Construction Days 5, 6 & 7

Day 5 found Peter needing to rest and recuperate.  His hands were damaged and needed time to heal.  So Thursday Peter mended and I went to work at the Post Office.  I keep hoping I will wake up one day and not hate my job.  It didn't happen on Thursday, in fact I was having fantasies of quitting before 10:00 a.m.  Then to add insult to injury - I found out I will be covering for vacation again next week.  That doesn't fit in construction plans at all. 

But I digress and I whine.  I was talking construction.  Not much progress has been made in the last three days because of the rain.  It has been coming down in deluges.  It's been miserable and makes me very cranky.  Today was really the first day we had reasonable weather in ages.  We ran out with enthusiasm to greet the pretty day.  Surprise!  It was really cold!  But at least it wasn't raining so we bundled up and got to work.  We made progress before I bailed out to go get alpaca food.  Shortly after I got back Peter bailed out to go to the office.  Together, but separately, we got the concrete up from the west side of the parking slab.  Now we need to dig up the gravel, then dig out the top soil.  The new parking slab is going to be much higher, slightly smaller and off-set from the old one.  Our front lawn will be bigger (and actually a lawn!).  

It's nice to be making visible progress.

In case you're wondering, the stripping of our kitchen floor has been stopped in the middle and my studio has doors, but all construction has been halted in favor of THIS construction.  That's okay. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

(De)Construction. Days 3 & 4.

Day 3 of construction brought rain.  Torrential, oppressive, disgusting rain.  It felt as if we should be building an ark instead of an addition.  Instead of doing much actual construction, Peter made arrangements for a jack hammer rental as well as spent time at the office.  We also took our 4 goose eggs off to a friends house to be incubated.  If all goes well we'll have more baby goosies in about 30 days.  Because we need more critters in our growing menagerie!

About 6:00 we finally made it out to the garage to continue clearing out the stuff that went back in after it went out.  The rain was so bad though that even making a few dashes from garage to barn or shed had you soaked clear through.  Man I hate rain like that!

Day 4 proved much more productive, aided by the fact that the rain held off for most of the day.  We were up before daylight and Peter had the jack hammer with it's very own compressor/trailer home and nearly ready to go by 8:00.   Because we had to resort to a jack hammer and jack hammer rentals are expensive we had to temporarily skip to phase 2 of our construction plan.  Phase 1 was to just break away the concrete on the parking pad and in front of the garage and replace the other concrete when it made more sense. Because we had to rent the jack hammer and we wanted to get our moneys worth our mission for the day was to break up ALL the concrete that needs to go.  Ever.  That's a lot of jack hammering!

Peter said the jack hammer officially weighed 90 pounds.  I tried to use it, I think it weighed more. I managed to "drill" 5 holes, total.  I was no help at all.  In my defense, Peter said that by the end of the day the thing weighed closer to 300 pounds.  It was probably an accumulation of the concrete dust and crumbs that made it so heavy.

While Peter cracked concrete I pried it loose and piled it up.  It was a long hard day for both of us - more so for Peter.  He logged just over 6 hours on the jack hammer.  No one can say my husband had girly hands.  They are totally torn up with more blisters and tears than you an imagine:

The rain hit about 3:00 and we yet continued for another hour or two.  The sidewalks and slab are all cracked, there is a growing pile of rubble with so much more growing to do.  

I think I'm glad I'm working at the Post Office tomorrow.  Otherwise I'd be picking up concrete in the rain.

Construction. Day 2.

The end of day 2 finds me not quite as exhausted as I was Saturday.  Today we headed off to the toxic waste disposal place.  It turns out not all our toxic waste was toxic at all.  Latex paint is non-toxic and can be disposed of with regular trash, as long as you make it solid.  Fortunately the place did take all the nasty stuff so we don't have to worry about THAT anymore.

On our way home we stopped and rented a concrete saw.  Peter applied himself to the task:

I applied myself to the task of turning latex paint into a solid.  I do distract easily though and before I knew what came over me I was swirling the pretty colors together and entertaining myself quite nicely.  I know.. I'm a slacker and I did eventually get all the liquid out of the cans and spread out in boxes so it can dry.

 While I was playing with paint, Peter continued working on concrete removal.  He hammered on it with a sledge hammer, while I burned paper in my chimenia.  He pried on it with a pry bar, while I played with kitties.  He got the farmer next door with the really big tractor over to help lift sections while I wandered around the field with the alpacas.  The result of his efforts are below.  That's Oliver, Intrepid and Minuit, our outdoor cats, hamming it up in the photo.

The concrete was much thicker than expected and was not going to be removed as we had planned.  Our next step is a jack hammer.  I wonder what I can find to keep myself busy while Peter uses that?

Construction. Day One

Day one of construction is done.  Gone.  Thank goodness.  I'm pooped.  The day started off somewhat leisurely with attention to the chicklets and alpacas.  Everyone needed food and preparation for the day, including Peter and I.  Cleverly I threw food in the crock pot so we'd have dinner ready when we wanted it.  We began our endeavors by 10:00.

Our construction plan involves a complex chain of events.  Here is a before photo of stage one.

Our plan involves turning the garage into additional living space for the MIL suite. Our plan is to remove the garage door, frame in a wall, add a window, remove the brown door on the end, add a window, re-side the building and build a pergola/patio where those plants are on the end.  On the inside we are going to vault the ceiling, insulate and sheet rock the walls, break out the old concrete and re-pour the floor, topping it with matching hardwood that we put in the rest of the suite last year.  Before we can do any of that we need to remove the parking pad and tree stumps, raise the level of the ground, re-pour cement to include the foundation of the garage and future pergola.  But before we can do that we need to make space for the pile of broken concrete and foundation that we need to break out, as well as the soil we're going to try to sift and salvage.

And that's just stage 1.  

My beloved husband (aka the great time under-estimator) says we can have it done in a couple of weeks.  Bwaa haaa haaa!

Now that you know the plan, here is how day one went.  Peter started clearing a space for the concrete and soil while I started emptying the garage.  Most of the stuff in the garage was not mine so I could not make the judgement call on what to do with it.  I just hauled it out to the parking slab and sorted into piles:  Tools/hardware, garden, wine-making, organic material (like potato starts, cuttings, etc), everything else, hazardous waste (there were cans and cans of unlabeled paints and chemicals) and then a pile for the stuff that probably needs to go to the dump.

By 3:00 the garage was mostly empty, Peter was done with his task and began tackling the chore of sorting through the piles.  He added new piles to my sorting schema and made serious progress.  I turned into his assistant as the decisions being made could not be made by me. The problem was that by the time we finished sorting, nothing was actually put away and it was nearing 9 pm.  We had promised his mother that we would not leave anything on the slab overnight.  She worries about how things look.

Peter stashed the potatoes in the barn, as well as the tools and hardware, while I burned our burn pile.  A few things were put in Peter's mom's van for charity and a few things were put in the SUV for recycling.

Everything else went back into the garage.

EVERYTHING.

(can you hear the crickets chirping?)

At least it's sorted for easy dispersal once the dump, recycling & hazardous waste places open on Monday.  Peter still needs to make some decisions on where to put the things we aren't getting rid of but the hardest part of this section of the plan is over with.  yay.

Still on Tenterhooks?

Still on Tenterhooks?

Let me put you at rest over that right now.  We didn't get the closet done.  Monday Move day will have to become Tuesday Transfer.  Tis very sad. 

We spent the morning exchanging presents and generally relaxing.  It was Christmas morning after all. Then we went for a lovely drive to Silver Lake and Maple Falls.  The weather isn't particularly cold today but it has been.  There was ice on the lake that glistened and sparkled, the water pushed it to shore in sheets that stacked up on each other.  It was beautiful.

After relaxing and enjoying the day, we finally got around to working on the closet about 6:30 pm.  We already had time working against us.  We made some progress and then it became apparent that I wasn't really being very helpful.  I'm not sure if there just wasn't much for me to do or if I just wasn't in the mood.  Anyway - I found other useful ways to keep myself busy, dishes, facebook, dancing with the cats and Peter continued building. 

Then we ran out of wood.

Construction ceased about 8:00

We have most of the framing done.  We still need to put in studs.  And of course the sheet rock.  And mud.  And paint.

I just hope it doesn't become Wednesday Welocate.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve fun!  This certainly has not been a traditional Christmas Eve.  No kids around.. No meals to plan, no presents to wrap.

Instead - construction.  We were supposed to get to work on closet building right off the bat this morning.  The problem?  It turns out my husband is pretty much a typical man. Quite an eye-opener for me because up until this point I really believed he was anything but typical.

We had just finished our morning coffee this morning when he looked at me and said..

"I have to go to town." 
I said, "without me?" 
His reply:  "Yes, without you." 

You know what that means... he had to finish his Christmas Shopping..  Maybe even start it.  No amount of prying could make him tell me what he was up to.  Oh well - I'll find out tomorrow.

Once he got back from his errands we had to eat lunch, then go all the way to Bellingham to purchase sheet rock, THEN we got to work on the walls.  About 7 pm.  sigh..

At 8:00 I was enthusiastically cutting sill seal.

By 9:30 we had some studs.

We quit at 10:30.. 
Wall is not finished.  Monday Move Day might be a bit touch and go. 
Are you on tenterhooks?  I am!

Merry Christmas! 

Be good humans.

I'm in hot water - Thank goodness!

Today was flooring day.  I'm sure I've mentioned it (like a gazillion times).  By this time we should be getting very good at it, and we are! Flooring a room now takes us hours instead of days.  We still have a lot of opportunity to use these skills again.  In the spring we will be converting the garage into additional living space in the batchelor pad and at some point we will most likely be putting down new floors in the farm house.

Yesterday we put self leveling stuff on the concrete floor and last night we applied sealer. We set the hot water heater in place this morning and got started on the floor at noon.

By 3:30 we were ready to install the last row.  3 1/2 hours!  See?  We're getting good!



By 5:00 we were actually hooking up and filling the hot water heater.  I tell you..  these are the best inventions ever created by man.  Give me hot running water over microwaves, dishwashers, electric blankets and toasters any day.  I'd even take hot running water over sliced bread - which is apparently the pinnacle of greatness (so they say).

After dinner we began laying out the outline for a wall we'll be building tomorrow.  This wall is going to provide a partition creating a hallway and shelving between the two doors on the one side and a closet and a more intimate bedroom space on the other.

We "decided" to call it a day by 8:30...

Countdown: T minus 4 days

This little house on the ditch has no hot water.  The hot water heater is sitting in the driveway.  If we want hot water out of it, we will need to set it on fire.  We can't re-install it until the flooring is down - and we still have to put leveler and sealer down before we put the flooring down.

My "dresser" is a saucony shoe box I keep tucked under the bed (talk about downsizing!). 

Peter, myself, two cats and a dog are living in approximately 300 square feet.

Thank GOODNESS we've set a move date for Monday.  Just 4 full days away.

Tomorrow we put down the stuff that levels out the floor.  While that's drying I'm going to pick and choose what we can move into the farm house.  Friday we should be able to put down the new floor.  Saturday we'll build the closet.  Sunday is Christmas!  Monday - we move.  Tuesday & Wednesday we start moving stuff about and getting organized.  Thursday Jill get's here. Saturday she goes home and Kyle and Mary get here.

It's sure nice I don't have to worry about what I'm going to be doing from one day to the next.

Ceilings, walls & floors

Saturday was "Wash the walls and patch the holes in the walls and ceiling" Day.
Yesterday was "Prime the ceiling" Day (as well as "visit the Museum of Glass in Tacoma and eat copious quantities of Pad Thai" Day).
Today was "Wash more walls, apply 'Kilz' where necessary and paint the walls" Day.  You probably thought it was Monday.  Ha ha.. you would have been wrong.
Today may also be move the "hot water heater so I can paint behind it and we can put flooring under it" day.
Tomorrow will be "Put another coat on the walls" Day and hopefully "Seal the floor" Day.
Then there will need to be:
A day for skim coating the floor.
A day for laying the new flooring.
A day for building a closet, and of course painting it.

I'm getting a little punch drunk.   As I was painting the walls today I got a little silly.  The previous color of the walls could best be described as the color of dried up orange sherbet.  You know - how it darkens and loses it's orangie-ness unevenly after it sits in the freezer for two or three years?  (Not that I've ever done that).  The new color is a creamy color called distant white.  It looks much better and provides a nice contrast to the old color for writing words on the wall.

Racing toward the finish line...

Christmas is just 7 days away.  Kyle and Mary will be here in just 14 days.  I'm so glad we are making progress!

Yesterday I moved the bed into the living room.  It's quite cozy in here and I can drink my coffee while still in bed.  Gosh.. It's so cozy I can almost MAKE my coffee while still in bed.

The bedroom had 5 different kinds of carpeting in it.  There was an orange shag, a brown swirly patterned atrocity, and orange swirly patterned piece, another incredibly ugly and gross piece and then a salvagable beige berber over the top of that.  You can see three here:

By two o'clock the ceiling was coming down and the carpeting was coming up.

Sparky supervised.. and because there was a risk of asbestos in the popcorn ceiling, she wore protective gear:

By 10:00 pm the ceiling was all down and the carpeting was all out.  Tomorrow I attack the walls with bleach  (there seems to be a bit of a mold issue) and start filling holes and prepping the ceiling for the new finish.

flooring - day 3

We scraped all the glue and goo from the kitchen floor.  It took hours.  I have blisters.

Here is a shot showing the nearly done floor - and all our junk.  Don't look at the junk.

So tomorrow (maybe) I'll move all the stuff out of the bedroom into the living room and get started on THAT part of this project. Of course I'm thinking if I can get doors on my fiber studio we could move stuff there.  Minimal fiber studio construction may need to be done first.  Decisions, decisions.

Batchelor pad floors - day 2

Today started out so promising.  We actually got started putting flooring down on the floor.  Then Peter had to go to work.  At this early stage the job is much easier with two people.  I mean I COULDA gone on alone - but it just didn't seem like a wise choice.  We got this far before Peter had to go.

While he was gone I took a nap.  I know.  I should have been working, slaving away on this project but a nap called to me.  I am unemployed - an official "laze-about" and I have to take advantage of the few perks I can get.  After my refreshing nap I started scraping up 40 year old linoleum.  What a job!  I worked at it for hours.  Peter came home from work and (still in his work clothes) he poked at the floor just long enough to get his picture taken. 

By the end of Day 2 we got the living room almost completely done.

Tomorrow Peter does not have to go to the office.  Tomorrow we should be able to finish up these two rooms.  I'm looking forward to it!

Batchelor pad floors - day 1

The time has come for the floors.  This is exciting because once the floors are done in the living room and kitchen - we move out of the bedroom, get it done and get moved.

Peter had to go to the office this morning (why does that seem to always be the case?) so I started the morning by clearing out the living room.  This was the hardest part because we just don't have room for all this stuff.  We are going to have to move it all back and forth like we did for the walls.  Right now all the stuff that was in the living room is shoved into the kitchen and the bedroom.

I cut the carpet into 4 pieces and hauled it all out to the barn. 

I quite like the reddish color of the carpet pad. But it had to go too.  As well as the tack strips and all residual glue and gunk.  I managed to get the pad up in one piece - I even managed to get it to the barn in one huge chunk.  I think I'm getting muscles.  Peter came home just in time to help me get up the last of the tack strips and goo.

We brought the boxes of flooring in from the car preparing to get to work.  Cleverly, we read the directions first, and they stated emphatically that the flooring be installed at room temperature.  Sigh.  House:  65 degrees (ish), car: 40 degrees (ish).  Whoa Nelly.  Stop the presses.  Hold everything.  Keep your pants on.  Cool your jets.  
 
So now, the flooring is inside and nearly everything in our world is displaced until the stupid stuff warms up.  sigh..
 

 
Tomorrow we should be able to get serious about laying down the new floor in the living room.  Then we'll need to move all the stuff from the kitchen to the newly laid floor in order to work in there.  It's like we live in a Cuisinart.

Batchelor pad roof - days 3 & 4

Day 3..



10:30 a.m. Peter had to work this morning - I spent my time continuing tear down of the green house.  Do you see Sparky?  Isn't she skinny??



3:30 pm Green house was finally cut back from the house and the underlayment started getting put down. 

 Day 4 (it was only supposed to be a two day project!!)

Felt is down and significant progress was made on the shingles



3:30 day 4. The rain started.  Sprinkles mostly. 

We did manage to "mostly finish" the roof by 8:30.. in the dark.

Batchelor pad roof - day 2

2:30 pm. Not much visible change - but the side walls are down in the green house

 

6:30 pm.  The greenhouse has been cut away from the house - a must in order to put the roof on properly.

The covers over the doors are done.  The greenhouse - although not completely removed - has been cut back from the house.  We are ready for felt and shingles.  I precut the shingles today while Peter was at the office.  The rain is supposed to start tomorrow afternoon - I think we can do it.  But certainly - this two day project is stretching to three.

Bachelor pad upgrades continue

The goal:  replace the roof, add two roof covers, tear down the green house.
The time frame:  2 days.

This is the progress of day 1.

8:30 a.m.  Peter removing the roof  (I was down below picking up the mess)

11:00 a.m.  Old roof gone and mess is mostly cleaned up



7:00 (ish) pm.  The first of two entry covers is getting finished.  Part of the green house walls have come down.

Just can't wait for tomorrow!

Have I mentioned the stove?  The stove in our house had a short and it's about 60 years old.  If you touch it and the sink at the same time it shocks you.  If you stand on the metal trim on the floor and touch it, it shocks you.  Not fun at all.   It's apparently done this for years but Peter has learned how not to get zapped.

Yesterday remodeling moved into the kitchen and the horrible stove was in the way of painting and it shocked me repeatedly while I was trying to clean.  It HAD to go.  I don't demand things very often of my husband - but yesterday, I demanded the stove be tossed (I demanded, of course, in the nicest possible way), but I was done with it.

Once we got the stove out, Peter took a look at the back of it.  We think we found the problem:

I think I shall name him Mickey.

After painting the walls and the trim I began to paint the grimy, icky, textured ceiling.  As I applied paint, the ceiling started coming down on me.  It just started to fall off.  I felt a little like Lucy as the candy started going faster and faster down the conveyor belt.  My original plan was to keep the texture up there (seemed easiest at the time) but I was being forced to change that plan.  Such a messy process.  I like the smooth ceiling better than the texture but I just didn't want to work that hard! 

Now I will need to go back and take the texture off the living room ceiling as well.  Anyone want to come and help?

Working days as a stripper.

So this is what married life is all about.. I'm now stripping for a living. 

Today was the start of turning the batchelor pad into a suitable apartment for Peter's mother.  I spent 8 hours stripping wallpaper from one wall and this is all the farther I've gotten.  This wall is only about half done and there are still 3 more walls to go!

Tomorrow I get to keep going.  Yay! 

While I was working my new Mother-in-Law came by to chat and offer a bit of assistance. 

During our conversation she shared the following sentiment:  "I'm so glad you're here. A man without a woman is really no good at all."

You know..  I have to agree!