Trim and Doors

Saturday morning started with hanging doors and cutting trim. The trim that was delivered included all the items for the interior doors, stairs, banisters, baseboard trim, baseboard shoe molding, window and door casing, bead board for the outside decks. The total package cost was $4586. We think we got a good deal on this.

Saturday morning we had help from Rod's grandfather, my Dad, my Mom, Rod's Dad, and Mike. They were able to get over 1/2 the doors hung in both the upstairs and downstairs.





On Sunday we had more help arrive. Our friends Bobbie, Scott, and Charles showed up as well as Rick. Of course the normal staples of Mom and Dad were back as well. The remainder of the doors were hung, lots of the trim was cut, and we had to move the piles of trim around yet again because the flooring people were coming on Monday.



And our standard payment for all of this cheap labor..............

Wow what a long week

It has been almost a week since I posted something. We have been so busy I almost don't know where to start.

Friday - Rod and I both took off from work to do the painting. We had help from Rod's step-dad Shelton, his step-mom Annette. By Friday evening, we had all the downstairs complete and most of the upstairs done. My Dad had already been coming over daily to help with the painting downstairs.

Friday afternoon - all the trim, bead board, and doors arrived. We all helped unload the truck and it was full. We unloaded it all onto the deck.

Also, on Friday all the brick was complete.

Saturday - We started out early with a run back to Porter Paints - we have now bought 59 gallons of paint. Later in the day, Shelli, Zac, and Hayley came up. We did more painting with Mom. Rod and Dad worked on putting up the bead board under the small deck. We camped in the house again on Saturday night.

Here is a picture of the bead board. It is hard to tell this is a ceiling, but it is.


Sunday - We didn't do too much work on the house.... Tori and Tina worked on the posters (see the post below)

Monday - Work started on the septic tank. They have done lots of digging for the field lines and have really moved some dirt. They finished to the point of being ready for an inspection on Wednesday afternoon


They also started on the vinyl siding for the eves and over hangs. On Monday they put about 1/2 up; on Tuesday they put up about another 1/4; and on Tuesday afternoon.. they took it all back down. They had put the wrong kind of siding up (vented) and we are supposed to have solid because of our insulation system. So on Wednesday they put the right kind back up.


On Monday evening Rod, Rick, and my Dad did more of the bead board on the front deck. It is hard work and there is still so much more to do.

Tuesday - Remember all the trim I said was delivered on Friday? Well on Tuesday we got the news that the concrete guys were going to be back on Thursday to repair the deck... meaning all that wood now needed to be moved. So when Rod got home, we started moving all that into the house. Oh boy was that tiring.






That meant that Rod couldn't get anything else done before Tina's softball practice, so at 10:00 when he got home, he went over and grouted the girls bathroom. The tile job looks great, but it was extremely time consuming. We are going to pay to have the upstairs shower done. Rod's time is too valuable to be spent on that and we will leave it to a professional.

Wednesday - They are trying to get done with the digging so that they can move the heavy machinery out of here. They took care of digging out where the retaining wall will be as well as where the footers for the patio are going to be. That only left 1 more item - to dig the trench from the temporary service to the house.



Rod had been worried that they would hit the water or electricity that he had run underground to the well house and the camper. He was supposed to mark them and he had not gotten around to it. I can't imagine how he didn't get this done since he never does any work (surely you can hear the sarcasim). Anyway, anyone that has followed the blog knows what the next picture will be...

you guessed it - they hit BOTH power and water. My Dad was nice enough to come fix the electrical since Rod was not going to get home until after dark, and now it is 10:15 p.m. and Rod is finally home and over there doing plumbing. Since we have lived in the campers, this is not the first time for him to be working on plumbing after 10:00.

Poster Contest

Tori and Tina decided to enter a poster contest. The theme was anything to do with America, Liberty, the Constitution, etc. So here we go again in the campers working on crafts. After we took a trip to Hobby Lobby and getting my scrap booking supplies back from my friend, the girls were ready. They spent many, many hours this weekend in the camper taking turns at the only table for crafts we have.

Tori did her poster as a puzzle and each piece was something different. She had everything from the armed forces, Disney, picnic food, Washington monument, an eagle, a flag, vote button, holidays, sports, etc. It looked really great and she won 1st place in her age group.

Tina has just finished studying the constitution and she decided to do one on the 19th amendment. She did a voting booth and decided to put the presidential candidates that were on the ballot the first time women had the right to vote. She also took some buttons that we got from Hobby Lobby and made "campaign buttons" and put them on the side. She did an excellent job. She actually did so well that some of the people voting didn't believe that a 10 year old did the poster and so she didn't win a prize even though I have been told that hers was the best in her age group. She was extremely disappointed and there were tears. Tori decided to split her winnings ($100) with Tina. I told Tina that she really needs to understand that is just a compliment to her talents as an artist and to look at it in that positive way.

Watch Out BELOW

The vaulted ceilings are high and they are vaulted over the stairwell. So Rod borrowed a ladder from Donny, a friend at work, and started painting. Just to make sure he was safe, he was wearing safety equipment.. ok, not really, but if he got the urge, he could quickly jump off the ladder and right onto his mountain bike!



Notice the boards that are over the stairway that he has supporting the ladder.

Brick Pictures

The brick is not finished yet, but it is getting close. We are extremely impressed with the work of the brick layers.

Here is a picture of the back of the house with the brick almost complete


I think they will finish either tomorrow or Saturday and I will take pictures of the front. Here is a picture of the deck outside the Living Room.

Weekend and Painting Update

As you can see from a lack of posts, this week has been busy both at work and at home.

The weekend was unseasonably hot. Like I have said before, we can not run the A/C in the campers so we opened the windows and left the doors open. Tori and Tina's camper has a screen on the front door, but mine and Rod's does not. So only at my house can you say " We had a chicken in the camper".. Luckily it didn't leave us any presents :-)

From the pictures below, you can see we started painting. We have had help throughout the week from many different people including Shelli, Zac, Hayley, Logan, Paige, Mom, Dad, and tomorrow Laine, Shelton, and Annette. Not to mention Jason from Rod's work coming to help with the tile. It is great to have people willing to help us out.

So far we have bought 51 gallons of paint!! Yes that is 5 and a 1. We are all very tired of painting. With the exception of the 1/2 bathroom upstairs, all the rooms have at least a coat of primer on them.

Tina's room is completely finished. She wanted something wild and she got it. Here are some pictures of her finished room.

Interior painting

Tile in kid's bathroom

We began our first tile job in the kid's shower area. We used inexpensive snow white 6" tile. The walls were fairly straight and square, but now I know I would hate to get into remodel jobs on my first attempt.
We put in a 16"X16" recessed shelf for shampoo and cut tiles to put a diamond design using 1" blue glass tiles in one row. This definitely added time and complexity to the job, but it is turning out nicely. We even had Mr. Vector show up fresh from a tile class he took on Saturday morning. Everyone helped place at least 1 tile. Helps spread the blame around.

Brick beginnings..

The brick is going up!

how much longer?

I'm really struggling in the campers. Tonight I actually suggested we go rent someplace for the last little bit. I didn't really mean it, but it sounded good when I was saying it. I know the worst is behind us and there is light at the end of the tunnel.

BTW - No picture of the brick because they didn't lay any today. All they did was setup the scaffolding.

Cheaper By the Dozen

On one of my trips out of town a couple of years ago, Rod went and bought chickens. We have had chickens ever since then. Tori has many sources of revenue - baby sitting, grooming dogs, baking her homemade dog biscuits, and hard labor around the land. As Tina is growing up, she felt the need to make some money of her own. So about 8 or 9 months ago, she invested in 30 chickens. Over the last 6 or 7 months, these chickens have had a rough time of being transplanted to the land. Sadie, Tina's dog, had a taste for these chickens and thinned the flock to 11 layers and 1 rooster. We have finally broke her from killing the chickens. The chickens are free range and Tina gathers and sells the eggs for $2.50 a dozen (a cheap price for free range, organic eggs). Lately with the warmer weather, she is getting about 4 - 5 dozen a week. As of tonight, she finally has an "official" waiting list for these yummy eggs. She is selling so many, I am going to have to buy some just so we can have some eggs at the house!

Here is a picture of her customized pink cartons.

Brick delivery

1/2 of the brick was delivered today. We have ordered 19,000 bricks for the exterior of the house. This does not count the block that was laid for the part that will be below grade. Because of the grade of the south wall of the house and the retaining wall that will need to be built, the brick came in over budget. The block and brick so far has cost $11,500 which is $4,000 over budget. Sand and and 2 pallets of mortar were also delivered. According to Jim, the builder, they are going to start bricking tomorrow, so check back for a picture.

Fun Evening (can you hear the sarcasm?)

Tori is in a nice hotel room, Rod and Tina are at the ball park, and that leaves me, the animals that are pets, and the ANTS home alone. Right now I am really just posting this to take a break from the work that I am doing. I have real work to do (coding some stored procedures) and house work to do (taking care of the ants). So to take a break from both.. I decided to whine a little on the blog. Since I have been home from work, I have loaded up all the food that is unopened in the camper # 1 and taken it to camper # 2. I have removed all paper plates, napkins, plastic silverware, etc. Tonight when we go to bed, Tina will sleep in there with Rod and I which will make this camper empty. I will set off a smoke bomb to try to kill the ants. Tomorrow morning we will open the windows and tomorrow night I will have the fun task of wiping everything down, bringing the food back, cleaning, washing all the pots, pans, glasses, etc. Like I have said before... I hate ants.

Living in a camper, camping in a house

Last week they started the drywall on Wednesday, taped it on Thursday and Friday. We worked for a couple of hours on Saturday cleaning up some of the construction trash around the house. Saturday night we decided it was finally time to camp in the house. We started out by vacuuming the room. We decided to sleep in the master bedroom because it was upstairs where it was warmer and had the least amount of stuff for us to clean up.



After vacuuming, we brought in the air mattresses, laptop, oreos, drinks, and space heater. Before the night was out, we did get cold. It was certainly quiet in there. There were storms on Saturday night and we could barely tell it was even raining.

Bathroom Tile

We have decided that we are going to attempt the tiling of the bathrooms. Our builder told us to use the Durock for the backerboard.

Here is Rod working in the master bathroom.


Tori helped out in her and Tina's bathroom.

Ants

Many people seem to assume that camping in the winter has been harder than in the summer. Often we are asked if we will be happy "when it warms up". The problem with warm weather is the bugs. If you have followed our blog you know that in the first two weeks of living in the campers we battled the ants. We won that battle after a ton of hard work. But we apparently didn't win the war. They were just laying low until we were unsuspecting. Last night in the cover of darkness they found some strawberries with sugar on them that were left on the counter. I got home today and had to start the process of throwing out all the open food. Luckily they had not invaded the cabinet yet so any food unopened I kept. I still fed Molly and Dolly anything that had the seal broken on it. Now all food is back in ziplock bags.. UGH.. I know this is just the start and it is only going to get worse from here. 6 - 8 more week, for some reason I fear these might just be the hardest I have done so far.

Congress, watch out - Tori is on the way!

Tori for Senate? I don't know if that will happen one day or not. She would be a great leader, but she is too nice and unbelievably honest. So not sure if she would be Senate matterial or not. However, on Sunday she headed downtown for 3 days to pretend. She is part of the 4-H Congress this year. Each county takes high school kids to the capitol to learn about the state process. In order to be selected, the student had to write an essay. I'm not sure how the selection process worked completely, but Tori ended up being a Senator. When she got the paperwork in the mail of responsibilities, she discovered she has been selected to lead the senate in the opening prayer. Speaking in front of a large group of people is something that she does not have any trouble doing. As for praying in front of a large crowd, she will feel right at home.

As I type this, I hope she is having a blast. Tomorrow night is a big event where she has a new formal gown to wear. If nothing else, she is sleeping in a nice, comfortable hotel room at the Shearton!!!

Drywall

The drywall was delivered yesterday. Today in 4 1/2 hours, they installed all the walls. The will come back and do the taping and mudding starting tomorrow. They have told us that we can start the bathroom tiling. We are going to try to do Tori and Tina's bathroom ourself. If that goes well, we are going to do the other bathrooms.

Geothermal - Aquarius

The geothermal unit is now connected to the ductwork. They finished drilling the wells today and inserted the "closed loop" pipes into them. The unit is a Florida Heat Pump Aquarius 3 ton. It has the ports to connect it to the water heater for free hot water in the summer and radiant floor heat in the winter. I will be installing radiant heat beneath the master bathroom floor (someday).

Poking another hole in the ground

Now they are drilling the wells for the geothermal system.

Spray Foam Insulation

We are having the spray foam attic insulation installed. The company is Tennergy. They claim the open cell spray foam will give me a R-24 insulation value on the entire roof. This also means we have an almost air tight attic for storage with no itchy blown in insulation. The spray foam goes directly on the bottom side of the roof decking and between where the rafters and walls connect.

Inspections - PASSED

We have officially passed the Electrical, Plumbing, and Framing inspection!!! YEAH!!!! Sheetrock is on the way next week.

Renewed appreciation for MOM (and Dad)

The laundromat should be a 4 letter word... Mom (and sometimes Dad) have been doing our laundry since we moved into the campers. I take her baskets every few days and pick them up the next day folded and back in the baskets. I have been buying all the supplies for both us and them as well as giving her money to offset the huge electric bills she has been having. Remember all the mud I have been blogging about...The clothes are often real dirty!

This week I had 3 full baskets of clothes, all the sheets, all the comforters, and some couch throw type blankets that needed to be washed. Their washing machine just can't handle the down comforters. It was late in the afternoon and I headed up to the laundromat. It took me $42 to wash and dry the clothes. As the clothes were drying, I had my laptop and aircard on one of the folding tables doing some work to pass the time. All of the sudden the attendant came out of the office and started shouting at me. We have had rain here and I did have a SMALL amount of mud on my boots, but it was really not that much. She said "If I had seen you come in, I would have made you go outside and take your shoes off!" Then she started sweeping the floor and was trying to sweep under my feet where I was standing. I was not going to cooperate, I had just dropped $42 in there, so I refused to move my feet and continued to stand there. Honestly, my boots were not that muddy, I had kicked them on the sidewalk before I walked in, and the majority of the dirt she saw came from me putting the dirty clothes into the washing machines. What was real funny was I, for some stupid reason, thought I was the customer???????

Lucky for Mom - as the weather is getting nicer, I will be able to use my washer that Rod hooked up for me and a clothes line. The reason I have not been using it is because I don't have a way to hook up a dryer.

Hello Dolly

We walked to the buttercup patch yesterday. Tina and Dolly are both looking lovely this afternoon.

Down through the chimney

Denny Mechanical finished installing our chimney for the wood burning stove in the basement. We used Hart and Cooley insulated 6" pipe. It only needs 2" of clearance between the pipe and any combustibles. I wanted the pipe to run up through the house instead of putting a hole in a wall and having it on the exterior.

Three Musketeers - Hold your fire

10:07 p.m. Tina is at Laine's spending the night, Tori is reading her book, I am on my laptop doing some work, Rod is playing the Wii. Then we have a "brown out". The electricity comes right back on. The dogs had been barking but way off from the campers. After about 15 - 20 seconds, Rod gets up and goes to the other camper to look out the window. He comes back in and says " I see a light and I have my gun. I'm on my way over there". Tori and I spring into action. I get the other pistol and start loading it. I come back to the girls camper to see Tori with Tina's pink BB gun cocked and ready. Tori has called her friend at this point and said "Paige if you hear gunshots call 911 and told her our address. As I am outside listening by the side of the camper, I can hear Rod talking and I can't tell what he is saying. The electrical pole is about 400 feet from the camper. After a minute or so I can tell someone is walking back over and I call out to Rod....

Apparently the plumber wanted to come "finish something up". He saw Rod with his gun and said "I'm glad you recognized me". I'm pretty sure he won't come after dark again. Good thing the port-a-potty is close to the electrical pole.

Geothermal HVAC

Yet another part in making sure this house is ready for future energy costs will be the geothermal heating and cooling system. We are installing a 3 ton Florida Heat Pump system. With all the insulation in the house, we are able to under-size the HVAC by quite a bit. Our old house was about the same square footage and had a 5 ton standard heat pump unit. Our builders have told us several times our electric bills should not be over $100 a month for this house.
The house will be so air tight, we have to use a device called an HRV (heat recovery vent) to introduce controlled amounts of fresh air into the house. It does this by passing it through a heat/cold exchanger with the inside air being exhausted out. This transfers about 60% of the energy that would be lost to the incoming fresh air. The system will not try to suck air through windows and doors. The duct men from Total Comfort got most of the duct work in. The geothermal lines outside are where most of the labor costs come in.

Playing in the Hay

Tina had a friend Alizabeth over on Friday night. I just love this picture of them playing in the hay ring. I know they played for hours in that hay.