Day 241: Windows Delivered

Our windows have been delivered!  I LOVE them!

Day 239: Bird Eviction

This is a first, I evicted a bird.

One day I noticed our living room filled with weeds. The day before I had pulled a ton of weeds from along the back fence and it looked like those weeds.  I thought a little neighbor had been playing in the house.  I swept it up and dismissed it....until....it happened the next day. 

A few days later a crazed bird flew out a small window when I arrived.  It happened a few more times, each time startling me. Then, I saw him fly INTO the house.  He had found the teeniest perfect home up in our trusses. I pulled out his nest (tricky because of the angle), bid him farewell, and taped up the hole.  The foil tape is still there as a reminder of our former tenant.

DAY 238: Can-Can we can do the Can-Can

When I went to sleep last night all I could think about was cans.  Light cans.  Brent and I have worked on cans for the past two weekends.  One of my jobs yesterday was to be sure that all the cans in the basement family room matched up/lined up.  I went to sleep bugged because one row is off, but I will get it figured out!

We have cans in the kitchen...

 This is our fancy can layout for the basement drawn on a basement window sill...

 We have cans in the basement....

We have been working on switch boxes and outlets...

 Cole worked n the outlet that will be under the kitchen table.  We have a favorite french dish, Raclette, that requires a tabletop cooking grill.  Brent is tired of dragging out an extension cord when we eat Raclette. 

 Cole wired for speakers in the basement family room...

 Estee got tired of sweeping and picking up trash.  It's true, those are usually her jobs.  She resorted to writing on boxes.  (Maya worked for two hours and then was at a friend's house for the day). 

 I was grateful for my kids today.  Mom and Dad are tired so they made one of their favorite dinners for Sunday dinner.  They LOVE oven baked chicken fingers and Cole has the recipe down.  He always solicits the help of his sisters since it takes a few hands.

DAY 227: Pick a Tile, Any Tile

Today I worked on color schemes again. I also headed over to Roofers Supply to get sample of shingles to match with color schemes.  It amazes me that I have lived her for 13 years and have lived completely unaware of the many local businesses.  When I first walked into Metal Mart a few months ago I was shocked that such a large business was just around the corner.  I had never noticed it.  It is interesting the things that I am learning and the places I go. 

Brent worked on electrical again tonight.  In addition to his day job he puts in a lot of hours at the house.  He is one of the hardest workers I have ever known.

DAY 226: Drip Edge

We have decided to not do our own roof.  We were going to use Bartile but have decided to go with an architectural shingle.  We are working with Pro Roofing.  Andy has been great!  Brent has done roofs before.  I even helped him re-shingle his Mom's roof the first year we were married.  But in the end, Pro Roofing will do it quickly and it's one job we won't have to think about. 

I am learning terms like Drip Edge.  It's not a part of the soffit or the facia.  It goes under the "felt" and allows water to properly drain.  However, we needed to know what colors the soffit and facia will be which we had not yet determined.  Over the weekend we decided white since our windows are white.  Tomorrow I will go to Roofer Supply to get some shingle colors but that means I also have to nail down the house colors for certain.  It's a bit daunting since this will be the first thing the entire world sees.  Well, not the entire world, but everyone who drives by our house.

Today Andy and his crew laid down the drip edge, felt, and the waterproofing membrane (I forgot the fancy term).  The had it all done in three hours.  We will now be waterproof when we work which will be appreciated by all.  Had we known that we could have done it sooner we would have.  Just the things you learn when you build your own house and when you build for the first time.

 The white line is the Drip Edge and the black stuff is the "felt".  It's sticky sticky stuff. 

 The white stuff the covers the roof is the synthetic waterproof membrane. (This shows the cute side of our house.  I love the side of our house.  It will have a little mini porch and will be the family's main entrance into the house.)

 Andy up on the roof.  Today I asked him about business and he said that they are busy busy.  Mostly re-shingles but he said that the new home building is picking up.  There are five houses going up right now around where we are building.  I figure that's a good sign for our economy that people are willing to build.  I hope that home prices steady for EVERYONE.  What a rough couple of years for all. 

DAY 225: Name That Tool

If you are my age you will remember the game show "Name That Tune".  This morning I played my own version.  I was helping my Dad plant his vegetable garden.  One of his neighbors is doing some sort of home improvement project.  I could tell the difference between each of the tools he was using.  I laughed out loud when I heard a drill make a familiar noise as it drove a screw into a board.  I could tell that something wasn't right.  I then heard the grinder.  Which meant that the screw didn't go in right and it had to be ground down flat.  You know you are building your own house when noises play a picture in your head....

Saturday was another full day.  We met with an electrician who helped us walk through our project.  At noon the boys started threading wire through our home.  I had a chance to put in one of the electrical boxes.  Cole had done most of them.  But since it's a question I'm often asked, here is how a box works on an ICF wall.

First, you have to cut out the shape of the box.  That part is cinchy. Next, with a grinder a line must be made deep into the styrofoam to house the electrical wire. Here is a sample:

 Here I am using the grinder making the lines in the styrofoam for the wire:

 Here is a sample with the wire.  The wire will be packed deeply into the wall and will be covered with foam.

If it's not on an ICF wall the electrical looks like any other stick built house:

 I tried to lay out the kitchen in blue tape.  I'm trying to figure out if we have room to put in a desk on another wall.  We're not going to do it now, I just wondered if we have the space.  This is the island,

 This shows island and the end of the base cupboards:

 And on a final note....ta dah!  The window drama is OVER!  We have windows that match now!  It was a chore but we did it! 

DAY 217: A Month of Lots Of Little Things

It's been a month of lots of little things.  We've been busy getting ready for the four way inspection.

There has been low voltage electrical:

There was lots of work done on the gas line.  This black pipe was one of the trickier pipes.  It was so long that we couldn't just load it up into the floor joists.  We ended up drilling a hole through the concrete from the outside and then threading the pipe through that hole. 

 This was one of my jobs. Not the pipe part, but making a hole to accomodate the pipe.  I had to cut the floor board but the fun part was using Brent's mammoth chisel drill to pound out the cement around the pipe. I'm getting a little more comfortable with the tools. 

Brent checking the lines

We installed the central vac system this month.  Of all the things we have done this was one of the easiest jobs.  I was excited when we gave it a little test run by hooking up the shop vac.  I was surprised by the power with just a shop vac.  I am hoping that this new fangled device in our home will motivate our children to vacuum frequently.... 

There has been lots of foam cutting.  We keep touching up holes in the styrofoam and that always leaves excess.  We are constantly trimming up foam.  It is still one of the fun and easier jobs for the kidlettes (and me). 

 When the kidlettes were little one of their favorite books was a simple board book called "Shoes".  It repeats the same phrases over and over so it's easy for little preschool children to repeat the story and predict what will happen next.  There is a line that repeated in my head over and over when I watched them in the rain one day: "Rubber shoes for muddy squishing".  There has been plenty of muddy squishing during the wet month of April.

Do you remember our windows that didn't match?   

We also worked on that this month.  The bottom right window was the problem window.  We called Omar and he came with his concrete chain saw.  It was interesting (and loud) to watch.  It took almost 2 hours of work. 

(I can't get blogger to work for me tonight, sorry about the double images...)  When finished the window looked like this:

Brent "re-framed" the window with v-bucks and styrofoam.  We packed the styrofoam with cement and we're almost good as new.  I didn't take a picture yesterday of our finished product.  But, it now matches, YAY!!!

When Omar cut the window you could see a perfect cross section of our wall:

The 4 vertical scribbles show the 2 inches of styrofoam.  This is all the insulationt hat will be used in our home.  The one horizontal line shows the 6 inches of concrete sandwiched between the styrofoam.  Pretty impressive, eh?