe not the window cap only because it’s tricky? I’ve got some molding to paint tonight (I want the bed molding to be red and it’s easier if it’s pre-painted). Everything else will be yellow so it’s up to them when they add the molding, they could do it after painting the rest if they want, I just want to make sure I’m not holding them up.
Replicating the original cupola in some form or another is going to be very interesting. I was very excited to get a hint at what it used to look like this morning when they got the aluminum mostly off.
Last night I ran over to home depot after kiddo was in bed and Ryan was home and I ordered some vinyl replacement windows for the attic part of the cupola. We were waiting to see what was underneath and once we knew it was panels and could be rebuilt we just ordered new construction windows. Hopefully they come closer to 10 days instead of 2 weeks.
It sure was nice to come home to some great progress! They got 5 windows flashed and installed today. They also removed some more siding so we could see what the original cupola panels looked like – very interesting. I’m a little worried we don’t have windows for the top of the cupola yet. I’ve been having trouble getting such small double (or single) hung windows. I’m going to talk to our contractor tomorrow about calling Harvey windows and see if they have any, but even then it’s 2 week lead time.
Looking good!bumpout windows are also in!Interesting panels revealed
And the interior….
Bumpout (this will become the master bathroom.Laundry room (left) and bathroom (right).
Well clearly we are not getting work done on the house lately since there have been no blog updates 🙂 The small amount we did get done last weekend was in preparation for our new crew to start work. We hired a crew of 3 to do the exterior work (replace windows and siding) on the right side and front of the house’s 2nd and 3rd stories. This is a HUGE job and the price certainly reflects that. They are hoping to complete in 5 weeks or less although the cost is a fixed price for labor. Since we’re not getting work done I might as well blog about the work other’s are doing 🙂
Day 1 –
Removed aluminum siding on 2/3rds of the bumpout and the back section. Removed the wood siding/paneling on same sections. Removed 4 windows. Reframed 2 windows for smaller vinyl replacements and closed 1 window up.
Siding removed on this section (aluminum and original) as well as 4 windows on the right.Close up of the shingle damage – those are going to need to be replaced unlike the other side 🙁You can see how far around they got removing siding – started on the cupola.
Attic staircase window closed up, the other 2 windows framed in
Debri was all cleaned up, aluminum is piled up for us to recycle and tomorrow they will start putting up staging so they can access the bumpout and cupola more effectively.
Debri all hauled off already!
Inside shots…
Attic staircase window closed upNew windows popped in backwards for the night (temporary). The left one is our laundry room, the right one is our bathroom. The bump out window just has plastic over it for now.
I’m very happy with the pace they started with, getting the cruddy work over with quickly and cleaning up in the same day. The overall estimate is 5-6 weeks for this job, we all know the finishing work is the slowest part and they are going to be going all the way to caulking and painting with the new siding (as well as scraping any old soffit that remains). So even though things start out fast, they will slow down eventually. For now though the progress is astounding and fun to capture.
Plus – it gets done while I sit at my computer working all day 🙂
Going into this weekend I was a little concerned with how much prep work we had to do before putting in the new windows but of course Ryan and my Dad surprised me and got it all done!
First – up went the scaffolding and then down came the aluminum siding which Dad cut and bundled into neat bundles which will be easy to recycle (much better than our previous method of just piling it up) 🙂
Scaffolding upAluminum siding down (around windows)
We finally got to see what they did to side the peaks we have – we were crossing our fingers for shingles – and YUP – shingles – they look awesome and they’re in really good shape so we can just clean them up and paint them when we put on the new siding below them! Yeah!
Shingles! And yes we are missing a piece of glass in that attic window 🙂 It's on the todo list.
Next the wood siding had to come down and the old windows had to come out. They actually did the 2 nursery windows on saturday and saved the top of the stairs window for sunday to remove.
Just finishing up Saturday nightJust before they put up the second piece of plywood
Next up was resizing the windows because we bought smaller windows so we could raise them up to make them a bit safer for the little one on the way. These are in her room (and the top of the stairs) so safer is smarter 🙂 By Saturday night the two nursery windows were reframed and covered in plywood for the night.
What did I do while the guys did all that work? I took nails out of the walls and cleaned up (constantly), plus I piled all the wood up that got thrown down and tried to keep nails out of the driveway.
Sunday Ryan finished taking off the rest of the cedar siding and took out the third window then Dad put in the new framing.
Third window almost ready (top of stairs).
The tar paper started going up and the windows started going in (the windows themselves go really fast once all the prep is done so I didn’t get a lot of in progress pictures!
First window in!
And here’s what we look like this morning…
From the outside - ready for new siding this summer 🙂New window at the top of the stairsNew windows in the nursery!!!!
Once the windows were in there was a lot of cleanup and Dad started getting more insulation out of the ceiling of the nursery. Ryan drilled the holes for the outlet circuit on the exterior wall (so we can install that next weekend) and I removed the old knob and tube wiring (which was still live of course and sitting loose/cut in the ceiling). So that’s now removed (except for the main light which isn’t knob and tube and will get removed once we put in a new light) 🙂
Look how clean that ceiling is (and it's not quite done - still a little vacuuming to do)
Things are right on track! With insulation coming on March 21st and Dad coming out to drywall the weekend after it’s a busy 3 weekends but the plan for next weekend is:
Install corner nailers (at least in the exterior walls, all if time permits)
Run the outlet circuit (at least in the exterior walls, whole thing time permitting)
Run the vent pipe on the exterior wall into and across the ceiling so later it can be met up with the upstairs bathroom vent
Clean up closet (nails to remove, vacuum)
Clean up basement (they’re insulating the sill plate) so they can reach sill plate all around
Clean up ‘guest room/master bath’ (so they can insulate)
Time permitting I’d like to get as much of the electrical run as possible (it’s just a simple light circuit, a smoke detector and the outlet circuit in that room). I will do what I can during the week nights as well so that it doesn’t all fall on the weekend (I can start cleaning up the basement for example). I’m so excited about the progress that was made this past weekend. Soon we’ll have drywall up again and be working on the finishing details – FUN!
Replicating the original cupola in some form or another is going to be very interesting. I was very excited to get a hint at what it used to look like this morning when they got the aluminum mostly off.
