Two Miracles!

Well ... I don't know if they really qualify, but over the weekend I managed to lay the last few tiles in the entryway pattern. I know that it was on my list of things to do a really long time ago, but it's actually done now (for the record, there were 5 tiles to lay - not 3 - that really explains the delay don't you think? lol). Also, on Saturday my parents and grandparents (and sister!) were up and cleaned all the excess mortar off the tiles - one step closer to grouting. Thanks guys!

While we were working on that (and some while I was napping ... shhh!) Peter put together our third cabinet box. Technically there are 7 boxes, but we're now all finished one run with an attached corner cabinet and we have one run (with a corner cabinet) left, so I'm saying we're half done those as well. The miracle in this is that we're actually progressing at a rate similar to what I thought we could - one box a day (when we actually work on this house). At this rate we should have the bottom cabinets boxed in by the end of the week and we'll be able to order our countertop - yippee! I'm assuming there will be a delay because of Christmas, but regardless we should have a countertop installed and, depending on how quickly we work on the other stuff, a working kitchen by the end of January :) I can hardly wait!

This week the goal is to finish the cabinets and get the entryway grouted. Lofty goals, but doable!

Merry Christmas :)

One down ... Six to go!

Peter was home sick yesterday, and I had a meeting last night, so no progress on the house. However, over the weekend we did manage to get one box together, and at present it is sitting on its frame in the correct location in our kitchen – it looks so pretty! I’ll have to take a picture and post it. Putting the first box together was a little frustrating – it took about 3 hours, but each one should go faster than that, and hopefully it will be less frustrating now that we have an idea of what we’re doing!

Tonight we work on the second box. Once we get that done (which should be tonight …) we’ll have the whole run of cupboards along the side wall done except the corners – not too shabby. We’ll still have the two corner cupboards to do, one small cupboard beside the dishwasher, the cupboard under the sink, and one more basic cupboard at the end of the island part of the U. Then it’s off to the countertop store and then a two-week “wait,” during which we’ll be busy sanding, staining, and finishing the cupboards, and laying tile in the remaining two bathrooms – sounds like we’ll be really bored! Lol

I called to get some quotes for putting in a subpanel in the garage today, and most of them were in the same ballpark except one, that was about half all the rest. It makes me quite suspicious, but it would be great if we could just pay that much! We’ll have to look into it some more.

Sorry I've been so quiet!

Just haven't been that interested in blogging in general lately.

However, I should keep up to date as much as possible. The past few days I've spent a while grabbing all my posts off the old site and saving them to my hard drive. Time will tell whether they ever get put back online. I wouldn't hold my breath at the moment!

Peter and I have made an itty bitty bit of progress on the cupboards, although we realized on Saturday that we had made a fairly major mistake in cutting the side pieces. After some advice from Derrick, we were ready to move on last night. So, last night we started and made the frame for one section of cupboards. However, we built it wrong, so it's back to the drawing board tonight. We should be able to rebuild it properly tonight without too much problem. Hopefully we'll also come close to getting the box together. Peter gets to try out all kinds of new toys now that we're cabinet-makers! lol

We got word from the siding guy that he will finish the garage for free, which is wonderful. We're so thankful for that! We did get the rest of the Christmas lights up on the weekend - can't wait until tomorrow night to turn them on!

The view from our bedroom this morning ...

Funny story from last night

Peter and I had just finished cutting the 11 side panels for the lower cupboards. We started to look at how tall they were (31") and started thinking that maybe they were way too short. We cut them so that the countertop will be 36" above the floor - standard kitchen counter height, or so we'd read. So, we pull out the tape measure and hold it to 36". Hmmmm ... that seems really low. So, we were getting a little anxious, and the only consolation we had was that the books we had said that 36" was a standard height for a countertop. We were still eager to come to work this morning and check that, yes, kitchen countertops are really that low.

Didn't want to forget our momentary anxiety!

Confession time ....

So, despite having a long weekend, I did not accomplish what I wanted to on Friday night. *gasp* I have a good excuse, though, at least for not doing it on Friday night. Friday after work, Peter dropped me off at home and headed back into work. I diligently measured and cut the tile for the entryway, then spent 45 minutes scraping off the excess mortar that didn't quite get removed when I cleaned up last time. Then I went outside to get the buckets that we use for mixing the mortar .... and I thought .... where is the drill? We need the drill to mix the mortar, and it was ... in the car .... with Peter at work. *sigh* So, I couldn't actually lay the tiles, although I did get a fair amount of prep done. I could have done them any of the other days this weekend, but I didn't - no excuse there.

I did get as many windows and doors as possible insulated on Friday night (I ran out of foam), so that was great.

Saturday we put some more siding on the garage, although we were missing some special trim pieces so didn't get finished. We're going to try and pay the guy we bought the siding from to finish it. It's just too cold. Peter also put some of our Christmas lights up! It is our first Christmas with outdoor lights - I'm so excited! We'll have to get the rest of them up this weekend in time for December 1st :)

Last night was the most exciting of all the stuff we got done on the weekend. We finally took the plunge and cut out all the side panels for the kitchen cabinets. We also got measurements for the bottoms, and Peter put together his new jointer (needed for making the frames). Thursday night we'll hopefully get the bottoms cut, and Friday night we'll start the frame that the bottom cabinets sit on. Things don't seem quite as scary now that we've started. Looks like by next week we'll be getting ready to assemble!

Keeping myself accountable ...

So ... motivation has been lacking this week toward getting work done on the house! Since Peter's not home tonight and it would be really easy to plunk myeslf on the couch and not get anything done, I thought I'd post my goals for tonight and then I'll have to check in next week to say whether they were accomplished or not.

One goal for this evening is to (finally) put the last 3 tiles in the middle of the entryway. Yes, I've been languishing for over a week on putting three tiles in! I'll hopefully have enough mortar mixed to put in a few more outside the border, but I'm only requiring myself to get those three tiles set.

The second and last goal is to clean out around the windows and doors and spray the foam insulation in them. I don't mind putting the insulation in at all - it's sucking out all the sawdust first that's less fun. I want to get as many done as I can with the 4 cans of foam I have.

That's it for tonight. The quicker I can get those two things done, the quicker I can plunk myself on the couch and veg.

Tomorrow the plan is to completely finish siding the garage (déjà vu!) and get the knobs and locks on a couple of doors. If we have time we'd like to get the Christmas lights up on the eaves as well, but we'll see ;)

Keep me accountable! I'll let you know how I made out on Monday.

Nothing to report

Work on the house has been non-existent for the past few evenings. We are getting really burned out again (hmmm ... these episodes seem to be getting closer and closer together! lol) and Peter's been working lots of overtime. So ... we've decided that we'll finish the garage (and hopefully get the Christmas lights up!) on the weekend and start the cupboards with a vengeance on Monday night. Wish us luck!

Garage :)

We got home last night to a garage with a nice big white door on the front :) We quickly noticed, however, that there was no handle / lock on the outside of the door. After trying to figure out how we were going to get in (we had nailed a board across the side door to keep it from blowing) we checked the side door and the installers had actually unboarded it. Turns out the lock is on the inside of the garage door, which is something I've never seen before. It's kind of neat, as it's harder for people to break in that way, but Peter doesn't like it right now, as it's really dark when he goes in the garage.

Other than that, no house-progress last night (although I did clean up some of the kitchen!). I had great plans, but none of them came to be as I got quite side-tracked with my cross-stitching.

Tonight is craft night, and I'm pretty sure Peter is coming in here to work, so no progress again tonight. Today the electrician is supposed to go out and hook up the thermostat for the radiant heating - hopefully soon we'll have a little more control over the temperature in the house! lol

*sigh*

My previous blog-hosting site has decided they're not going to be in the blog business anymore, so I will be transferring all my previous stuff from there (http://peteandange.myblogsite.com) over to here. I have until November 30th to do the switch, so please be patient :)

Sorry about the change.

Interior decorating

This is definitely too early to be thinking about this stuff, but I've been contemplating colours today for the rooms in the house.

I already have our bedroom / bath picked out. We always promised ourselves that when we moved into a house we would decorate our bedroom first, since it always seems so 'blah' in the apartments. So, our bedroom will be a raspberry colour with lots of white accents ... hmmm ... sounds like the outside of the house. Oh well!

Peter is in the process of making us a four-poster bed with one of the other men from our church (this was started before we realized we were going to build - Peter's not really that much of a glutton for punishment!). The whole master bath will be white (with little splashes of raspberry colour ...), and we bought a tile that is mostly white with little silver patterns running through it for the floor of the bathroom and around the tub. So, I think I can do that room pretty easily.

I'm having the hardest time deciding on a colour for the kitchen. I had originally thought a sage green colour, but now I'm thinking that it may not look great with the cupboards (which will be a cherry stain). I'm not really sure about that yet, and since this is our first attempt at painting / decorating an entire house, suggestions are welcome! The tiles are a very neutral colour, so they will match pretty much anything.

The living room I'm thinking of doing in that mustard yellow colour, but again, that's subject to change! It definitely wouldn't match our current furniture, but I'm ok with that, as the furniture is almost 20 years old. Some day we'll be able to get new stuff to match the decor of the house!

Anyway, I'll be enlisting the help of my interior design-savvy friends and family members to try and make wise choices on decorating schemes. Once everything's painted we're going to focus on one room at a time until they're all decorated the way we like - starting with the bedroom of course. So - if anyone comes for a visit within the first little while after we move in - you'll have to come see the bedroom - it may be the only room in the house that's coordinated!

Anyway, back to the real world of studding walls for tonight! Hopefully we can get completely finished upstairs tonight. Peter met with the electrician at the house today, so I'll find out how that went tonight as well.

Current photos

Starting the first floor ...

Sorry there aren’t any pics yet – I thought I burned them to a cd last night so I could upload them at work, but when I got to work this morning there weren’t any pictures on the cd.

Today is Day 2 of full-time framing on the house. I’m hoping that by the time I get there we will have the four walls of the bottom storey up. Last night we managed to stand the front wall and frame the back wall. When I was there at lunch today they had the frame for one of the side walls done, so I assume they finished the second one this afternoon. Now comes the slow (but very important) job of anchoring the walls to the concrete floor. Peter rented a concrete drill this afternoon, so that’s probably what we’ll be working on all night.

These days are just flying by with no time for anything else! We got home around 9:30 last night and by the time I had organized the pictures from the last week it was 11 and way too late to be up. We got up this morning at 5:30 to do some car shuffling before work.

Nan & Gramps came up today to bring food and a picnic table. Gramps’ trailor also came in very handy because we had to pick up a few more pieces of wood to finish the bottom floor today. Gramps also worked on checking for leaks in the connectors of the heat pipe – very helpful as we wanted to be sure we weren’t losing pressure from leaks in the foundation :)

It was really neat last night to see the wall go up – I could see where the kitchen, entry, and living room will be. The only surprise was the height of two of the windows in the living room. They’re a bit higher than I expected, but I figure that will make it easy to put furniture (maybe the piano?) against that wall. The downstairs is so open that wall space is precious! Anyway, it was really neat to see everything start to come together. I imagine it will be even more so tonight.

Thanks again to all the people who are helping out – we really appreciate it!

Finally some pics!

Before the news - there are a few new pictures on the site - I think the only new ones so far are in the 04-24-2005 folder, but now that I know how to get them down to size I'll add some more tonight. Stay tuned ... **ETA - this is no longer relevant. See the Flickr site for house photos.

On to the news ...

We have a foundation :) The concrete was all poured on Friday, and except for one long crack in the middle (eeks! Oh well, everyone told us to expect it, but it’s still very distressing) it looks really good. There wasn’t much to do over the weekend, as God did the work for us by sending rain to keep the concrete wet. The slower it dries, the stronger the concrete.

Today is the first full-time day of framing, so I’m anxious to see how it’s going. The day apparently got off to a rough start, with Kent’s bringing an old version of the lumber order, so that slowed things down a bit as they had to wait to get the correct stuff. Peter said at lunch time that they wouldn’t have all the walls for the first floor up today, but I’m inferring from that that at least there should be something standing, which is very exciting!

Things are moving very quickly now, so it’s even more important to keep up with this journal. I really don’t want to look back and be unable to remember the process, and the daily ups and downs that went along with it.

Last night Peter and I were up until after midnight working on diagrams of the walls of the first floor. Hopefully they have come in handy today; allowing the carpenters (Peter, his Dad, and my Dad) to just measure and cut instead of figuring out all the measurements at the site. Peter said he’s going to tell me they were useful whether they were or not since we stayed up so late working on them! We were up at 5:30 to get Peter to the lot and me to work on time. I think we’ll all crash tonight!

Pouring today!

Well, in about an hour the concrete should start to be poured for our slab. Needless to say, we're very excited. Tom, Dad, and Peter worked all day yesterday laying the in-floor heating pipes - it looks really good. Now if we can just manage to avoid puncturing one when we put up the walls!

I have all kinds of new pictures. I'm hoping to get them posted over the weekend.

Concrete ... coming soon!

So, lots of news on the home front this week. We (finally) got our financing straightened out early this week, which was definitely an answer to prayer. Maybe God is trying to teach us patience through this whole endeavour?

Tom helped us build the forms last week, and last Saturday Dad, Jeremy, Peter, and I braced the forms and tried to get enough sand in the middle (underneath the middle of the slab). With all the wet weather lately, it was a chore to keep the sand dry enough to be useful, but we were finally finished with it a few nights ago.

Tuesday night we compacted the sand and laid down the insulating foam which will (hopefully) keep our heating bills lower in the winter.

Yesterday Tom and Debbie came up and tied the rebar (a really tough job – lots of bending and sore hands) together to form the mesh around the footing. Today Peter, Tom, and Dad are laying the in-floor heat pipe and tomorrow we pour. Yippee! Seems like a long time to get here, but it will be worth it when we walk on our warm floor next winter.

Monday is the day we start framing officially, so if you can keep us and everyone else who is up in your prayers that would be great. We really don’t want any injuries during this process, and it would be nice to stay somewhat on schedule. If all goes well, in a little over 2 weeks we should have a roof on and windows and doors installed J We should also be ready to receive our first draw of money, which will enable us to pay off all the debt we’re incurring. Overall, it should be a very full next few weeks.

I’ll try to keep updated as much as possible.

Keeping up to date

It's been harder than I thought it would be to keep this journal up-to-date. All I talk about is house-building, but I don't often take time to sit down and write out what's going on. However, I do want a record when we're all done and what it was like, so I'll keep on trying to keep this as up-to-date as possible.

This weekend was exciting as Peter and I picked out and ordered or bought almost all of our flooring. That's some big decisions out of the way, and it's nice to get them done now and not have to worry about it when we're in the middle of framing the house.

Every time I come to write these entries I can't think of what to say! Anyway, on Sunday Mom, Dad, Emily, Nan, Gramps, Grammy, and Grampy all came up for a visit and to see the lot. They also brought lots of home-baked goodies - thanks! Peter's been very neglected lately . Dad helped Peter put a vapour barrier down that goes under the foundation.

Last night we went out and fixed the vapour barrier that had gotten mussed from the little bulldozer driving over it. We also raked out some sand that goes under the middle of the pad. Today we should get the rest of the sand, level that out, and Tom is going to build as much of the forms that hold the concrete as possible. NBPower is also supposed to come hook up the temporary power today. Hopefully they do, since Tom needs it to build the forms.

Our proposed schedule for the next week includes having the plumber out tomorrow or Thursday to put in the rough plumbing that goes in the concrete, put in the rebar and wire mesh by the weekend, then possibly next Wednesday lay the pipes for in-floor heating. Next Thursday we hope to pour the slab One thing we hadn't given much thought to was the fact that the plumber needs to know where the well is going, so we have to get in touch with the guy who's drilling the well and see when he can come up and do it.

I'm off to add a bunch of pictures. I'm writing this at work (we have to come in really early on Tuesdays) so the uploading is much faster here:) **ETA - for all our house pictures, visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peteandange/

We need how much rock ??!!

There are currently about 20 loads of rock on the lot, and we need another 10 at least to get the house above the grade of the septic field and driveway. However, after that the rock is done :)

Tom (Peter's Dad), Peter, and I have spent lots of time this week walking a compactor back and forth across the loads of crushed rock. There are a few pics posted in the picture section.

We found a good deal on laminate flooring last night at Kent's, so I'm going to check out a few more places and if I don't see anything better we'll probably order that before it's all gone. It's hard to believe that it's time to start lining that stuff up!

Not too much else exciting happening. Lots of phone time lately, lining everything up to happen. For someone who doesn't like calling people she doesn't know, I'm definitely out of my comfort zone! Oh well, it's good for me :)

Gotta run!

What it looks like after 4 loads of rock

Just a small update on the lot. The above link** shows the lot after 4 loads of rock, 8 loads of sand, and a septic tank. You can ignore the 1100 lb compactor that is ... well .... resting peacefully in the corner of the picture. It is not stuck in the mud ... really.

**ETA: This piece of evidence seems to have disappeared in the transition from the old blog site to this one. Instead, enjoy some pictures of us running the compactor.

Update

Well, I thought it was probably a good time for an update. We are still working on financing, although things are looking up (we think). We should know by the end of the week for sure.

Things in other areas are moving right along. Our excavator / septic contractor dug the hole for the foundation and put the septic tank in place today. Tomorrow he's bringing in the rest of the rock that will have to go under the concrete pad, since we're building on a slab. We arranged to have the concrete, rebar, joists, and trusses delivered according to our proposed building schedule. If everything goes well, we should be framing the house the second and third weeks in May. Yippee!!

Discouraged

The last couple of days have been rather discouraging as we've been trying to get financing, and while we had been led to believe that it would be no problem, a huge problem is what it's been. So, we've been doing a lot of praying (especially me for an attitude check - I'm very prone to pity parties) and contacting different financial institutions (thanks to our friends at those institutions!). I know that it's all in God's plan, but not sure what that plan is leading towards right now. I wasn't even going to post until it all got resolved, but it's good to have a balanced perspective on the whole experience - not just the parts that went as planned.

On an up note - our 8-year-old Tercel (Slammin' Salmon) passed her inspection with flying colours this week, so that was definitely an answer to prayer. We would definitely recommend a Toyota to anyone - ours has been superb!

So, not much to update on the house for today. Hopefully happier news in the future.

We have an address!

I finally got our address from the 911 people. She was very concerned originally that we would be number 14, but our driveway comes after that for number 15 (very strange - I didn't think it mattered since we're on opposite sides of the road!) I have to call now and get our blue house numbers and our postal code.

We just got a revised quote from the plumber. His price more than doubled and we didn't add anything to the house, so that's a little sketchy. That's Peter's domain, so he'll be checking that out.

That's all the news for now. I'll be posting often, as this will be a great resource when I go to do my scrapbooking! Hey ... I could just cut and paste :)

Here's where it all begins

Peter had a wonderful idea that we should keep an online journal tracking our progress through this adventure called building a house. Since I have a bit more free time (hehe) I thought I would be the one to try and keep it up to date. Plus it's always fun to recap what's going on in your life.

So ... on to house details.

Yesterday was the day we officially "broke ground" on the house. The excavator came in and removed most of the stumps and moved our driveway and culvert to the higher portion of the land. We also met with the bank, which was nerve-wracking - it's always scary asking someone for money. We had a little glitch there since I'm still in my original 6-month probation period at my job, but we're praying that everything will be approved. We should find out by tomorrow or Thursday at the latest. After that it *should* be smooth sailing.

We were going to bring in some rock for the driveway, dig the hole for the foundation, and bring in rock for under the slab today, but since it's snowing (eeks!) we had to put a halt to that. Hopefully by tomorrow we can get back to work (and by we - I mean Peter's dad - he's helping us out alot by supervising at the lot during the day when we can't be there).

Since this is my first post, I'm going to try and keep it relatively short (I tend to be long-winded) and I'm going now to try and post some pictures I took yesterday. Wish me luck!