Setting up for success

The Materials have arrived!

It was a weekend of getting ready for a lot of progress and as well as work behind the scenes.  The Load of drywall (120 sheets to be exact) that should be enough to finish the project was delivered at 10 on Saturday morning.  Doug and I proceeded to spend the next two hours moving various sizes and varieties of sheetrock into storage and out of the snow.  Once it had found its temporary home we finished the peek of the great room and were able to remove the temporary planks over the stairs that everyone kept hitting their heads on.  But wait there's more, Amber showed up ready to work and progress continued.  With fiberglass raining down she was still a good enough sport to pass me up batting through the access holes into the attic of the original section of the house.  So now instead of ground up newspapers soaked in fire retardant and spun mineral wool the insulation is pretty legit now and at least an R38 rating.
Today went a bit slower though things still went forward.  I ended up being a little more worn out than I had expected so I wasn't a happy camper for the majority of the day.  Doug and I managed to get a new false ceiling in and the majority of the drywall hung.  Turns out though the end drywall needed to be trapezoids due to an out of square on the old ceiling.  Personally that did it for me and I quit working on it at that point.
So all in all it was a weekend that made great strides, but they were mostly prep strides so next weekend should be the flashy progress.

Working With New Sawhorses thats to Jim

The Peak over the stairs is done

Looks like a pretty great room indeed

"Fun" and done, enough said about attics and insulation

Finishing up a bedroom ceiling

Another perspective of that finish

Shameless self promotion

Cutting walls to shape

Expensive Mistakes, Progress, and Solutions

     To begin with I made the first expensive mistake that I will admit to.  Not having a lot of knowledge on how to measure windows and making the assumption that they were the same did two things.  I certainly made an ass out of me, and I have eight custom made windows that are six inches too long.  For a while I was considering cutting down the bricks, moving down the limestone blocks and rebuilding the frames.  Better sense won over after I finished being defensive to hide my mistake.  In the end I think that I will have to buy eight new windows (properly measured) and use the ones I have for the future greenhouse/sun room off the front.
     With that said it seemed to be another start to a terrible work weekend.  I was broke, I screwed up in a big way, and its cold out.  The trifecta of assurances backing a good work weekend.  As it turns out the odds were beaten.  Amber pulled through buying the needed lumber for the window frames (which isn't surprising since the list of people she hasn't come through for is in the negative).   Then Doug showed up on Saturday morning with a will to work and we put in all new replacement windows downstairs.  The best part of it is we ended up swearing less than usual at one another.  Once the windows were in I moved on to drywall and insulation.  So it was a good working weekend.   At the end of the day Doug bailed me out again.  I  couldn't have gotten all the windows in on my own, and today we had seven inches of blowing snow.  Father and son crew does it again!  

What the new windows that are properly sized look like installed

Getting into the house

The front room looks like a room again

A better example of the last photo



Aspiring to be window frames



Still working on the SOB ceiling

Brighter than your average 1870's window

Ladder games

Putting in the ceiling

I mean its been a while since the ladder platform ladder system so I decided to give OSHA another run for their money

All in all a successful weekend

Fiberglass and fun

The past few days of working has been much more reasonable than the past month since the weather seems to have broken a bit or at least its upper thirties and fourties instead of close to zero.  Menards as it turns out convienently had a sale with rebates on high R value insulation as well and unfinished oak interior prehung doors and drywall.  Pretty much a taylored made sale for where we have progressed to.  We ended up with twenty or so sheets of 5/8" drywall for the ceiling of the great room.  The thickness had to be sized up since the trusses are spaced at two feet instead of 16".  What supprised me the most was how much of a difference an eight of an inch makes for the overall weight of the sheets.  The 4x10's come in at about 88 lbs appice.  This being said its not specifically a lot of weight, it is the geometry of the weight and holding peices in place that takes its toll as a day wears on.
The fiberglass went up fairly easy with only a few areas that needed specially cut pieces.  The truly wonderful thing about the r-38 is it seems to be slightly "crispier" than the other fiberglasses going into the house.  So not only does it shed a lot of fibers they have the ability to float just long enough to get down the back of anything being worn and plaster themselves to the general face/eye region.  90% of it is up though and I don't forsee having to install kraft faced batting over my head for a long time.

Installing R-38 Batting



Even better than down the back is when it rains in the ol eyes



Attic vents to to soffit plates

Continuing the R-38

Doug and I putting up the first sheet of ceiling drywall

The Suburban Deer Herd checking out the Project

Putting up the second sheet of ceiling drywall

After sheet four went up it seemed like a good spot to quit

Lynch hanging some hallway walls

Scraps

Wintered Windows

We finally have a room 90% drywalled (including the ceiling) which has turned into a convenient storage room for the project.  This couldn't have come soon enough because the materials have been coming in fast the past few weeks.  The replacement windows arrived last Thursday, forty sheets of drywall last Monday, two pallets of brick on Friday, Attic Insulation tomorrow, and the kitchen suite some point in February.
The project keeps moving forward with Lynch plugging away at the drywall and making sure all the walls are properly shimmed and plumbed.  Last week I ended up running hardwired cables for phone Ethernet and Coaxial to a control box in the basement.  Hopefully by next week we can have all the spaces between the trusses in the great room insulated, and prepped for drywall.

Drywall Jack and Replacement Windows

Storage Room

The Last piece of ceiling to have plaster board added

Lynch taking a page out my jobsite safety book (it is a super stable platform to get at the wall above the stairwell)

Rooms taking shape

Insulation put in between the floors (Amber's handywork)

More interfloor insulation

Furnace Thermostat

Control Cabinet

Control Cabinet Interior

Another Octopus was sighted

Full of Hot Air

We had a major victory today with the advent of the furnace finally being turned on.  With the help of Jim W. we installed the thermostat, replaced a fuse, and fired up all 100000 BTUs.  Within two hours the interior temperature had gone from 20 to 39 which made it almost pleasant to be working there.
Lynch is still banging out the drywall and insulation room by room at an incredible pace despite having to find and make shims for all the unevenness found in the the walls and ceilings.  It is our goal to have all the insulation finished and the drywall hung by the end of January.  There are two big challenges to accomplish this still though.  The first is finding a ladder that will work on the stairwell (there is a 20' open rise) and the second is getting the nailers and batting into the area with the vaulted trusses.   Normally Doug and I would probably try to build something to half way hold the drywall up on the ceilings, but someone from work has been nice enough to lend me a drywall jack so we will need to find another thing to half ass.
For the first time since it has started a very distant end is in site.  All the tasks left have distinct names and specific ways of getting done.  Up until recently it seemed that the house always had the upper hand in our fight, but now the downhill battle has begun and soon most things (nothing is ever really done) will be finished.

Putting the all into Drywall

Lynch Laying Drywall

Half the Master Bedroom Drywalled

Bedroom #2 Getting Drywalled

Bedroom #2 Lookin' Good

T Throwin Up the Signs of a Job well done.  I would like to note That he came to visit specifically to help me because he is a good friend.

Lynch's insulation should make for a great staircase

Cutting Drywall

If the Crap was moved out of the way it would be a good show of an almost finished room

Yet another Drain

Evidence that Doug is working as hard on the plumbing as we are on the drywall

Who Needs a Floor When there is a Bathtub Fixture