Heat and Floors?

 

We lost our drywall Pros to other jobs in late December and January, but they assured us that since we were ready for them to finish upstairs, they would give us the whole month of February. In the meantime, the boys hung drywall downstairs.

I was often asked what we had to do to get in, and here is what once inspector told: heat, a full bathroom, a kitchen sink and washable surface in the kitchen. Seems so simple, right? But in reality it wasn't that minimal and those few things did not come very fast. That orange coil meant that the in-floor heat was on its way, but we were nowhere near a kitchen sink install.

Around that time I learned how to make a house disappear. This information was from a friend who wanted to build on their acreage without taking down the existing (perfectly fine) structure. They said they were told by their county that they would have to either tear down the other house or just take out the stove. So I wondered: if you take a stove out of a house it is considered “torn down," so if we just put a stove in would we get our occupancy certificate? 

Somewhere behind this tangle of plumbing, electrical and radiant heating lines is a bathtub. We missed a fantastic opportunity to put the radiant heating lines UNDER the tub. It was in the plans but somehow things got re-routed and forgotten. 

The shiny brass knobs of the radiant heating manifold. They look like you would be able to control things with them but we actually have not figured out the fine-tuning yet. 

We had to shift some things around on our house calendar because of the delay in the drywall progress. Having a calendar planning night was really good for us during that time, it helped us to see what was coming up and realize what we had to research and order. Every time we drop off the planning, work seems to slow to a halt. 

(Don't get excited; those prices are really old)

 One of the things we decided we could start doing while waiting for the drywall was shop around for flooring. We did stop at a flooring store to see if we could plan that purchase, but the salesman didn’t seem to know much and we felt like we wasted our time.  Flooring couldn't go down until the walls were done anyway.  

The order things should be done for wood floors was sometimes hard to juggle in my mind. The purchase and delivery had to be just so for timing. For instance, we wanted to paint the walls first. Although you are supposed to let your wood floors sit in the house weeks before you lay them, you are not supposed to acclimate wood flooring when there is paint drying (it adds too much humidity I guess). So you can't paint the walls if your flooring is already delivered and acclimating. Oh, and the radiant floor heat had to be installed and you don't want stacks of flooring in the way, so paint then heat. And the weather affects wood flooring installation. By the time I counted up the rest of the delays I could see there wasn't any hope of ordering flooring anytime soon. At least we were beginning the process of thinking about it!

Here's a cross-section of what we were looking at, adhered to some plywood. My husband wasn't exactly impressed with this stuff. 

Stair backing also had to be thought about. More things to add to the list. 

I would like to say our new year's work was "cut out for us" but the fact was we DIY-ers had to do all the cutting! I couldn't wait until something could be bought pre-made and installed, like a cupboard!

A Construction Christmas

Guess I'm going to blog about Christmas in July! It just so happens that the snowy winter posts will be up during the heat of summer. Hopefully it will be a nice relief from the heat for some of my readers. 

We were sick the end of one construction year (no, it was not 2020) and had to put off the Christmas gatherings until we were all well. So we spent the day at up at the house, just to get out of the RV. 

(It was amazing to look back now and see how often we were sick before we discovered the benefit of hiding away from all other human beings. I don't know what is going to happen to us when we get out and about again.)

Just look at that stairwell! Wow what a difference drywall made. 

This bathtub area did not get an arch like the master bath. The entire alcove here was to prove troublesome later on.

Since we had to put off Christmas, we took the day to give small gifts and venture out for a walk. This deer trail behind our house seems to point straight to the place that eventually housed my garden. Coincidence? More on that later.

Those who felt like it put on a Christmas concert, Construction style.

When we were better, we drove up to The Dalles to meet with relatives for the holidays. It is another place we love. 

Some cool murals there!

Arch, Oops, and sundry items

Since the weather prohibited the exterior work, my husband turned his mind to refining the interior, like building this arch in the master bathroom. It takes quite a bit of calculating in structure and little cuts in the drywall to make it do this!

One day we had quite a windstorm. It started in the Willamette Valley, and my folks called me to tell me about it. I timed it from their call, and an hour later it showed up here!

 I know RV's and camper trailers are built for going down the interstate at 55 MPH, but when strong winds hit it I would get nervous. I took the children up to the house to spend the afternoon. You could hardly hear the storm in there. Yay for 8 inches of insulation!

Look, a DOOR! The master bedroom was primed, cleaned, and a door installed to keep out the dust. This was because my husband was able to start work remotely and needed to keep his computers clean from construction debris. No, this wasn't yet 2020 so he was ahead of the trend. The nice thing was that he could skip two hours of daily driving in upcoming winter weather. Although he could take any mostly finished area of the house, we eventually realized something: we had not put an office in the house plan. We did have a nook designed for a "command center" type space, but not a full blown office space. Oops!

My "command center" nook (which included a place for a computer) also changed about that time. It was going to be in one of the corner closets of the bay window structure in the dining room. Since the weather prohibited outdoor work, this was one space that my husband turned his mind to. Down the 2x4's came and a new plan was made for the bays, and the computer closet was unfortunately going to be narrower. 

Measuring and cutting drywall

 

Mudding and Paint Chips

Paint chips. We knew we wanted a combination of whites. It wasn't as simple as it sounded!

Though not as tedious as watching someone caulking every little hole on the exterior siding, there is a bit of a wait with the drywall. First comes the layer of paper tape that is adhered by “mud” to all the seams of the drywall, and the holes from the screws or nails are filled in too. Oh, and the Pros filled in all of the holes poked in the wrong places, huge gaps around outlets, and other mistakes that we made! Then after all that is dry, it is sanded. Then another layer of mud goes over all that but just covers a little more territory, then once that is dry, it is sanded. Then another layer. It goes on for I don’t know how many turns until that last layer of mud is quite wide.

In order to do these multiple passes, the drywall team had to come back numerous times. That was fine, until they progressed to a point where we forgot to build a wall, or we needed to suddenly move a wall about 6 inches, or put in an arch that somehow wasn’t done earlier. That is when we said, “Uh, we’ll call you,” and the Pros went and get another job to pass the time. Then of course when you call, you are on the bottom of the list. 

Nevertheless, we progressed  to the point where we could pick out paint! 

While I was in confusion over shades of white, my daughter knew what she wanted. A bright yellow called "Chickery Chick" caught her eye. It looked about like the yellow you would use on a curb or a fire hydrant. I was buying samples of something a little more pastel. 

Before we could prime the rooms, all the walls had to be sanded, dusted, damp-patted, cleaned. It was hard! Every speck of dust had to be gone otherwise the paint would not adhere. I tried all kinds YouTube contractor's methods, but I still missed some spots that would haunt me later. 

With electricity at the house, Interior work could go as the days got shorter.