Weekend Update March 16&17

Stefan got back from his business trip safe and sound and utterly exhausted.  It was good to get some house work done but we did make time for some relaxation.  In fact, we went over to a good friend’s house for drinks on Saturday night and dinner on Sunday night.  Seeing them entertain all the time made me want to get the house finished so I can entertain too!  I can’t wait to have people over this summer.  We’re one of the few people with a yard so we may take the warm summer nights entertaining spot this summer.  We’re thinking about a pizza oven and certainly a grill.  I’d also love a small smoker.  I promised Stefan that if the house got finished up a bit, we could get a natural gas grill.

I believe this is the one he’s picked out.

Amazon only has it listed in black, copper, and green but Lowes has it in an exclusive Espresso color.

We got a bunch done this weekend. We finally got the half bath floor down! Yay! It ended up being a lot more work than we had hoped. Re-wiring was easy peasy but Stefan had to saw-zall the edge of the room to expose the beams so that the new subfloor had something solid to rest on. He was certainly feeling it by the time he was done. Doing anything while balancing on beams is tiring on the legs and the core balancing muscles. But look, floor!!!

I also got a bunch of electric loose ends finished up. The smoke detectors are all pulled. I need to have Stefan cut one more circle in the plaster in the den and I need to toss up a full-size box in the master closet but everything is run where it needs to be. I even attached a few of the metal boxes.

There is a new wire to the overhead master light. We had operated under the assumption that there was a gas line to the that room but while I was working up there, I pulled this dodad out of the ceiling. It looks like at the time the electric was done in the house, attaching to the gas pipe was the standard way of mounting light fixtures so if you had only an electric light, you would mound just a nub of gas pipe to attach the fixture to.

THis is great news for us because now we can put in a modern box which will really widen our lighting search criteria.

I also installed some other boxes here and there that needed to be cleaned up including our newly pulled and installed switch box for the master bedroom.

Stefan is also well on his way to having the shower controls installed. After that bit is done, we can toss up the durock backer board.

We installed 2 of the Kohler Temp-Rite pressure balancing valves. We found them cheapest on Amazon.

Typically, they don’t recommend using 2 mixers because having 2 different temperatures of water can be unpleasant but I like a really hot shower and Stefan has to have a fairly cool shower so we decided to have 2 temperature controls. We’ll see if it was a poor idea soon enough.

All in all, I call the weekend a success. We still have a lot to do before drywall 🙁 but we’re making progress. More and more stuff keeps popping up that needs to get done.  Let’s take a look at the list:

• Knee Wall
• Pex to 3rd floor
• chimney wall on 3rd floor
• Lath on bathroom and closet wall
• mount and hook up shower mixers
• mount vanity light boxes (cut and hang)
• wood support for corner sink in half bath
• wood supports for toilet paper rolls and towel rods (cut and hang)
• 3rd bath floor
• half bath floor
• smoke detector wiring on 2nd floor
• electric to fans
• bedroom electric finish up
• half bath overhead light boxes
• Kitchen overhead lights
• durock backer board
• foam behind rafters

Still plenty of work to do but I’m hoping one more long weekend (more realistically 2) and we can be done!

Sarah

Feb 23 &24 – attic stairs, plumbing and electric

We have a plan.  We are going to get drywall in in 2 weeks.  I’m determined.  This weekend was part one of a two park push to get everything done.  We are exhausted but one more weekend and we’ll take a break.

First off I had Stefan cut me some holes.  Cutting plaster and lath is tricky business.  We use a 2 part system with the Rotozip.  First we use a tile bit to cut the plaster followed by an all-purpose bit to cut the lath.  The Rotozip works great.  you really have to use a rotory tool of some variety.  Anything that pulls back and forth like the sawzall is just going to shake the lath and destroy the wall.  A circular saw works well for big holes but for little holes, you really need a more precise tool.

We are adding a switch in the stairwell to control the lights at the top and bottom of the stairs.  This will solve the “climbing the stairs in the pitch black” problem that we’ve been dealing with.

If you remember from last week, we pulled some wires from the basement for the stairwell outlet. I finished off the pulling which involved being very tricky and going through this closet.

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