Decidedly NOT helping

I took a few minutes on this un-seasonably warm day to sweep off the deck & patio. Actually, un-seasonably strikes me as far too gentle a word - maybe something like anti-seasonably? At any rate, it was hot and sunny and July-ish for Maine. I was sweeping for a couple of minutes on the other side of the deck from Frankie, and I turned around to see this little excavation:

 I guess he was pointing out that we still need a half dozen bricks in that corner.

Some 'helpers' apparently need more direction than I am used to giving. On the other hand, perhaps he can be enticed to till the garden for us...

Last light

Since it's the last day of winter, posting about light seems appropos.

This weekend a landmark event occurred: Ken installed the last - LAST! - light fixture in the house. Period. The whole damn house. We did all the wiring a bit ago, but had to wait until the ceilings were done in the cellar to actually add the fixture to the orphaned wire - and after a Herculean Saturday of ceiling-ness, we installed it on Sunday.

The ceiling in the future living room area has been done for a week or so, after a month of scrubbing, whitewashing, and varnishing above my head. Arm...falling...off....

In the future kitchenette area, the rubber met the road. This was the area where we basically routed all the infrastructure for the house, because it is next to a utility room. So the ceiling couldn't simply be cleaned and done - it needed cladding.

 Enter the gorgeous old boards from last post. The idea is to create something that looks like whitewashed undersides of subfloor, but dropped to hide the wirey mess. I haven't felt so guilty in a while - we scrubbed them clean and then - gasp - whitewashed and cut up those awesome old 5/4" x up to 12" boards (up to 12' long, too) to fit between the joists. (We used up oh-so-much scrap 1 by as cleats on the joists to carry the boards. Sweet!) Don't anyone dare comment that we should have planed them and sold them for a zillion dollars to yuppies for flooring - we know! But we paid $40 for the load, we had them here, and that's what we bought them for.

And there was light. And today, we rested (well, went back to our day jobs).

Need some wood?

Anyone remember the Presidential debate in 2008 when GWB said this? I think we were rolling on the floor - it was so goofily uttered. But we recently needed some wood. My mission over the past month has been to find old boards. Anything old (we are going to whitewash them) - barn boards, attic boards, subfloor boards. Whatever! Lots of them and decent widths.

The board quest is because in the kitchen area of the cellar, we need to basically make a dropped ceiling, and we plan to make it look like the rest of the cellar ceiling, but just to create panels that look like the underside of subfloor, and hang them down lower. We ran all the wires and other ugly stuff in the kitchen area to keep the rest of the room clear, so we just have one section to cover up.

By the way, I'm done scrubbing the ceiling in the living and kitchen areas and have moved on to whitewashing - sweet!

First I found a guy on craigslist, sort of nearby but we could make another errand in the general vicinity. The guy said I should call his dad. They advertised wood salvaged from old barns that could be made into flooring or whatever - and in the photo, it just looked like a giant wood storage barn. I was salivating. Our budget, as per usual, was as close to $0 as possible. So, I asked if they had any crummy old scraps for cheap - he said sure, they had seconds in a pile that weren't suitable for flooring and would probably work.

So, we loaded ourselves in the truck and took off down un-marked roads (partly dirt) in search of the lumber barn. The dad of the guy we emailed was there. We walked past heads and entrails of hogs he had just slaughtered (nice), and up rickety stairs, being admonished not to step off the 'obvious' places in the attic so we wouldn't fall through. There was the pile. As he began pulling mouse-poop-covered boards out, he started talking about price, and said something about $5 a board foot (for rotten poopy seconds? C'mon, man!). I did my best negotiating but in the end we left empty handed rather than spend several hundred $ on not great lumber - and we only had about sixty-two bucks with us anyways!

Back home, I grumpily typed a 'wanted' email and put it on the e-bulletin board at work. Next morning, a guy emailed and said he had a bunch of old boards in the basement he'd love to get rid of. And was only about 10 miles away. Back in the truck - and we went down cellar to find the motherlode - a whole pile of 5/4 barn/subfloor boards, properly aged, and up to 12" wide! We gave him something like $40 for the pile and quickly packed it up and left! The boards are almost too nice to use - hopefully we'll have extra and can make something sweet with a few pieces.

We are almost done with final insulation and we have some time off in a couple of weeks - the plan is to finish up a bunch of ceiling work and maybe even get to wall sheathing very soon!

Thing of beauty

We were going to label just the smoke alarms' breaker, but I have a label maker and a slight case of OCD, so Ken let me label everything in the panel, from his new schematic and COMPLETED wiring job for the entire house + garage.

That's a lot of wirin', cowboy! Well done.

In hot water now

We are DONE - officially, completely done - with all of the electrical re-wiring in this house. That means the whole house has been 100% re-wired. Nice going, Ken! The cellar is done and wired and all set for the rest of the remodel. We even did fancy (code) stuff like putting the furnace emergency shutoff where it belongs (top of the stairs). We did a little dance when we put the panel cover back on the breaker box - it's been sitting on the floor for literally years, since we've been constantly upgrading the box.

Speaking of the furnace, we've been steadily making improvements to infrastructure that are allowing us to (1) quit using oil, and as a bonus, (2) have redundant systems for everything. Our heat is from a pellet stove, with pellets made in Maine and emissions that are very low. Our insulation, closing the flue, making all the doors and windows actually close, and other basic projects (like storm windows) cut oil usage in half, even before the pellet stove.

As of Friday, we got our hot water off the oil-fired furnace! This means no running the furnace in the summer (which always seemed ridiculous), and massively reduced oil use in winter. We went with a simple, basic - though well-insulated - electric water heater. It was cheap, easy to install, and based on the energy label, should cost about $40/month to run. A big savings over a couple hundred in oil! And, our electric is primarily from hydropower generated from the river we can basically see from a couple of blocks away - nice to be more renewable and much more local in our energy use. We'll see what happens - but again, Ken did a great job installing this and hot showers after a hike today were just perfect. 

Up next - more insulating (we started and need to find more discount foam).

Tore it up

Finally got a day with:

• No work
• Puppy at daycare
• Both of us home
• Nowhere to be!

So we worked on electrical in the basement - part 1 of the second installment of basement finishing. We actually got just about all of the new wires pulled (= all of the frightening old wiring out!) and just have a couple of last bits to do before flipping the breakers and moving on to other things like insulating!

However, all it looks like is that we ripped the hell out of the place! Especially in the stairway/hall, which involved all closed in old plaster walls, so everything was fishing wire and demolition. Looks worse than when we started, but it will be awesome to have a light in the stairs (it has been treacherous!) and outdoor lights to de-creep the driveway.

More soon - yahoo for vacation time!

Well, hello there!

We've had a hiatus. Not without small jobs getting done - trimming hedges, putting up vent covers, finishing details in the basement (including calling in an expert - the third and hopefully final time we will call for help - to root out the drain in the basement because the new toilet wasn't flushing).

For the past month, we've been totally unable to focus on anything but this guy...

We got a new puppy (7 months, a rescue) named Frankie, and puppies take a lot more time than we remember (it's been a while). He is settling in fantastically and is a great little dog. Today he got pretty worn out with lots of walks and a fundraiser/dog party for the future dog park, so during his nap, we did a few things.

The most awesome thing was installing this new old can opener. We have one of these in the camper - it's a Dazey Senior. After camping with it all summer and then coming in the house to an absolutely horrible new handheld thing that SUCKS, I found another Dazey on ebay and installed it. Super sweet!

Next month - during puppy naps - we will be back in business working on the basement. We have some time over vacation and are looking forward to getting dirty again!


p.s. - the new blogger is taking some getting used to! Nice changes but my photos aren't showing up as cleanly as I'd like. Begging your pardon until I learn...