Warm and Cozy

Since we moved in to the house, it has been, well, drafty to say the least. The house was never insulated and now that there are holes in the walls and no drywall downstairs, it can get pretty chilly. As part of the remodel we hope to make this old drafty house a little bit cozier and have started the full insulation of the house. Luckily, the state and local codes are already aggressive in the level of insulation required so all we have to do is follow the law.










Required insulation: R-15 for exterior walls and R-38 in the attic.
Since our crawlspace is so small (>18") we aren't required to insulate the floor(R-19) but Deder is attempting it anyway. We are also adding r-13 to the interior walls and ceiling to try to increase the local coziness and sound dampening.










This was supposed to be the easy job but it's really more tedious than you might think. Our house is framed all crazy so the stud bays are not the same size as the insulation batts. This means you have to take the time to trim an inch or two off of all eight feet of a batt (cheap serrated kitchen knives work the best!) and then trim out the spaces for the diagonal fire-blocking and all the new electrical and pluming in the house. Finally it gets stapled and taped in place. Andrea and I try to keep a 'fiber-glassy' set of clothes downstairs, but who the hell wants to put those clothes on? Inevitably the back of your throat starts to tickle and you rub your face with your glove and your face starts to itch, it can just be pretty awful. A cold shower and PBR seem to take care of the symptoms quickly enough though.

With the carpentry, electric, and plumbing finished and something finally beginning to cover the studs, we can't help but feel like this whole project is really starting to come together. Of course we still have a ton to do: exterior trim, electrical service, install/refinish floors, mechanicals(fans and hoods), drywall, electrical fixtures, plumbing fixtures, bathroom, kitchen, and interior trim. That should do it, right? Maybe we'll take a break before tackling the upstairs.

The New Addition

Some of you may have noticed that there has been something else building in the background. We are happy to announce (belatedly) the arrival of our daughter Elsa. Born on June 19th, at 8lbs even, she's beautiful, healthy, and happy. This, of course, has slowed us down a bit, but we don't mind at all.

Let this be a lesson. . .

At our electrical inspection, the inspector was fairly complementary of our work, of course most of it was done by an electrical engineer (Jens) but we weren't going to tell him that. He picked up our permit sign-off sheet, clicked his pen, and stopped, "are you going to run phone lines too?" In retrospect, this is an obvious setup but innocently we reply, "yeah, data and cable too."
ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! Wrong answer!
Apparently, the electrical inspector DOES care about low-voltage lines in your walls. So we got to work on it.
Deder was diligently drilling holes and dragging cable one morning, all this after the new plumbing is in (now in the ceiling rafters and not in the floors) when the predictable happened. Drill bit meets new hot waterline!
There are several lessons that can be learned here:
1. if you can see the other side of the rafter, it pays to take a look first.
2. PEX is not impenetrable but is reparable.
3. ALWAYS have a quick shut-off valve for the whole house.
4. it never hurts to have LOTS of towels.
5. on the bright side my water pressure is GREAT!

Windows with a Vista

This summer we got a lot of help from friends installing the new windows.
These babies are pretty top of the line: double hung, double tilt, pine framed, with custom three-light tops to match the rest of the house.

15 windows took only about a month--one at a time--that's like one every other day!

The real trick was spacing the windows to resemble the old ones, I think we got it but we'll see when the trim goes on.

Plumb and done

The Plumbing is done. The plumber we hired was a great guy, really knew his stuff and what was best for our situation, I would definitely recommend him if anyone needs major plumbing repair in the Willamette valley. We got all new Pex lines, a rearranged bathroom for the Antique claw-footed tub (next post), a second hose bib in the front of the house, the exterior mounted vent piping is now gone (how embarassing that was!) and an outdoor shutoff was added (which came in handy).

It only took a couple of days to get the house completely re-plumbed, the pex lines come together so easily. I though we would have to replace our original cast iron main vent stack but the plumber told us that cast iron is still the best thing you can get. Apparently they build high-end homes with cast iron cause it better at hiding the flushing sound in your walls. Because all the toilet flanges were 2" off the ground, those got replaced and now the height is really throwing me off. The new pipes allow for much more water pressure and much hotter water--I think we may really see an improvement this winter now that the waterlines are a non-conductive material.

I spent a Saturday sawzalling out the old galvanized steel pipes and went to the Dr. because of it. Some nasty little shard of wood found it's way deep into my palm and has really put a damper on my handshake. Come to think of it, I've been spending alot of time removing parts of my house from my hands and arms.

Odds and Ends

Here are a few of the other projects that didn't seem to deserve their own entries but are still worth mentioning:



To make more kitchen space, we've added an extra 4 feet of 1/2 wall to make our L kitchen a U.
This was surprisingly easy now that Deder's done a bit of framing in the house already. It's also desperately needed--since the original kitchen had neither a fridge or range, we needed to make up the counter space somewhere.





The guest-room closet had a bit of an ugly issue. The septic pipe running down the corner tended to condense and mildew your closet contents besides being unsightly. So we managed to disassemble and reassemble the frame a full stud over giving enough room to frame over the septic pipe when the finish work happens. Much nicer!



Much of this remodel includes organizing the house the way modern homes are organized. The current configuration is piece-mealed together from 80 years of fixes and upgrades. As a result, the water heater is not in the house proper, but a later addition. Luckily, our local home-builders association had it's recent garage sale. Local builders donate used and extra parts to raise money for a charity, often there is some really good stuff there for folks like us. The place was a crazy house, some lady even took some tiles right out of my hand. You would have thought it was some kind of Black Friday Sale or something. Anyhow, we did end up getting our name on a nice used water heater, way newer and more efficient than our current one. Once we get the plumbing in we can place the new heater inside the house where is should be much more efficient.

Breaker Breaker

So, upon the advice of our electrician, we purchased the largest breaker box available for our 200 amp service. This sucker is 40" long with space for 40 breakers! But you'd be surprised. After adding in breakers for hard-wired smoke alarms (code), washer, dryer, fridge, microwave, GFCI's for bathrooms and outdoor outlets and double breakers for each of the six electric heating units. . .bam

only six left.

That's only six for upstairs and any heating/cooling units we eventually install.