Tuesday, June 7, 2011

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

1 comment:

  1. It sounds terribly frustrating... almost like our, "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!
    It WILL be worth it in the end. Just keep telling yourself that!

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