hooray for drywall
we've got almost 20 sheets of drywall adorning the ceiling and some walls upstairs. despite the blood, sweat and tears it's still dry too!
Once again Matt was a huge help and we're excited to not be looking at insulation. In fact it may be fair to say we don't ever want to look at insulation...unless maybe that insulation is brought to us on a platter as we sit on the beach. If this happens we'll gladly look at it and then send it on its way and ask for another drink instead.
Next up, we start progress on our built in shelves and drawers. hopefully we can get the materials we need without having to rent a truck.
is there anybody out there?
Is there anyone reading this, or are you boycotting because we're lousy at doing updates? Leave a comment or three, we'd love to hear from you.
Progress...ahh progress. There are now more holes in the walls than ever. It's a great way to give the spiders unique condo living experiences without having to have them in each other's way. One such spider was unfortunately evicted so that we could get the new porch light up. The good news is that we now have a motion sensing porch light and it seems to know the difference between the bushed and the drunk people on the sidewalk. I'm sure the spider will be moving back in soon and it may be excited to see it's new larger habitat.
The insulation is done! If you ever have the chance to get the most R-value you can in the least space, please spend the money to have it sprayed in. We probably spent 1/3 to 1/2 of what it would have cost to have spray in insulation, but it took MONTHS! so not cool. This project goes on the "never again" list...on top of "stairs from scratch" Hopefully we'll have all of it covered up in just a few days.
stay tuned for more. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.
holy drywall batman!
This isn't exactly burning news, but we do have some drywall up! hooray! Check out the progress with the closet and all of the insulation that's up finally.
The great folks at
Extra Build thwarted our plans to finish the insulation. We paid home depot $20 for a nice sunday ride in their van only to find that the used building supply store was closed for the holiday...who woulda thunk? We've already established our position on thinking, so not us.
For all of you who are wondering why we've cut the poly-iso insulation and "wasted a bunch of money," don't worry. Extra build sells the stuff for $75 a pallet. Home depot sells it for $20 a sheet. If you're going to run out and buy yourself a bunch, please bring us one more pallet of the 1 and 5/8" stuff. gracias.
a little window to my soul
Introducing the worl'ds first bird-safe window!
We're still working through the details on how to keep the rain out of the house with this new breed of window, but we guarantee you'll never be startled by a bird hitting the window.
This labor day was spent laboring mightily and we have a new window to show for it. The project of taking the old window out, moving the opening up and getting the new window in went very smoothly. We both wish that we had known how easy it was to move the window because we probably would have gone with something larger. Oh well. The good news about not resizing the window any more than we did is that we had a limited amount of siding to fix.
What siding there was looks like a high school shop class had a go at using a jig saw for the first time. Unfortunately we couldn't locate cedar shakes to look like ours. Mark made an attempt at custom crafting several different kinds and gets a C for the effort. They don't exactly match, but it's more as a result of improper planning. We didn't really weave them in with the old ones so there is a pretty well defined break. It's also very hard to match the character of the old rotten shingles.
While we do wish the shingles match, we're happy to be done with the bird safe window and back to something that exerts our dominance over nature. It took a lot of will power not to reface the house (a project that would still be nice). We're a little better about focusing on things that improve the livable space. Once that's done we'll take the other challenges.
Here's a shot of the final window with it's primer. not too bad for a rookie, eh?
