Cleaning, wiring, venting (no I'm not mad!)

 So....this is where I was extracting honey this year.  My own little section of the garage.

That was FULL of stuff from ourother house....from when we moved.  We can't put it in the area where we are living, and it was in the way in the house now, because we are building.  So in the last couple of months, we have been moving everything out of the garage, and into the pole barn.  And we did get rid of some things.  I showed you in THIS POST that Mom & Dad came over and helped me get started.

Here is our garage now!  Thanks for helping Mom & Dad!

That little pile of stuff on the right hand side is no longer there.  That is stuff that went into my camper.

And now we are back in the house.  Dave has finished the laundry room.  This vent from the dryer to the outside was a bit of artwork to figure out.  The vent goes from the laundry room,

 through the attic,

(Look how he built brackets out of scrap wood to hold the vent in place.  Brilliant. )

in the mudroom, and through the wall to the outside. 

And he built a wall around these vents which I will show you later.

And this is the foyer.  This is the door guests will use when they come into our house.  It actually faces the back yard, but because the driveway goes up and around, it would be awkward for people to walk around the front of the house.  I'll go up in a helicopter or a bi-plane some day and take pictures so you'll know what I'm talking about.  NOT!  You'll just have to visit!

This is standing in the entrance door looking into the grand banquet hall.  Notice....we have electricity.

We now have electricity in the entire main level except the bathroom.   So you can walk from the basement, to the garage, without a flashlight!!!!  YAY!

He has done some more work on the house, but electrical wires start to all look the same after awhile. Our goal is to get the entire main level closed off from the upstairs so that we can keep it a little warmer this winter and continue building.  We have discussed some HUGE changes that just maybe the architect could have suggested from the very beginning....I'll 'splain all of those to you later.

Cindy

Big Honkin' Kitchen Post!

Total Kitchen Post!
In the last few months we have been working, off and on, on the kitchen upstairs.  I was very excited for this, because right now I have a one by two foot piece of counter space.  The top of my coffee pot and the top of my stove also double as counter space.  And I love to bake.  So this is an important room for me.
Our house sits on a hill....hence....The House on Hilltop Farm.  We have tried to make sure the house is tightly sealed since it is on a hill, and it seems to be windy a lot up on that hill.

Here, I am sealing all of the joints in the OSB.  I did the same thing in our living area, aka, Great Banquet Hall.

We also insulated all of the walls in the kitchen

I think this will be my Halloween outfit this year!  You HAVE to wear this when insulating, no matter how hot it is.  And don't bother with make-up because it will just rub off on the mask, if you don't sweat it off.  It's an ugly job...but someone's gotta do it!

 We put OSB on the kitchen ceiling

And we insulated the attic above the kitchen. 

 Which is nerve-wracking for me, because you have to walk these planks to get to the attic kitchen area!

In the end, we put insulation (R value 25) one way, then rolled it the other way.  Which makes an R value of 50.  Hopefully the kitchen will be toasty in the winter and cool in the summer.

 

 As you can see I'm going to have a lot of lights in the kitchen.  One thing we realized by living here, is the kitchen is dark.  On the outside of the South side of the kitchen is a porch, and the other window is on the North side.  So, not much natural light comes into the kitchen.

The good thing is the south row of lights are on a separate switch than the north row of lights.  And the two lights in the middle are not lights at all.  They are ceiling fans.  We use these faux' lights to  make sure the electrical is done correctly, kind of a test, before we close it all up.  Much easier to correct mistakes before the walls are up!
 Here's the thing about building. 
You have to think through....how are you going to decorate....how are you going to do the walls....what lights you are going to turn on when you walk into the room.....just about anything from the beginning to the end.  I know I've said this before, but it is just mind boggling to me.  This window below looks out over the patio, and the kitchen sink is going under it.  I decided that we would put "mdf" on the walls.  It's a plastic-type bead-board looking material.  It needs support.  Hence, the osb on this wall.  Support for the mdf.   We also have to think where the fridge, stove, cabinets, what the cabinet height, sink height, etc. is going to be so all of the wiring can be finished before the walls go up. 

 

The wiring includes all of the outlets, which also need to be thought out.  Where will the microwave go, the coffee pot, crock pot, etc.  Will I have appliances in the pantries like I do now.  Sometimes I think we spend as much time thinking things through as we do, doing the actual work.  The wiring is in the attic.  And the wiring was actually finished before we closed the kitchen ceiling up with osb.

 We spent a huge amount of time discussing pantries.  I even had some friends help me out.  In the beginning, on the left of this window (that is on the north side of the house) we were going to put a wood stove.

 Which would make the right side of the window the only area for a pantry.  I did not want a walk in pantry because it was too big.  It felt like a room inside a room.  So, I opted out of the wood stove, we made two pantries on either side of the window, we lowered the ceiling and turned this area into a cozy little breakfast nook.

 It's been hard to get a picture of the whole wall, and the lighting through the window messes with my camera.  You get the idea though from these two pictures.

So that's the kitchen!
  Last week My Shug hurt his foot, again.  He is in another cast.  It's a very thin cast and he, fortunately, did not hurt his Achilles tendon.  He did, however, hurt the same foot he had surgery on.  So, I decided to bring dinner upstairs last week, to save him some steps.  We had a nice little dinner in our cozy little breakfast nook.  I can not wait to move upstairs.  Have I ever said that before?????

 Cindy

My Bay

 One time Dad told me he was going to come and live with us, then my Sister, then my Brother.  And during the time he lived with us, he was going to clean out our garages!

Well, I gave him the chance!

When we lived in town, I had the cutest potting shed and greenhouse.  Well, when we emptied it, we dumped it all in the garage.  And now that the pole barn is finished, and I have a bay, I'm filling it up with my gardening stuff.

 

The first trip from the garage to the pole barn, Dad sat on the tailgate.

He then told Mom to sit with him and she'd feel like a kid again.  It must have worked because they sat on the tailgate for every trip!

While I drove and tried to keep an eye on them!

This was all the stuff from my potting shed that we dumped in the garage.

 We cleaned it all out except for this pile of blankets on the floor that I need to wash...

and a few things on the table that Dave needs for house building.

Dave built me some more shelves today!

I can't wait to finish it and show you the inside.  I feel like I have way too many irons in the fire right now.
I've been cleaning out my craft room so I can find stuff in it this winter
I've been cleaning out the garage and moving stuff to the pole barn
I've cleaned out a big cupboard and put shelving in it's place for my clothes (in a back room in the house)
and I've been working on the camper.....
too much going on.
But I am going to be organized by golly!

Cindy

Pole Barn Part III

 I forgot to mention another little tidbit.  Before the guys came to pour the cement, we wrapped the entire inside perimeter with plastic.  This way when the cement splashed down, it wouldn't get all over the walls. 

 And what did get on the walls, the guys that were working on the floor, were nice enough to clean off the walls.  It wasn't much.

  

 After they put the finishing touches on the floor, it was time for Dave to hang the doors.

 He opened the first package, got the door hung, took the outer covering off of the door,

 and on the bottom panel was a dent!  In the door.  It's a small dent, but it is a NEW door dammittohell!!!

And actually, when he picked up the doors, it looked like one of the packages had been ran over.  So Dave had them sign a paper saying it was possibly damaged.  Guess what?  It was.

 

These are the rails the door raise up on.  They need to be straight.  It took a week and a half for the parts to arrive, but they replaced the damaged parts.

 When the doors were on, there was a slight gap in the top of the doors.  It had to do with the size of the opening being a tad too big,and the floor taking a dip by the edge, but Dave fixed it and it looks just fine.

  Dave also built these awesome shelves which will hold tubs and such, and are extra sturdy.

 And on the other side of that wall is MY bay!

 

 Which I will show you later!

 And this be about where I lost it.  The "boys" spent a few days playing around in the dirt, getting this all smoothed out.  They were also hauling dirt away from the front of the pole barn so we could have gravel brought in for the approach.   I don't have pictures, just a video, which I do not know how to upload.  But while Dave was on his tractor (not pictured) our neighbor was on his backhoe, loading dirt into a trailer, that was attached to Dave's tractor. Well, the trailer was too big for the tractor, and the tractor/trailer combo jacknifed....twice. 

 The trailer was pushing the tractor over on it's side, while my man was on it!  Our neighbor had to come with the backhoe and pull the trailer back.  It could have been deadly and I was on edge from this whole project taking too long as it was.  

But it is finished now and today, we are filling it up!  More pics later.

Cindy