Still working on "C"

"Ya gotta do A, but before you do that you gotta do B, but you can't do B until you do C and you can't do C until you do A! That was part of a comment from "Dreaming"

or As my cousin Vickie put it, "you're ready for A, and B, but you gotta do C first." I thought it was funny that they both used the same type of analogy.

We want to paint drywall (A)and put in the ceiling(B), but we have to put in heat duct work (C)for the rooms ABOVE the basement and gas pipe (C)for the rooms ABOVE the basement before we do anything else.

So, I thought I'd give you an update on the house, even though it's probably a bit boring. We never got anyone to come out and tell us where to run the duct work, so we've spent hours figuring it out on our own. We decided we'll just install it ourselves too. A guy did come out and tell us how many registers we need for each room.

And thank the Lord we did not drill any holes in the floor for registers before discovering that the vents we bought were the wrong size!

We are constantly learning. They don't even sell register covers to fit the vent size on the right. It's bigger than the standard vent size, on the left. Odd that they sell the vents, but not registers to fit them.


There are all kinds of rules & regs that you have to follow to be up to code with bearing walls.

One register done, upstairs. About ten more to go. (sigh)

And we also have to put in gas pipe, in the ceiling, for the upstairs.

Which involves reinforcing the ceiling.

We are almost done running gas pipe, and the gas company is coming out on Wednesday to install the outside part of the pipe.

And while Dave does ductwork and gas pipe, I'm learning drywall techniques.

You use this kind of 'tape' on the wall, to cover up where the drywall comes together.

Then you take a slab of drywall mud and run it over the tape, very smoothly.

We have these plastic outside corner things that you spray with water and stick on the wall. They are very specific not to rub the water on the plastic corner or you will rub the sticky off.

After you stick it on the corner, you use mud to seal it in as well.

You use this tape on inside corners. You cut it to size, then fold it in half, then drywall mud it in.

I told Dave it's like icing a cake.

Making sure you fill in the blank spots, then smooth it all out.

Piece a cake.

Cindy

New House Miscellaney

I haven't updated in a couple of weeks because how many more pictures can you look at of insulation, o.s.b.,

and drywall?

Right now we are putting up drywall in the basement living area.

And we've been a little frustrated about some things.

First of all, our yard outside the walkout basement,

is eroding into the driveway. We have to grate it before we plant it and it keeps raining.

We paid a lot of money for gravel for this driveway and seed for the lawn. And the part that we did seed keeps running into the driveway, because of the rain. So now we have grass and mud for a driveway. It's lovely for the cars.

This is up by the house. Dave is trying to get it grated so we can plant stuff here, but he really needs to be working in the basement. We're thinking of hiring our neighbor to help us with this, even though it's some of Dave's favorite things to do.

The other thing we have actually lost sleep over is this....see that kind of indented area in the wall? It's for a fireplace. Above that, to the right, the 2x4's are not coming together and the one up by the ceiling is a rather large gap. The double balcony is on the front of this end of the house. What we were wondering is....is the double balcony sinking into the ground from all of the rain (settling) and is it pulling this end of the house down? Or did we just not notice that this is the way the framer built this? See the gap (below)

So, Sunday morning I spent two hours going through every single picture trying to find one picture that I took of the fireplace area when it was first built back in October. This is the only one I could find (below) I've already blown it up once, and if I do it again it's fuzzy. However, when I do magnify it, it looks like that space was there when it was framed. If any of you have some type of computer program that you can enlarge the pic and it isn't fuzzy, feel free to have at it. I'd be much obliged! You can e-mail it to me at mailto:hilltopbeelady@aol.com

It's the area in the very back of the picture. We really don't think it's the porch because we put a level on the porch and it's still level. But seeing the gap in this picture would sure ease our minds.
Then we had to get a family of wrens to move out of the house. Squatters already! I kept telling him there was a mamma bird coming in feeding babies somewhere. Apparently they were above the garage. We never did find the nest. But the babies were flying around everywhere on Saturday when Dave got there. Then on Sunday he found this little one.

When he took the bird outside to let him go by the woods, he flew back on the side of the house.

Then it flew back on the porch under Dave's chair and wouldn't leave. I think it's in love with my man! After awhile it flew away.

Then the heating issue. We are heating the basement rooms with electric baseboard heat, because we are not going to be using the entire basement all the time. And it's underground and really stays at a pretty steady temperature most of the time. We are, however, going to have gas heat in the rest of the house. And the furnace will go in the basement. We have to run heat ducts and such in the basement (ceiling area) before we close up the ceiling. We can't finish the ceiling until those runs are done, even though we probably won't need them for another year or two, they have to be run now. And we can't move in before we close the ceiling. And we can't get anyone to help us figure out where to run the duct work. We're not heating and air people. We've installed four furnaces together and have even ran duct work, but it was previously installed so we put them in the same area. We've never had to figure out where to put them in a new house. And there are rules that need to be followed. Codes. Such as not cutting into a bearing wall, which is what the entire end of the basement area is that we are going to live in. We've called several companies and one did come out, but they don't "tell people where to run duct work".

So we went to the big store to see what was available. Basically anything you want! We've decided we'll do it ourselves and figure it out, but we'll need to get to the library and get a book on it and then it's going to take us longer to get moved in.

It's frustrating. Sunday I just wanted to scream. But, the sun finally came out, and I got into my beehives and it was very zen-like.

oohhhhmmmmmmm

Cindy