Working in the basement

Yesterday I painted one wall in the "mechanical room." I call it the mechanical room because it will house a furnace, sump pump, electrical thingy, and other mechanical/electrical type stuff. I only painted the one wall because 1) the other walls aren't up yet! and 2) Dave wants to start working on putting stuff on that wall, and I would prefer to paint it before he puts stuff on it, so I don't have to trim so much.


I was painting O.S.B. It's like a glued little pieces of wood pressed together to make a board. You can see it better in the picture below. It's what we used in the garage and are using in the basement. It's easier to handle than drywall, it is heavier, but it's harder to paint. And I didn't realize until I was finished painting, that the garage paint is Exterior paint. The paint store sales staff recommended exterior paint for the garage because of mold and dampness. Oh well...I won't use this paint anywhere else in the basement, just the one room.

This room above is going to some day be Dave's workshop. But for now, we will store everything from the house that we live in now, in that room, while we live in another part of the basement.

After I finished painting, Dave gave me a quick lesson on using some power tools. I've used them before, but it's been awhile. I've never drilled out outlet holes in O.S.B before.

But there's a first time for everything and I want/need to help him build this house. I love to learn stuff like this. I was actually enjoying this part of the work.

You first use this drill tool with that specific bit which I cannot remember the name, but you make these holes. See the drawn on box?


I make a hole in each corner of the box.

Then I take this saw and put the blade in the hole

and saw on the lines Dave drew. I go from hole to hole.

Which looks something like this...

until I clean it up a bit.

This is Dave measuring more box holes.

If they fit just right the O.S.B. will go right up.

We had a little trouble on the sheet of O.S.B. that had the three outlet holes. Dave had to take it back down and re-cut some openings (darn it) but it was also a wee bit off. Just a sliver off, but it makes all the difference. So he also had to shave the side of the O.S.B.

Here you can see how the holes fit.

I was proud of us yesterday. I got the wall painted, Dave and I got two walls up in the storage room. We have one wall to go and the upper half of all of the walls.

And I cut all of this insulation, which I plan on hanging today.

Dave is out there wiring this room right now. I'll hang the insulation while he finishes the other wall in the back storage room.

Cindy Bee

We're working in the basement...finally!

We are finally ready to start working in the basement. For those of you who are new to the house blog, we plan on living in one end of the basement by this summer, putting the house we live in up for sale, and live in the basement while we finish the upper part of our new house. So when we went in the basement, I saw this on the wall!

My Shug drew me a picture! Kind of scary huh? I look crazed...maybe that's me when this project is finished. And he is letting his sideburns grow out. Weird I know...He's living in the 70's....again....So, before I get started on the work we did in the basement, I forgot to mention in the last post that when the guys unloaded the siding, it was the WRONG siding! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I calmly asked our framer, Mike. Nope, not kidding...unless they changed the box. GAAAHHHH.....I called Dave and asked him to call them up. They brought the correct siding out for us, and took the wrong siding back.

So, my Shug worked on the wiring in one of the storage rooms in the basement all last week. By Sunday, it was ready to insulate.

He set up an area for me to cut insulation, shows me how to cut it, and I get busy.
Easy peasy...I just pretended like I was working at our local fabric store, cutting bolts of material, only I was nicer :-)

When working with insulation, there are slivers of glass floating everywhere, hence fiberglass. We both had masks on, I had gloves and a suit on since I was flipping the fiberglass all over the place, but I couldn't wear glasses because they steam up with the mask on. I gotta figure something out to put glasses on. My eyes were itchy that night and the next day.

And I ended up putting that stringy hair in a pony tail holder.

And while I cut and cut and cut insulation...

Dave hung it up.

And when he got to his special drawing, he started to hang insulation right over it without even seeing my response.....{sigh} MEN!

He did the high parts

and I did the low parts, because his back was hurting.

We got the insulation done on Sunday, working together, with no arguments! Only 12 more rooms to go....

Cindy

Siding and mud!

The only thing left to do in the garage, besides paint, is fix this door. It is way too tight.

Last week I mentioned a painting party. Lucky for all of you it didn't happen! The guys that we hired to put siding on the high part of the house called us last week. They wanted to jump in and start siding since it was going to be warm out. Well, the garage was needed to put the siding in, so we would have been in each others way. So we put the painting off. The weather has turned cold again, so the next warm weather days I'll try to paint the garage.

In the meantime I thought I'd share a story and show you the siding progress.

Our construction area has turned into a mud bog since the snow melted.

We laid down all of this scrap wood to walk on.

Last Friday, the guys needed some siding materials and Dave was working. So my friend, Marcia, and I went to Chrysler and got Dave's truck out of the parking lot. Then went to the building supply store and picked up the siding materials, and proceeded to the house.

I GOT STUCK IN THE MUD! oh my...

What a mess....

Lucky for us I've lived in Indiana all my life. I learned at an early age how to rock an roll a vehicle to get it unstuck in the snow. Mud is about the same theory. Problem is, I flung mud all over the truck, all over the siding, all over everything!

The guys that were siding had a hard time too. Their ladders sunk in the mud, they sunk in the mud, there is mud throughout my house.

But look how nice the siding looks...

I know a lot of people are wondering/asking why we went with white and why vinyl.

1) White is classic and traditional.

2) You can add color in other areas. Remember the one area on the other end of the house that is sided with T1-11. It can be painted any color I want. I can also add some shutters and stuff in colors. But in the house I live in now, the roof is dark green and we have dark green shutters. I loved the dark green color. Now I'm tired of it, but can't change it.

3) Vinyl is maintenance free. I want a low maintenance house. We are 52 and want to enjoy this place as much as possible. That's why....

So many decision to be made. We decided to flute the corners.....to add a little character...

But not the corners of the fireplace box. You don't really want it to stand out.

The front. I couldn't take a picture of the entire front because of the mud.

The front edge - fluted corner.

That's it for now. It rained all night so I doubt I have updates for awhile.

Cindy

Garage is almost done!

I went to our house today to help my Shug work in the garage.

It's been a couple of weeks since I've been there. The first thing I noticed was this light, over the door. I like old light fixtures. I love the blue on this shade. My Shug has it set up so that when you walk in the garage, this light will come on. Nice.

This contraption is also new. He had to figure out something to use for the garage doors. The ceiling is really too high in the garage, but the trusses were already made when we tried to cancel the order, so we couldn't cancel. There is a vaulted ceiling in the garage, which makes it much higher for the contraption that holds the garage doors. It's hard for me to explain so just hang with me and you'll see what I mean.

See what I mean?

Right now we are waiting on a part or two so we can finish the other door. In the meantime, today I wheeled him around on the scaffolding while he puttied the ceiling. This took about four hours. He said if he had to climb up and down that scaffolding all day, it would have taken him two days to do what it took four hours.

We're supposed to get some warm weather...so if anyone wants to come to a garage painting party on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, lemme' know ;-)

Cindy

Lighting and garage - now

It's really hard to see the difference in colors in these pictures. But one is almond and one is bone.

Anyway, I chose bone color. It matches white and cream. Dave had some of each in his garage. I commented on it and he said, "now see, you are getting a trained eye and noticing stuff like that. You never noticed stuff like that before." He'll change them to match, I know he will. He won't be able to stand it that a girl noticed the difference!

The garage is almost done. He's putting up some temporary lighting right now.

All of the o.s.b. is up.

Hopefully the basement will go faster as it should be warmer working in it.

Cindy