Electric, Insulation, Windows

Our house is finally sealed from the outdoor elements! Our 3rd upstairs window went in today, and the house already feels a bit warmer. We have also been very busy wiring two bedrooms and half of the kitchen. It's amazing how exciting hitting a light switch can be.

The master bedroom has been mostly gutted, only the ceiling wood lathe left

Bathroom

We have been very busy over the last few weeks. The bathroom has been 95% tiled, we just need to add a few pieces of trim. The bathroom door is in place. And we rebuilt our vanity to hold our 1920's sink.

Tiling

This weekend John and I leveled out our bathroom floor to prepare for the tile. I tiled the bathroom floor, which still needs to be cleaned up and grout added. I also insulated the ceiling of another bedroom. There is also a picture of a bedroom window that was recently installed.

Window with trim

Today I made the sill and trim for our bathroom window. I must say it turned out quite well and I look forward to finishing other windows! I also painted the interior of one side of our skinny bath closet. We've worked on numerous other tasks throughout the house which I can't begin to keep track off. We have our refrigerator at the house now, although it's not yet plugged in.

Close to a bathroom

This weekend I worked on drywalling the bathroom - first I had to level out the wall with the window as it wasn't close to being level or plumb. My first attempt at drywalling isn't very good, I'm hoping the spackle will fill in all my mistakes! I also framed in what will be a little cabinet that will double as a shelf for the shower at the end of the tub.

Last weekend we worked on breaking off some remaining cement from the walls, and filling in the cracks, along will other cementing to our crumbling brick. John worked more on the our sink stand. And our wall where the chimney used to be is now all repaired.

More pictures!

Lights & Insulation & Much more

Updates: Our bathroom is now wired - working lights & outlets. We have also run the electric wire for 2 bedroom lights - to be connected to the panel soon. John is building a vanity stand for our oversized bathroom sink. Our helper has made some progress on rebuilding the bedroom wall. We also put up a new wall frame for one of the bedrooms as the other wall was mostly rotted. We have a new contractor who has actually been in (our other one left us for over 5 weeks without any work) laying the water lines, and getting ready to install our tub and toilet. We made a few good purchases at Lowe's this past weekend. Picked up an almost new refrigerator for $200 by bargaining on a clearance item. We purchased a lot of insulation as is was on a good sale, and we started to put some insulation up as well. The bedroom window has been removed, but we have already purchased 3 new windows for the windows in two bedrooms. We have also been busy ebaying for chandeliers - we have two on their way, we picked up our bedroom lights from ikea. We've also spent many hours on general clean-up - removing old wires, cleaning the basement, patching up the brick walls, etc. While our basement isn't yet dry we have our dehumidifier working around the clock to help dry things out.

Weekend of Sept 20th

I spent most of my time this weekend putting the bedroom floor back together, now that we have the 3rd joist in.

Weekend of September 20th

John spent most of the weekend running electric wire for the bathroom - we'll be connecting it to the panel today and hoping all goes well! As the pictures show the kitchen is now mostly framed.

We also layed new concrete on the sidewalk, probably our neighbors - but we are trying to seal everything up to prevent the water from reaching our basement. The plumbers did come on Saturday to pour some hydrolic cement around the drain and foundation wall. We'll just have to wait for another heavy rain storm to see what happens. Also take note of that blue box next to me in our soon to be bathroom! The electric is coming. We started to run the wire and we have the lights.....hopefully it will be working this weekend.

One joist in

We did get one joist in - we have to wait until the brick against the wall and up along the old chimney gets repaired and replaced before the other joist can go in. Luckily our help is doing a great job of removing the old chimney and repairing the brick.

Another weekend at the house

This weekend I moved our bathroom doorway, which intailed framing a new doorway as it had to move about two feet. We also began what may be a big project - putting in two new joists on the second floor. A lot of the flooring in that area was also rotted so we decided to cut the flooring back to the joist we are keeping. Somehow we managed to pull the old joists up onto the second floor and not let them fall down onto our new kitchen subfloor, windows & door. I'm still unsure how but I guess that's why our bodies ache. We started to repair the brick work near the joists and cut one of the boards to size. Hopefully we'll get in this week to finish the joists. We've also made the call to hire another set of hands to speed up the work in hopes of moving in by the end of the month.

Tropical storm Hanna also brought water into our basement! The water was actually coming in right through our new main drain, and the new main water line is now whistling (a leak somewhere else behind our foundation?) Needless to say the plumber is coming Monday, of course he couldn't come earlier, so we have large clear photos for him!

Basement Windows Continued

Basement Windows

We spent most of Labor Day weekend exhausting ourselves with the house but we did acheive quite a bit. We picked up more lumber from Lowes, which resulted in renting the Lowes truck to get it home. We assembled one of our basement windows to allow for space for the dryer vent. After countless trips to Lowes and a few arguments we managed to get both basement windows installed. Of course they need some finish work but they are a huge improvement. We took advantage of discounts to purchase our kitchen floor. John also worked on patching up some of our crumbling brick. And with some creativity we managed to dispose of a good amount of trash.