Pow!

Hello?.....(hello).......(hello)..........

Is anybody still out there?

....meanwhile back at the ranch.... I made a bathroom.


I made these sinks out of wood.




Why yes, yes those are LED lights behind glass tiles that were borderline impossible to do.




Oh and I started siding the house with Hardiplank. I like the look.

I don't know how to love you.

So yea. I'm completely burned out on the house and the blog. I have kinda pulled back my efforts to just keep moving slow and steady on the house. I'm anticipating the weather breaking and getting a boost then to get back to the outside of this place.

Anyhow, we put some floors down and Andreas and I built a pretty awesome staircase.

It's been a long time my friends.

So i'm going to skip the apology and we can operate under the assumption that i'm an unreliable blogger and that our friendship is one-sided. That way you can protect yourself from being emotional hurt everytime you come to my blog without updates and I can stop feeling guilty.



Since i'm living at the house I use my spare time for working instead of blogging.



So what has happened? Well the house got drywalled. I hired it out on account i'm running out of time. The company I hired did a pretty good job-especially with the cathedral ceilings upstairs.




While the drywall was going down my friend Andreas and I did some full-blown restoration on the 9 severely rotted and disfigured porch posts. I took them to Toledo to be professionally stripped of their paint. Upon their return they were in rough shape. Much more rot damage then I expected. We then molded some restoration epoxy to shape on the damaged parts. Andreas is an expert carver so we had at it and through heroic efforts we reshaped the damaged portions. 2 coats of oil based primer and they look brand new. We are very satisfied with the results.



After the drywall dust settled we took to priming and painting.....about 40 gallons of primer and paint later the house is in the home stretch for touch-ups. Check out the interesting colors.

Also meanwhile we laid the wood floor on the porch. I was able to get some salvage floors that came out of a house about 20 miles from here in a city called bloomfield. $1 a sq foot for red oak isn't bad and it looks awesome on my porch. about 400sq ft went down in 2 evenings despite single digit temperatures.



I had to fire my HVAC guy. He kept making promises and deadlines that he couldn't meet. So that sucked, but at least I didn't get taken on it.

thanks Patrick, Rebecca, Andrew, Jodi, John and Andreas.

Payback is not a......difficult situation.

This is the first Saturday in Lord knows how long i haven't worked on my house. To change it up i went out to a fellow Habitaters house to help him with his addition. He has been out to my house multiple times, so i was more then happy to lend a hand.



It was fantastic not having to think. Normally when we work as a group the leadership defaults to either whoever project it is, or whomever has the most experience. And then the rest of us accept the hierarchy and work like beavers. The ten of us highly skilled carpenters working like a well oiled machine is a sight to see for sure.



Rick was putting on a sizable addition on the back of his house for his in-laws and we had a very productive day. We had the floor system done in a couple hours, and by the end of the day we had all 3 exterior walls raised and braced and the rafters cut. A great day with the guys.

Also I hate the legal aspect to building, but these are from my house.



Also the drywallers are finishing up hanging my house as i type this.

My house has rabies

My house doesn't have rabies, but it looks like it does. It's foaming everywhere.

Let me backtrack. As you know the house is from 1859. There was zero insulation in the walls (which was nice for gutting). Most places there was plaster&lathe, lap sheathing and siding. And some parts of the house didn't even have the sheathing. One small part of the house that was rebuilt did have some R13 fiberglass insulation...but not much and by the time i had gotten to the house a raccoon had made that his home.

I wanted some high efficiency insulation. Because I plan on making this my homestead I was willing to pay the incremental cost up front for lower heating/cooling bills in the long run. I hired Arbor Insulation, one of the few 'open cell Poly-urethane' players around, to take care of me.



There are a lot of 'closed cell' guys out there who will try and convince you that it's 'structural' and 'waterproof', but the truth is unless an architect is specifying that it will be used in a structural capacity that does you no good, and unless it is below grade, it also does not need to be waterproof-that should be taken care of by an exterior weather barrier. Beyond those two things, closed cell just doesn't perform like open cell.



I haven't blogged about the inside of my house recently on account I didn't want to advertise that my electrical was completed. Now that insulation covers 90% of it everything is probably cool. Oh and i have a fancy security system.




The white stuff is open cell Poly-Urethane spray in insulation. A modern 2"x4" wall with a single layer of traditional fiberglass insulation provides an R13. 3" of open cell sprayed in insulation yields an R value of 13.4. But R-value only models conduction, the spray in severely cuts down on convection also. So that number gets 'adjusted' for the fantastic convection stopping power to a comparable R 26.7. In addition I have a 1" exterior insulation that gives me an additional R5. So the total system gives me an effective R 31.7 in the walls.....that is more then most people have in their attic. And honestly looking over the house in most places it is more then 3", more on the average of 3.5" - 4".

In the attic/cathedral ceilings they said they would spray me 5" effective at R 44.5, but again in a lot of places they out the entire 7.25" rafter.



In the basement/crawl space they sprayed 'closed cell' poly-urathane-which comes out green, but if left uncovered it needs to be sprayed with an intumescent paint. The paint is tan. I'm also using the close cell to seal a leaking brick basement wall I have.





Potentially one redeeming thing about a slowing economy is that the price of copper is plummeting due to decreased demand. It's hard to say if this will stop or slow scrappers because the slow economy might bring more desperation. But that remains to be seen.

Now I just have to pass an easy inspection on monday and drywall is en route

why does it have to get darker earlier in the winter?

So we both know its been a long time again. And that I previously promised to post more frequently.

The truth is, nothing interesting has happened really. A lot of details getting hashed out really. But a few important things have happened.

I moved out of my storage facility which I had been storing things in since I moved to Toronto in December 2005.



Garage door is a done deal.



I passed my structural inspection. This is a big deal. It could of been a nightmare, but some attention to detail, some schmoozing of the inspector and having a friend put a good word in for me at the city all came together for a single inspection pass. That is a huge weight off my shoulders.

My alarm system is in. This is something that has been weighing on me for a while and i'm glad it's done. With more valuable materials going into the house I wasn't ready to rely only on my ingenuity of re-enforcing locks and door frames. It's good to hear the chirp of my alarm set whenever i leave the house. Granted Detroit police aren't known for fast responses, but I have half a dozen neighbors i could put a call into if it goes off and they would have my back.

Oh and we've gone full blown on the porch. Got the floor reframed and sheeted. Then framed the roof incorrectly (working off a bum print) then reframed it right and got things underway.

Here are some pictures of Andreas and I sheathing the porch and framing the tiny pediment gable.





Also when i bought the house the porch had pressure treated deck boards for the floor...not exactly period. I was able to get some salvaged 3.5" oak flooring from the Detroit Architectural Salvage Warehouse for $1 a square foot. W00T! It will look perfect period.

I'll get you some better pictures of the porch soon. It looks so straight and true it makes me tear up a little.

Come quickly December 21!