November house addition update

Ok, well its been a crazy hectic month between the day job, side jobs and trying to keep progress moving on the house addition before the cold weather really sets in!! But things are looking pretty good, the addition is all framed! The roof was a stressful project, cutting into the old roof to tie in the new roof and then get it all done before any big rain or snow storms, and mother nature worked with me pretty well, got it all sealed up before any nasty weather. The roof has the osb decking down and  tar paper laid out and its all been covered with tarps for the winter, hopefully sometime in the spring I can finish the roof, getting cold and the materials are way out of my budget!
So now I'm on to getting the side walls sealed up with osb sheathing so that I can hopefully get it all enclosed and do some work inside this winter.

1st floor walls going up

setting 2nd floor floor joists

view on the 2nd floor, floor down and walls going up

View from the back, roof rafters almost all set

osb all down on the roof and tar paper

roof all tarped for the winter

2nd floor small back roof of old house that gets removed now that new roof is water tight

looking out to the addition from old house, standing in bedroom area, addition area to be 2 kids bedrooms on left and master bath and walk-in closets on right

2014 summer/early fall progress update

Ok, so I figured I should update my progress since I haven't added anything for the past few months, been busy with the day job and working on the house before and after work. Its been great having the new electrical service thats for sure! Even though I use alot of battery powered saws and drills i'm constantly recharging the batteries so its great throwing one in the charger while using the others, before having the electricity I was pretty much shut down when the batteries were all dead! 

I'm very happy to say that the foundation for the addition is complete!!! Many days of back pain from bending over mixing countless bags of concrete was not the best time of my life thats for sure. The addition is 38 x 16. I added a 8x16 space you'll see in the pictures that extends out from the driveway side of the house, this will be a single level bump-out which will serve as the side entrance/mudroom and kitchen pantry. 

Now its on to the fun part of framing! And I couldn't wait to get started! I've laid out all the joists for the first floor over the past week. Now i'm working on insulating between joists on the foundation sills using foam board scraps I picked up from a big commercial job site, some sort of sips (structural insulated panels) they have a 3/4 plywood glued to 2" foam with some sort of fiberglass facing like a wallpaper sort of material. They were throwing out a ton of huge scraps so I of course loaded my truck as full as I could! I'm using 3 pieces cut to fit between joists, will share a pic of that as well. 

I also got my 12x16 shed almost complete, just need to put siding on one side and finish a little on another, just didn't want to put off the house work any longer so the shed is on the back burner right now. On to the pics ...

The shed, I salvaged tin roofing from an old victorian that was being re-roofed, that stuff was a major pain to put back together, trying to get all the tins to fit back togerther after all the joints were bent from being removed from the original house, but its done and freshly painted now and it saved me some cash! The siding I used was the original siding from the house, which I stripped all the old paint off and gave a fresh coat of oil primer, its nice old siding, 8" wide and 3/4 thick!

Yes that sad looking useless tarp will be coming down as soon as I have plywood down on the floor 

Insulating between joists on sill...

a month of stressful electrical work...

so for the past month or so i've been busy with my day job as a painter and planning and installing electrical service for the house. After about 6 trips to lowes to buy and/or return supplies I got all the supplies I needed for the service entrance. With the little bit of time I had I slowly chipped away at installing everything- attached the weather head to the service entrance cable and attached it all to the house, connected the cable that runs from the meter box to the interior panel and attached that to the house and with a bit of trial and error (and a few choice words!) got everything connected together, that service entrance cable is tough to work with thats for sure- does not bend with ease! Today I connected the cable that runs from the meter to the panel on the panel end, that was easier than the meter connections! I claimed one outlet install with my permit and made that connection as well. So we are all set for the inspector to come and hopefully tell me I'm all set to call the electric company and get hooked up!!! Heres a few boring pics of the electrical crap, boring to look at or talk about but a huge step for me! Work on the house will be so much easier and i'll be able to run a heater in the winter!

below is the conduit for the ground wire, it can just be a bare wire running out 

but someone suggested this small conduit for a cleaner install, the rocks will be built up 

so the bottom of the conduit will be covered. And I will paint it as well to blend in.

 

yard work, cut a tree down & built more raised planting beds

Feels good to be outside again! Ground is still a bit of a mucky mess and all my damn boots have holes from stepping on nails and such, so i've been working with wet feet all week, not the most comfortable thing. Ya I stepped on a whole bunch of nails during the process of cleaning up the old garage that burnt down many a year ago on the side of the house, luckily not many hurt my foot too bad but they did a number on all my work boots. Ordered some new boots last night so looking forward to them.
So ya this weeks almost over, they just fly by, and most of the work I've done has been landscape related, I did put some siding up on the front of the house, the left side, had to get the edge trim board stripped & primed then re-installed, just have a little more to do up there then i'll take a pic of that.
Got the chain saw goin and cut down yet another oak, I wanted to build some raised bed planting boxes for along the back corner of the property and this one tree blocks alot of sun to that area so down it came. I think the core of the tree was still frozen because it was pretty tough to cut through once I got a few inches in. And like a dummy I built one of raised beds before cutting the tree down and of course the tree fell on the corner of it and nailed it in the ground about a half a foot, I had already leveled it, filled in with dirt and filled in the support post holes with gravel, so the tree hitting it screwed it up level wise, couldn't quite get it re-leveled but its close. Surprisingly the tree didn't break the box though so that was good.

The Tree

A view of the backyard from the driveway, ya half the driveway is full of my building supplies 

and some junk I have to burn. God I love the wooded area i'm surrounded by!

Rock lined raised bed along the driveway and wood raised beds, that rock bed is full of plants, one wood bed is full of strawberries and the other potted plants waiting for a permanent home.

The two new raised beds and some piles of wood from the tree

 The two new beds, one day i'd like to grow alot of veges, but for now i'll be using these to grow a ton of zinnias, ya I like flowers ok, I enjoy growing things, its pretty cool what comes from a tiny seed and I like making the yard look nice, and trying to earn some brownie points with the wife by bringing home some flowers! I'll probably build one more box in this line, theres a few other flowers i'd like to try and grow so I need one as a testing area. All of the boxes i've built so far have been with deck boards I got for free off of craigslist, and free 4x4 cut offs from the dump. Love making useful things from free materials! 

These new beds are big, 6'x8', the others I built last year to the side of the driveway are 4'x8'.

A nice day in the mid 60's!

So it was a pretty nice day today, in the mid 60's after lunch, was thrilled to take off my sweatshirt and just be working in a t-shirt! Its the little things! Just hoping for more of this nice weather, but i hear we're suppost to be back down in the mid 40's tomorrow and cloudy with a chance of rain. I didn't make a huge dent in the house but did make a little progress, one thing i've been dying to do is get those upper master bedroom windows back in, and i did just that! I love the small 4 over 6 windows on each side of the middle larger full pane windows. These are some more of the houses' original windows which I painstakingly restored. One of the small 4 pane windows had busted out muntins, so I just took some from one of the old 12 over 12 windows which was completely beyond repair but had some useful muntins so i cut and fit those back in to the frame nicely.
After fitting all the windows I installed some more siding on that same side, its going to get tricky because I have to keep the addition in mind, that small shed roof on the back will be gone and the roof pitch will be changing on the back half, so that upper right quarter of this side will be extending and i'll have to wait to add siding to that area so that it blends nicely into the addition. I primed a few of the boards the other day as well, the light grey is the factory primer and the darker is sherwin williams oil primer, swear by that stuff and don't trust the quality of factory primer. I run over the factory primer with some sandpaper real quick before applying the new stuff. I also set and fill all nail holes. I have no power here yet so I have to hand nail all the siding, plus I bought an almost full 5 gallon bucket of siding nails for like $15 off craigslist awhile back so they are going to good use now. I bought a 5 gallon bucket full of framing nails like 8 years ago at a tag sale for $1!! Didn't really have a big need for them at the time but I couldn't pass up the deal and I sure have a good use for them now! Heres a few pics of the windows and added siding...

A few nice days = some exterior progress!!

Alright so FINALLY a few nice days in late march and I've been itching to get outside and get things moving again on the exterior of the house. I have the master bedroom windows all restored and ready to put back in so I wanted to get the openings fixed up. So I got the ladder set up and the scrapers and sandpaper and went to town, its in rough shape but I completely stripped the old paint and sanded off as much of the grey  wood as I could and it cleaned up pretty nice. Once I dusted everything off I applied a coat of oil primer, I swear by sherwin williams exterior oil wood primer (slow dry). I used it on my old ex-house along with a duration latex topcoat and it held up perfect, when we moved 11-ish years after the paint job it still looked like new, no peeling or anything, with the exception of where I got lazy on some high areas that peeled up a little. Just have to do a little sanding on the holes I filled and a final prime then we'll get that all finish coated and get the windows back in, can't wait to see them installed, gonna look awesome I think, especially without those god awful aluminum triple track storms hiding those beautiful old windows. Also put up a bundle of siding on this side of the house, mostly to the left of the lower window. It was nice to get outside and get a bit of progress. Here's some pictures of the bedroom/driveway side of the house...

Before I touched anything...

Old siding off and gutting of house in progress...

As it stands today...