My husband is incredible. It took him one and a half weeks to build a large wrap around porch and repair the other small side porch. And it wasn't an easy build. I know I was there. I honestly think that if we had hired a carpenter he wouldn't have had it done this fast or built as strong as it is.
Most of the problems we had stemmed
from
that dag-blasted floor. It was horrible to put in. The boards were
twisted and warped so bad that we couldn't use many of them. We tried hard to
make them work but it was seriously impossible. Then when Tim put the boards in
they were beautiful, nice and tight against each other. With in two days they
had shrunk so much there was a gap between the boards in some spots. Then when
it rained a week later they swelled up so much that the flooring bubbled and
rolled. I don't know what we did wrong, but I'm hoping that when we get them
painted it will seal them up so the changes aren't so dramatic.
We are trying to build the porch the match the one in the photo we received from the man we bought the property from (see April 2003's entries). The boxes Tim built using plywood, and the posts are special order from the Home Depot. We primed the ends of the posts before attaching them to the boxes.
Next came the header for the roof. My dad came up with the nifty idea of the braces. They made the placing of these VERY heavy pieces of lumber much easier. They also held the header in place while we nailed the two sections together. In this picture I'm anxiously awaiting my very important part of the porch installation, the kicking of the braces. Yes, I do get the good jobs!
With the roof boards in place you really start to get an idea of how integral this porch is to the design of the house. I myself could almost feel the evening summer breeze in my hair as I sit in my rocker.
The only thing Tim didn't do was the roof. We called Jensen Construction back in for that and it took them two hours to knock it out. Another marriage saver, it would have taken us two weeks.
With
the porch done it was time to restore the original front door. Which also
meant another "airing out." Talk about your open floor plan!
When we first bought the house we noticed that the large chimneys were pulling the house down around them. So we made the hard decision of tearing them out. There are no fireplaces in the house so they were something we would never use since we are replacing the wood burning stove with forced air. Plus they were in very tough shape. A local volunteer fireman had told us that they had been called out twice a number of years ago for chimney fires.
At this point we are finishing up the clean up so we can start rebuilding by the end of the month. The attic is clean, the second floor just needs to be swept, the first floor needs to be picked up a bit and swept, and we just won't talk about the basement. I think we'll just get the furnace room cleaned out and worry about the old root cellar at a later date. We have the cellar doors leading to the outside so we don't have to worry about tracking the junk from the basement through the house to get rid of it.
So the end of the month comes and I am still trying to get things cleaned up. I vastly under estimated the time it would take to vacuum every little nook and cranny of that house. Tim is busy plugging away at the interior structural repair. The basement jacks are in and where the first floor sunk in towards the chimney is compensated for. When we got the walls out we discovered that most of the openings in this house have no headers over them and if they do they are just 2x4's. So we are beefing up the larger structures such as the picture windows and double doors. He is also working on reinforcing the joists under our future master bedroom. The floor has some serious spring to it and I don't want to wake up some morning sitting in the living room.
The electrician has been called and is supposed to be coming late next week. The heating/cooling guys start next week, and we meet with our exterior house painter tonight to finalize details. Also, our windows came in last week and look good! Well at least at first anyway.
The last weekend of this month could have been titled "Tim and Becky's Very Bad Horrible Weekend." The interior structural work just keeps coming. We get one thing fixed and then decide well if we fixed it here we had better beef this up too. And I'm still not done cleaning. Tim went to put in one of the new window and guess what, it's 3 inches to big. The lumber company measured wrong. Unless the lumber company can work some sort of miracle it's going to be over 6 weeks to get new ones in. We can't replace the siding until the window trim is in, we can't paint the house until the siding is up, we can't insulate the house until the siding is up, we can't drywall until the insulation is up. How many contractors do I have to call and reschedule with!!! Thank you Superior Lumber! Sheesh.
We've been slaving away. We got the window situation taken care of with only a little haggling. We don't get to put them in yet though. That's because when we talked to the paint guy he said it would cost $700 extra to paint with the new windows in because he would have to tape around them. Makes sense.
We have two carpenters hard at work on the exterior replacing bad siding and filling in some missing trim. They are excellent with great attention to detail. I cannot believe what fantastic luck we are having with contractors.
We met with our electricians and walked through the up-stairs and marked off where we wanted all of the electrical this and that. They should get started wiring this week. The heating and cooling guys were supposed to show up last week, but we didn't hear from them. Tim's checking into that so hopefully they'll be around this week too.
With all of those contractors working away I wish I could say we were lounging around watching them work. Unfortunately no. Tim's been busy fixing the interior to get it ready for all of the contractors. He forgot that he had to put blocks in the corners of all of the rooms to have something to attach the drywall too. So that's been taking up a little more time than he expected. Hopefully soon he can get started on the plumbing.
Welcome to my mom's garage. I've been spending all of my time here working on the woodwork. What a process! I've discovered that I must strip each piece twice, lightly sand it, clean it, stain it, and apply 3 coats of varnish. I'm finishing up 100 of the blocks that go in the corner of the windows and doors, little 10x5 pieces, and that has taken me 2 weeks. I'm thinking that the rest of the pieces will go a little faster because they don't have the detailed carvings.
And then it happens. We have lights! 4 of them in the up-stairs. The first night they were in we went over to the house and turned everyone of them on and then walked back and forth out on the road picturing what it was going to look like when those lights illuminated something besides wall studs. It was a beautiful sight.
Also the painted has been working away at prepping the house for the paint. Our painter ended up hiring from a temp agency to help him prep the house. The picture to the left shows them sanding on the house with belt sanders.
By the end of the month priming has started.
I officially lost the paint color battle (remember what I said about the woodwork in May?). The original white (my choice) is going to be replaced with a dark cream on the siding and a light cream on the trim. All of the fancy wooden shingles in the peaks will be a dark sage green.
The heating and cooling people finally showed up and got all of the systems planed out. We also have another new addition. A 1,000 gallon LP tank now sits to the north of the house. It's pretty unattractive, but necessary. I'll need to think a bit on how I'm going to "dress it up."
The house is now primer white with the green accent color painted in the peaks. I like it white and am now sorry I didn't push harder to win that battle. But I'm also very pleased with how the green draws your eyes to the decorative shingles. It will be nice.
Tim has now finished up on the structural work and is now going to tackle the plumbing until the painters are done.
I'm working away at wood work. I started refinishing the blocks at the bottom and top of the door and window frames. We only have a few hundred of them to do. But of course as soon as I get going on them I have to stop for a new project. The new front doors. The old ones were so weather damaged we decided to have reproductions made. Wow, did that cost a pretty penny. Thank goodness for Tim's employee discount. They're worth every penny though. They look beautiful!
Along with the doors we also got our kitchen cabinetry in. It was really depressing to have to haul it into my uncle's storage shed and not into the house.
A big find this same week was an old house in Rockford that has the same exterior window trim as ours. We'll be able to get more than what we need of what is missing.
The painters have packed their scaffolding and we can now take a step back and take her in for the first time.
What do you think?
I think we need some windows. Dear?
The
windows we deiced on are replacement windows. They are aluminum clad,
which means wood on the inside and metal on the outside. Giving Tim the
protection he needs and Becky the look she wants.
So instalation:
You start with little silver brackets and nail those to the old existing wood frame of the house.
You then snap the plastic runners onto those brackets (see photo to left).
The windows then snap into the brackets and volia!
Tim averaged a window in every 20 minuets.
So the
exterior work is finished for now.
We still need to: make and install the attic stain glass windows, paint the corners of the house the pale cream, install missing exterior woodwork, put up siding on the porches and post blocks, trim out the porches, tear out the north porch, and build stairs.
So inside we head...
Late September we get a visit from the Home Depot semi.
Tim's mom, dad, and brother worked all day to get everything taken into the house (I had to work that day).
We spaced the wall board out through out the house so we had a more even distribution of weight. We ended up purchasing 325 sheets of board.