Windows

Moved In

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 — 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! — Bella’s room moved in!

Alex's room finished! — 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 room — The other side of Alex’s room

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 — 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)

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!

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!

The outside is almost buttoned up for winter. We still have doors to replace but those will be spring projects.

Heat and Windows

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!

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!

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!

Ryan and his dad worked on windows on Sunday – putting them in is a two person job and now Ryan can get the trim up around them if he has time by himself! They got a lot more done than I anticipated and I can’t wait to see them later tonight!

All the upstairs windows across the back!

So there are 3 more windows downstairs in the front there to do, plus one in the livingroom which I think we bought the wrong size for. We have to buy the downstairs bathroom window (we forgot that one entirely). We are not replacing the garage ones at the moment, we’ll wait until we do dormers above the garage down the road.

Next up – siding to order!

Dormer Update (late)

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.

I was away with Bella Saturday night through Sunday but got photo updates as the trim went up!

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!

Panel progress

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.

Monday progress

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 nicely

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.

The cupola revealed

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.

Day 2 – windows are in

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.

And the interior….

Bumpout (this will become the master bathroom.

Laundry room (left) and bathroom (right).

Hiring a crew

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.

Inside shots…

New 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 🙂

WINDOWS!

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) 🙂

DSCN1628 — Aluminum 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!

DSCN1630 — 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.

DSCN1631 — Just finishing up Saturday night

DSCN1633 — Just 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.

DSCN1636 — 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!

And here’s what we look like this morning…

2012-03-12_08-36-29_187 — From the outside - ready for new siding this summer 🙂

2012-03-12_08-46-34_7 — New window at the top of the stairs

2012-03-12_08-46-41_837 — New 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) 🙂

2012-03-12_08-46-54_234 — 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!