Painting the Foundation - Fall 2014

Here are the pictures halfway through painting the foundation:

I'm getting there....south side without the tape. Just finished the east side - corner still taped.

Here's the north side...took me (Erica) a week to finish. Lucky we got warm November weather. I feel proud of doing this all myself!

She's looking better and better!

Latest Pics May 2014

A Newfound Appreciation: A Toilet and Shower

When we moved in, the toilet and shower had not yet been installed. Rob had managed to install the tiles - they are tiles that look like wood - in the toilet room prior to the Thanksgiving craziness, and he installed the toilet a few days after we moved in.

I was pretty excited to finally have a toilet! Doesn't it look like a throne?

Here's the room with the sink installed

We had our first snow of the season....

A Deer on our Driveway

And decided to start wearing our Klompen

Rob then began work on the shower...

Rob is applying Thinset to the walls which is an adhesive-based cement that holds the tiles in place

The green spacers keep the tiles evenly spaced

Here Rob is installing the floor heater before he put in the floor tiles

Installing the shower

I had my first shower on Christmas Eve!

Rob worked until midnight the night before he left for Holland to get the sink installed.

Here's what the house looks like right now....

And finally some awesome deer pics in the snow....

A two-point buck that shares the land with us

Happy New Year!

A Thanksgiving filled with...Bamboo Flooring?

After the plasterwork, Rob amazingly painted the whole upstairs with a primer coat and a coat of paint in less than three days. We were in a hurry to get the upstairs painted because we wanted to install the floor before we were moving in on Nov. 29 - and we had help that week from Lance and Judy who came to spend Thanksgiving break helping us! We ordered carbonized bamboo flooring the week before, and it got to us just in time for installing it Thanksgiving week. Bamboo flooring is said to be more "green" than hardwood floors because bamboo grows much more quickly than hardwood trees (oak, maple, etc). Unfortunately, we were sent three different shades of the bamboo flooring, and had to send back a third of the boxes that were too light. We did get most of the floor installed, however, before we moved in.

That's not how it's supposed to look, is it?

 

Lance used the crowbar to take up the panels with the three shades

After the oddly-shaded panels were torn up, we changed direction and started over in the east-west direction. We all took up our posts....

 

My job was to glue the grooves on the tongue-in-groove panels

 

Lance hammered the panels into place

Rob secured the panels with the nail gun

Judy was the facilitator passing the panels between me and Lance to speed up the process

We had some long days, including....

Yoga!

Naps!

Love!

Dancing!

And Celebrating! Yes, we have a floor!

Sheetrocking the Ceiling and Plasterwork

One of the difficulties with cellulose insulation is that no matter how tight you staple the Insulweb on the ceiling rafters, the Insulweb will still sag due to the weight of the cellulose. It therefore has to be pushed up with rollers so that the sheetrock can be put on. This rolling is very difficult work - overhead and time consuming - more frustration with the cellulose installation process.

We rented a sheetrock lift to assist with lifting the 4x8 boards up to the ceiling

Rob had to cut out holes in the sheetrock for each of the recessed lighting fixtures

Hans was such an amazing help - we love you, Hans!

After the sheetrock was up, the next step was the plasterwork, which meant sealing all the seams in the sheetrock with tape and covering the seams and all the screws with "compound." Cousins Lance and Judy came to help again - incredible! It took us a full weekend to put on the first coat with Lance and Judy, and then Rob spent several more days adding two more coats with water to even out the compound.

House with chicken pox or indoor snow storm?