This weekend

This weekend proved to be fairly productive..when you consider we only worked for a few hours one afternoon.

As I said in the last post, we’re hung up waiting on my electrical contractor at the moment. Until he comes back, we can’t have our City inspection which means we can’t insulate..or drywall, or sand the floors, or lay the tile, or bring in the bathroom fixtures..you get the idea. Though – as you can see – once we get that inspection out of the way, we’re really going to make noticeable progress. Like..start FINISHING stuff J

For now, though, we’re working on the outside. This weekend, we worked on wrapping the garage. This should keep the weather out, and further help with energy costs down the road. And because we used plastic cap nails, it should stay put longer than if we had just used staples – this is handy because it might be a while before we can really get moving on the siding.

As you can see, we tore off more siding under the new roofline outside the kitchen. We did this so we’ll have a solid spot to attach the F-channel to. F-channel – which receives the soffit – fastens to the wall in a straight line even with the bottom edge of the fascia board. From there, you can cut your soffit (vented in this case) to fit the gap between the F-channel and the fascia board. And because we’re not really all that professional, that’s as far as we got. The next step, in theory, is to snap the new fascia in place under the existing drip edge while overlapping the edge of the soffit underneath. Whew.

When I say “in theory” with regard to the next step, it’s because there’s a small complication. You see, when we ripped the steel siding off the side of the house, we found another issue: because the house had been added onto over time, the walls don’t line up exactly from one addition to another. When you’re working with steel, it’s not as big a deal because the material is more forgiving; however, now that I’ve (finally) decided on the cement board, we’ll have to do a little more preparation before we can start hanging. The cement board material isn’t as forgiving because it needs to be secured directly to the wall every few inches. Steel siding – or aluminum or vinyl – actually kind of floats in a channel.. that, and the physical makeup of the material make it easier to hide imperfections in the walls. There might be an easy fix for this – I’ll keep you posted.



See the difference in (old) siding colors around the windows?



Once we have our exterior walls squared away, we’ll be able to hang the rest of the new soffit and finish closing off the house to the outdoors. Once our electrical inspection gets a passing grade, we’ll be able to close the inside walls and it will start to look – and feel – like a home rather than an elaborate outbuilding.

Electrician: Tuesday. Celebration: Tuesday night? Too soon to call!

Shingles, garage doors, and other cool stuff

Since the last installment, we’ve made some pretty noticeable progress, I’d say!

First, the roofers are nearly done! In fact, they should be finishing as I write this..

Before..

That process proved to take a bit longer than anticipated – not only were there several layers to tear off the steep roof in the front of the house, but one of the crew members had a family emergency and the entire crew was unable to work for a couple days. I can’t complain about that..because I have a soul. Luckily for us, the weather has been absolutely terrific and I’m not the slightest bit worried. My mother, on the other hand, seems to think that I will be the coziest little bat hotel in the tri-county area. I had no idea how deathly afraid of bats the women around me are until we started this project, but we’re working through it.

Working away..

Nearly done!

Snazzy recycled garage door.

With the roof nearly complete – and a snazzy new/recycled-from-the-old-garage-garage door in place – our work on the house will really fly from here. We can use the garage space to its fullest potential now – storage, workshop, shelter, etc. My dad is already planning for the workshop he’s putting together out there. The joke is that once the house is finished, I won’t actually be able to park in my own garage because he’ll have it so filled with table saws and planers that I’ll end up in the street. We all make sacrifices. J

Inside the house, we’re building walls! Not only are we stiffening and restructuring some of the existing walls, we’re also tweaking things slightly, making spaces more workable, and improving the wiring, plumbing, and insulation along the way. It shouldn’t be too long before there’s new drywall hanging back here – who knows..maybe one day I’ll get to live here?

Removing the old windows between the laundry and the garage.

...and installing a door!

First batch of carpet coming up. Stay tuned for more!