Are we there yet?

Hey Friends!

First of all, let me apologize to everyone out there who has been watching. I did not realize how popular this site had become! I have received many, many calls and emails asking when the next update would be. Honestly, I didn't think anyone was really watching this site? Boy, was I wrong! So sorry for leaving you all in the dark the past few weeks.




Explanation: Kathy and I have been working night and day to get this project wrapped up! PLUS, I have two home remodels I'm trying to wrap up for some very important people, so any extra time I have had has been focused on their projects, not my blogspot.





Cure: I'm taking a break, a breather, and thought it would be nice to update the crew. I am very, very tire right now -- but somewhat relieved. Today we are getting carpet, which means that we are moving upstairs TONIGHT!!! Crazy, eh? Last night I had a punchlist a mile long in order to compete everything in time for the carpet installers today. Plus we had to clean out the 3 months of accumulated CRAP that was everywhere! Wait, I need to back up a bit.

The last posting I showed you some great shots of our fireplace install, John helping us mud, and Kathy painting.

So the fireplace is finally hooked up and RUNNING! We got the pilot light lit, and the gas is burning -- it's a beautiful unit, great install! Not too shabby for my first attempt as a mason!

Kathy's been a trooper with the painting. The colors are GREAT! We recently stained the wood beams and the color for the beams is fantastic. Really brings the theme together! We did, however, manage to drop 2 (not 1) quarts of stain in our house. One downstairs on our dining room carpet (that was suppose to STAY!), and one more quart upstairs in the m. bedroom -- it fell off of a wobbly ladder that I was adjusting -- duh! Oh well, :-)


John, our faithful drywall mudder, showed up at our doorstep in crutches a few weeks ago. We were on the edge of being done with the mudding, and he injured his knee. He's better now, but we were really concerned for him at the time. And there was no way he was getting back onto a ladder to mud our walls! So on the downside, that left just me to finish the mudding, and the tiling, and the trim, and the .....oh, you get the point!


Bathroom: It's done! We set the LAST PIECE OF TILE last night, around 10:30pm. I would have been done sooner, but I had to abandon the tile so I could focus on mudding so that Kat could get the walls primed and painted. One thing I did learn about mudding: it's not worth it! Hire it out to a professional. It literally took me 5 weeks to complete this task when I could have paid a crew $500 to do it in 3 days. This is the biggest reason why we are so behind. Anywhoo, I did save $500??




Sorry all these mugshots are of me. Kathy called me a camera hog last night. Hey, I wanted her to do the tile, but she told me she couldn't reach that high! Hah!




The tub made it thru the window, the vanities are in place, the shower is all tiled in, the toilet is set, the medicine cabinets are in and electrified, and the floors are grouted. We have a few vertical walls to grout in this weekend, then we'll seal up the tile and be done! Gotta tell you, the bathtub is AMAZING! We got the unit from Sansiro USA, and it runs as beautifully as it looks! Last night we had a major thunderstorm roll thru (about 1:30am). I had just finished my work for the night, so I filled up the tub, turned on the jets and the heater, grabbed a beer and soaked. I stayed for an hour. It was AWESOME! Many thanks to Bill from Sansiro for the best looking tub in any house in Aurora!

Carpet: We're getting carpet today. YEAH! I'll take some shots tonight and update the blog, or at least I'll try to update the blog!

Electrical: My sparky came out this week and got the place fired up. All the lights, all the switches, all the outlets -- up and hot. It's great. It felt nice to get rid off all of the extension cords and plug my tools into the new outlets. It's the fans and accent lights that make it all worth it, thought. They are GORGEOUS! They match the paint and stain perfectly and really make the fireplace POP to life! Honestly, though -- it's just nice to have lights in the space that aren't attached to a big fat orange cord.

Plumbing: My plumber was out this week too. He got most of the fixtures set and the bathtub up and running. He was not able to complete the sinks and toilet installs, so I will do this tomorrow (add some flex lines, putty in the drains, fire up the supply lines). The shower will have to wait another week or so, as I need to finish grouting in the tile and stones. He did get my fireplace up and running, which was a big sigh of relief! And he also helped me find a leak that we were having with the downstairs shower: the caulk around the soap dish is worn out, needs to be redone. YEA! Much cheaper than replacing pipes!

You know, I forgot to tell you a very important piece of information. We have had great weather for our project....and almost no injuries. But......I was playing softball Tuesday night and cracked a triple. I had to run pretty fast to beat the throw to third, but I knew I could beat the throw. However, I also knew I had to stay on base or be tagged out. So as I hit the bag, my foot stopped....but my body didn't. POP! A very loud pop was heard, not a snap, just a pop. But I was done. I had to get a replacement runner and I hobbled over to the bench, grabbed two cold beers (on for the ankle) and tried to nurse my wound. When the dust settled (we lost the game, but my replacement runner scored for me), I think the popping noise was my ankle tendon. Not sure what the technical name is for my injury, but it hurt like hell. I could not walk on my right foot Wednesday morning. But my buddy Jeff brought over a "miracle" splint, and once I wrapped my ankle in the splint I could walk around like normal, just couldn't fit a shoe on! So I took a sick from work, rested the ankle, and played gopher for my sparking and plumber. It worked out, but I've been working the past 3 days on a bummed ankle. It's fine, just can't put my weight on the right foot....gotta stand on my ladders and scaffolding with most the weight on my left leg and foot. And I got 'er done! And at least it happened at the END of the project, rather than during the framing portion!

What else? Kathy's having a dinner party this weekend, so our big push is to have the living room back in order, our clothes upstairs in our new closet, our bed upstairs tonight for our first night, and then start focusing on the final punch list. I'll have a ton of trim and loose ends to wrap up before I can call the project complete...but at least we'll be living in the space! And we're also going to turn our old bedroom into Jade's this weekend, and the kids are looking forward to having their own bedrooms finally!

Budget wise: we broke the budget back around the first of July! But I've managed to build the space for around $100/sf. This is considerably LOW for a construction project. And my bathroom along is a $200-225/sf space, so that's pretty amazing. I would project the space to cost a home owner around $150-175/sf to build using a contractor, so we're pretty happy about that savings. Still gotta find the extra $$ to pay for it, though!

What else? The family is doing well. I think everyone is ready for this construction project to be OVER! We're going camping next weekend, taking out the bullet, get some fishing in. Jade's back to school, and Kaleb starts Kindergarten on Monday. We should hear some news regarding the adoption in September....we'll keep you posted as things develop!

Looking forward to some good, very good rest tonight! Thank you so much for your support and interest. It's been a long and tiring project, but we're almost to the finish line!






Ciao!

Day 60

Two Months! Yikes! No wonder I'm so tired :-)

I'm going to keep this one short because it's late, I'm tired, and I want to go to bed!

We finished up the fireplace this weekend -- yeah! John (S.) came over and gave me a hand. Together we knocked out the final pieces of stone -- looks GREAT!!









Then John (B.) also stopped by on Sat. AND Sun. to help with his expertise: drywall finishing! He's an amazing worker and is just a great guy to have around.

Thanks to BOTH the Johns for helping out this weekend.

And Jeff! He came by so that we could crank out some more tile work. (Yuk, is it over yet?) We probably have one more full day of tiling plus some extra trim work left to do and then we can grout and call it quits. Yeah!

Anyways...hope all is well on your end...


NOTE TO NATE: Hope your trip is going well! Wanted to let you know that John (B.) was very impressed by your mudding skills in the stairway and had little touch up to do to get it ready for paint. Thank you SOOOOOOOOOO much! Also, wish you could have been there to finish up the fireplace...it looks AMAZING and I know you would have enjoyed! Like the cheap-O corbels?? Jeff told me to tell you that they "fit like a ....." oh, nevermind! Missing you on the drywalling of the vaulted ceiling! Hope Deutschland is treating you well! Don't forget the "Erdingers"!

Oh yeah...this shot was taken a month ago! Ouch! Where did it go?


"You remember the signal?"

Hello Again!

Well, sorry about the absence from blogging. Once we had received the green-light go from the building dep't. to finish our drywall, we began taping and mudding immediately. Since then I have been either too busy, too tired, or too lazy to update this blog. Truth is I have just been extremely, extremely busy and have just tonight forced myself to sit down and share with you our story since we last left off.

Rough Frame Complete. This allowed us to go forward with drywalling BOTH sides of the walls. This part of the project went pretty well. But when we hit taping and mudding, we hit a wall. It just commanded so much time that a few days turned into a few weeks. Looking back I wish I could have hired a crew to tape and mud...but we made it through.



Tiling. I got a pretty smoking deal from a local supplier for 18"x18" travertine tile. Travertine is a young version of marble. A bit more grainy, pocky, and soft. But it's GORGEOUS! Kat and I decided to use this for the floor (with accent dots) and the shower walls. Easy enough? I've never tiled, but fortunately Jeff, Nate, and I made it through the tough parts together and slammed out the shower and floor portions. All we have left to do are the walls in the bathroom, the ceiling of the shower, and the floor of the shower. Getting close!!

The bathroom is really tough to photograph without a wide lens. I'm going to get my buddy Paul out to really shoot the space well for us so that you can have a better sense of the tiles and patterns.

One of the tasks we had to do before tiling the shower was water-proofing the membrane. Since it's a steam shower, we had to make sure that water could not damage the structure. Here you see us applying the membrane. It went on pink and dried bright red.






Mudding. Did I tell you how much we hated mudding? Fortunately for us our good friends, John and John (not married) joined us for some help in getting the walls mudded. John is a near expert at mudding and proved to be a great help at teaching us how to mud. The other John is a dear friend and is always a pleasure to have around! Thanks to both of them!



Nicolette Sheridan stopped by the set one day to help us mud. That was pretty cool! She's a great mudder....and fun to work with!

Painting. Kathy has been doing a wonderful job of painting the spaces (I HATE PAINTING!) She's been spending her free afternoons knocking out the spaces that we've completed the mudding and sanding in by painting 2 primer coats and a finish color. Thank you! Here she is placing the ceremonious last dot on the floor! Sorry Kat -- I owe you a picture here for the posting!




Fireplace. DIY came out to shoot us laying up the fireplace stone. It went a bit slow, but we got-er-done. It looked beautiful. Then Nate and I were working on getting the wood mantel in place and walked away for a brief second: CRASH! Oh, it hurt!! The 7' long wood beam crashed down upon the hearth, destroying one of the 19"x20" stones and ripping off about 1/3 of the stone that we had meticulously lain that day. There are really no words that can describe how I felt.....well, maybe one word. Anyways, I just left. Then tonight after our softball game, Kat and I came back and restored the work. Pretty sharp little fireplace unit!

That's about it for now. Nate leaves on Friday. So Kat and I (and sometimes Jeff) are left to wrap up the space ourselves. Stupid drywall! We should be far enough along in about 3 weeks to be able to move in and start living in the space, unfinished.






Well, it's late and I have an early morning appointment. Good night my friends!

Day 36

Tired...very tired!

We received our rough frame inspection and drywall screw inspection --- yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! We're all good to go with muddin', tapin', sandin', texturin', and paintin'.

We're on the downhill slide now....just gotta get the finishes wrapped up. We're planning on getting most of the tile in the bathroom done this weekend. Big weekend for DIY too.

Last night we went to the ballpark to watch the fireworks. Got home around 10:30pm. I went upstairs to sand and mud some more. Worked till past 2am. Nate offered to help, but I felt pretty guilty about working him so much these past few weeks so I refused to let him help so late into the night. Anyone who knows me well knows that I can work (very effectively) well into the morning hours and still function fine the next day. But I'm still tired!

We're trying to wrap up the mudding in the bathroom so we can paint the walls and get the tile up for this weekend. After that, we're just going to coast along and mud and paint at a normal pace for the hallway, closet, and bedroom areas.

That's it for now. Big weekend ahead of us. And the tub arrives tomorrow -- yeah!

From here, we need to add our finishes, fire up the electrical and then call for our final inspections and move in. About 2 1/2 weeks is what I'm projecting.

Ciao!

Day 30-something

11:40pm.






I came home tonight and told Nate that I had good news: no drywalling tonight! Yeah! I had picked up my beam hangers and all we had to do was get the five of them in place. Simple task? NOT HARDLY! We began at 5:15pm -- took a half hour dinner break -- and wrapped up at 11:40pm. YUK!

Let me back up.



After we had received the green-light go from our framing inspection, Jeff, Nate, and I proceeded to rock the space. It took all week and most of the weekend, but we got all 600sf rocked in. It ain't pretty! We're going to need a whole lot of tape and mud....but we're done!





We even managed a day off on Friday to celebrate Jade's 8th birthday. We took Jade and 5 of her friends to Elitch's for the day. Lots of fun! Jeff and Nate joined us too.






Last Wednesday I received some bad news. My steel fabricator closed shop. He was working on my five remaining hangers required for my rough inspection. I scrambled and made some calls and found a guy who could make my hangers in a pinch. He worked all weekend and had them ready for me today.

Out of the five hangers, none of them fit. This was a very tough task, though. These hangers were very custom. So Nate and I had a ton of modifications to make to fit them in their homes. It was rough. Probably one of the worse tasks to date. We had to sawsall, chisel, hammer, slam, curse, and muscle the wood beams to accept the hangers. Then once the hangers were in place we had to drill the holes to accept the bolts. YUK! But it's done! Now tomorrow I can get my final rough inspection and drywall screw inspection. If all goes well we'll be mudding tomorrow night (well, at least Kat and I. I think Nate deserves a night off!)














....but at least we're having fun!






Good night!

Day 27

Hey!

Yesterday we had the electrical and gas piping inspection: passed! Although the inspector was nit-picking little things left and right. He gave me a few "suggestions", but passed me none-the-less. Yeah!

Today was the big test: framing inspection. Truth be told, I was pretty nervous about this since I headed up the framing crew. We didn't pass....yet. The inspector found 3 deficiencies, two of which can be handled with a letter from my SIP manufacturer. The third item is the metal brackets necessary to hold up my roof beams, which I already knew about. So that was FANTASTIC news! I gave Jeff and Nate an arm pump...I think the inspector saw it :-) After it was all said and done, I asked him if we could proceed with drywalling: he said 'sure, at your own risk". DONE! Jeff and Nate were into their construction clothes with superhero-like speed. We proceeded to rock the rest of the walls on the main level that needed to be buttoned up. Took us all night. Now we can move onto the ceilings and remaining walls that need to be rocked. YEAH! I'll get a final "rough frame" inspection next week when I get the brackets back from my welder.

Oh yeah, my roofer showed up today (unannounced) and wrapped up the shingles and all. So the roof is done. YEAH!

Now we have to throw on all the rock, go for a screw inspection, then we can start mudding, taping, and texturing. Hopefully be painting by next week.

Tired, very tired. And very dusty. Good night my friends.

Day 25

The weekend is over -- back to work!

Here's a shot of our fireplace as you walk up the stairs. There will be a pair of pocket doors in the hallway (with fluted glass) that we can close if we want privacy. But we'll probably just leave them open most of the time. What a view!

Let's see....last time I "blogged" I was rambling on about some inspections. Well, we passed two, failed one, and post-poned three more. Let me explain:


Mechanical -- passed. Yea! Thanks Jeff!!

Plumbing -- passed...sorta. Everything was fine with plumbing except for the piping to the fireplace. The inspector wanted to see a different kind of piping used or an extra shut-off valve. Fine -- we'll fix it on Monday.

Roofing -- those stupid roofers. If anyone is the least bit familiar with construction, you will share in my agony that getting subs to show on-site is BRUTAL! My roofers are very skilled at what they do, but horrible when it comes to committing to being at my project. I hate it, just hate it. I am at their mercy....or I fire 'em. But I've got two things, no three things going for me.
1. They've done great work, and we are completely flashed in and water-tight.
2. It has only rained one day at our house since we began this project.
3. I haven't paid the guys a dime!
Anyways, we will push off the roofing inspection until later this week. Stupid roofers!

Electrical -- my electrician wasn't able to button up the rough-in before 5pm on Friday, so I pushed off the inspection until Monday morning. Wish us luck!

Framing Rough -- since I didn't have electrical inspected, I couldn't get my rough framing inspected. Bummer. And the mech. inspector kept pointing out "deficiencies" in our framing...items that I'll have to find in the code book for exceptions. One thing he said was that ALL walls, full-height and cripple and pony walls need to have double-top plates. If this is true, we'll be busting out the saws-all for quite a bit of demo. But he also said it was to the discretion of the inspector. WISH US LUCK!!

We did get the okay from the inspectors to sheet-rock one side of the studs. So this weekend Jeff, Nate, and I labored to hang quite a bit of rock. It's fun, because this is the stage in which the interior spaces start taking shape. Two of our friends: both named "John" checked in with us this weekend to lend us a hand with drywalling as well. Thanks Johns!

This is a shot of our bedwall (looking east). Notice the pony wall at the bottom. Man, we're hoping the inspector doesn't make us double-top plate that sucker!!

So this week will be spent trying to get the rough frame inspection complete so that we can finish the drywall and get a screw inspection by Friday (hopefully!!!!!) so that we can spend the weekend mudding and texturizing.

While Jeff and Nate were working on the smaller drywall pieces, I was working on getting the fireplace chimney and window trimming roughed-in. I had to cut out early to go to my hockey play-off game...should have stayed and worked on the fireplace!









And a shot looking west to our balcony doors. From this angle, the fireplace is on the right, the pocket doors on the left. You can just see a glimpse of our bathroom in the distance, on the left. The beam in the middle is about 11-feet off of the floor. The door in the distance is 7' to the top of the transom window.



There you have it. It's looking great! Can't wait to move in!!


Nate made us dinner tonight: Pheasant Parmesan. FANTASTIC! I think this is an action shot of Nate cooking....taken from Kaleb's viewing angle. It's been great having him around this summer.....he's already asking if I plan on building another house next summer. YIKES! But it has been a fun one......and completely impossible without his help!







Here's a shot of the kids goofing off at the sidewalk art show today. Jade is turning 8 this week! AHhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!