Lake House Renovations – Page 13 – 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!

Copper

It was a little hotter outside today and it was the last day of our vacation so we took it a little easy. After a quick trip to home depot and some breakfast/lunch at Denny’s we decided to start on the copper.

First we cut the large piece we bought in half so it could do both triangles. That’s an expensive piece of copper!

DSCN0465 — Cutting the 3' x 9' sheet in half

Then we had to install the small side piece so we cut that from our 6″ wide strip and bent that and put it in. Finally came the slow process of bending, measuring, bending, cutting, bending the large triangle piece. But finally – it’s in!

The other corner at this point just has ice shield, we did pull the aluminum siding off near the corner and put in the small side piece (not pictured) but we didn’t get to the corner today.

At this point we took a break so Ryan could change his oil – we’ve got to stay on top of the chores even on vacation.

Unfortunately I don’t have more pictures from the rest of the day because I worked on the deck until dark but I sanded the deck down (light sanding) and got the stain on it. The deck isn’t finished but the part that is, is now protected. We’re using HC-65 (Hodley Red) for the stain which is the accent color we plan to use on the house. It may not match exactly since we went with a semi-transparent stain but it should at least match the rest of the house. I’ll try to get a picture in the morning before I head to work.

Time to clean up and relax the rest of the night and it’s back to work tomorrow 🙁

Wrapping up the vacation

Well this weekend is the end of our vacation – which is sad because it really went too quickly as usual. We had a great day though, we started out with some errands (last trip to the dump for a while hopefully) and then to the lumber yard to buy more decking now that we knew about how much we needed.

Then home to start working on laying the deck some more. While Ryan worked on that I got the “to be flashed” section under the diningroom windows scraped/sanded/primed.

Then I helped ryan with the deck and we figured out what to do with the corner – it was really rotted from the carpenter ant damage so we decided to jack up our new block after we got that in and cut out the rotted wood and replace it with a piece of pressure treated wood.

DSCN0456 — replaced some of the rotted wood in the corner

Then we continued on with the decking until it was getting kind of late and we switched over to our copper project (although we didn’t leave enough time). We got the ice shield on all around and then started with the front piece of copper which is cut from a 6″ wide strip we bought. This was our first time bending copper ourselves and it went pretty well.

DSCN0462 — Our first piece of copper installed

The hard part comes tomorrow when we do those large triangles but since we did the ice shield already we have an idea how it will go to cover. We bought a 3′ wide sheet for those, hopefully it’s long enough.

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.

The final livingroom window install

Whew… for some reason today feels worse than yesterday humidity wise, maybe because we never really got enough rain yesterday to break it. With a quick trip to home depot to start the day we got to work around 11 removing the window and getting the new one installed.

The original window was a little wider than the cupola windows but we decided to make it the same width, I don’t remember how large the next size up would have been but we would have had to adjust the rough in so this was our best option.

DSCN0280 — The original window (how we left it last night).

DSCN0287 — Some extra framing since the window is smaller (need to nail to something)

DSCN0288 — Had to cut the sills since they came too long

Finished in just 2 hours which is pretty good since I was feeling pretty lazy (humidity probably). So we’re just sitting down to some home made pizza now. The last window in the livingroom has to be borded up and re-sided since we’re removing it. We don’t have enough wood (need a few more 2×6’s) so it will probably not happen today. Today I may work on stripping some more trim for the gym or something since it’s raining out again.

Windows again

We finally have a full weekend to work on the house and we got right to work today. We installed the last 2 windows in the cupola in the livingroom. They were a little more work than the first three, the header had to be replaced on these so the windows would fit.

We decided to quit at 6 tonight and relax the rest of the evening. Tomorrow we’ll replace the last window and hopefully close up the other. The livingroom windows will be complete then!

DSCN0270 — Windows before we started today

DSCN0277 — New headers (just needed the extra half inch for window placement adjustment)

DSCN0275 — Raised up the bottom to match the others

DSCN0285 — The new windows from the outside

Now we’re settling in for the evening, I’m watching Emma and Ryan’s working on his laptop (he got a new harddrive and windows 7 a few months ago and hasn’t yet had time to install it!).

3 Windows

Pictures of the finished 3 windows!

I can’t believe it but it’s actually hotter today than yesterday somehow. Ryan headed into the office around 11 and I got the demo area cleaned up again, some wood we had moved out of the way for windows is back where it’s being stored and I vacuumed. Then I swept up and cleaned up the porch area a bit. I may spend most of the day doing some projects in the basement because it’s cooler down there with the dehumidifier running. I also have some outside projects I can do…