Recently we've been wading through the muck of this project, and by muck I mean dealing with permits and coordinating work around the inspections process.  Certain things need to happen in a certain order...a framing inspection can only be done after a passing electrical and plumbing inspection....an insulation inspection can only be done after the framing inspection and before the walls and floor are closed up...and so on.  It's been very frustrating at times but finally the clogs have begun to loosen up a bit.

We've had in the last two weeks plumbing, electrical and framing inspections, put down about 1/3 of the subfloor, had the majority of the electrical rough-in done, framed out an opening for the future stained glass and insulated the walls and ceiling.

We hope to get the subfloor finished in the next couple weeks and then we can move on to installing drywall.  And of course here are some pictures:

Here's the retaining wall the contractor fixed...this was damaged back in the earthquake a few months ago.

The new opening for a future stained glass window.  This should give the house more of a period feel.

Sarah having fun mudding around the doors and many of the holes we put in the walls.

This insulation is for acoustics between the upper and lower unit.  I can't take credit for doing all this though...many thanks to my sister Mary and brother Geoff for coming down to help on Saturday!

The kitchen is FINALLY starting to come together.  We were getting so tired of seeing the framing everyday so it's nice to see it being covered up.

After a morning of apple picking at Carter Mountain it was back to Richmond and back to work on the ole house.  I took Friday off and was able to knock out a couple nagging jobs that had to be done... rebuilding the furnace vent and putting insulation around the pipes that froze last winter.  The last thing we want is a repeat of last year, when our crawlspace went from a few frozen pipes to a river in just a few short seconds.


Here are some shots of this weekend's work:

Sarah knocked out the spot for the future stained glass transom.  We'll have to frame in a header but you can get an idea of the size it will be.

This is the main duct coming into the kitchen, which we're then branching to run to either side of the room.  We're going to try and have the registers blow out the front of the cabinets which should be fun to figure out.

Sarah's checking out the contractor's work in the backyard.  The earthquake had caused the neighbors retaining wall to tilt into their yard and it was made worse by the fact that the soil was right up against the wall.  So he dug out all the dirt, pulled it back into place, and put in drainage pipe and gravel.  We'll be able to connect one of our downspouts to the top pipe you can see beyond, probably sometime in the spring.

And another thing to add to the nagging jobs list was re-coating the front porch roof.  It might not look like it in the picture, but the roof has a very steep pitch to it which can make working up there a little hairy.  Trying to make sure I didn't paint myself into a corner was fairly easy, but painting the last bit while holding onto the window with one hand was a little harder.

This week we're hoping to get our kitchen floor framing inspected so we can put in the subfloor.  That should make moving around there much easier and give us a good base to start putting in drywall.

Tree Time

This morning we took a little break from the work inside and moved out to the backyard, a place that at times has looked like a waste land.  It's been a parking spot for the truck, a place to pile junk and debris, and even where we washed our dishes in the early days.  So we figured to give it a little life and plant a tree this weekend. We chose a Sweetbay Magnolia, and it'll be the centerpiece of the garden we have planned for the future.


And, of course, here are some pictures:

Here's Sarah starting on the giant hole which was 6 feet wide and 18 inches deep in the center.  I can't take any credit for this one, she dug the whole thing herself.

And here it is after all the hard work.  Our friends Erik and Robin picked it up for us and we were able to back the truck right up to the hole and dump it out.

And since we don't want the new tree to blow over Sarah's making sure it's tied down and secure.

Future Visions

Since we're doing some of the boring work right now we thought we'd share a couple images of what we hope for the future.  The first is a view of the kitchen from the living room...

And now an idea of what we want to do for the back yard...

We're looking to plant a Sweetbay Magnolia sometime soon...kind of the much smaller cousin of a southern magnolia and is good for the size yard we have.

After a nice day trip to Shenandoah on Saturday to celebrate our one-year anniversary it was back to work on Sunday.  We're slooooowly putting in the living room floor, which is pretty hard given none of the joists are 16" on center and some of them are splayed.  So it'll take a while and require a whole bunch of custom cuts.  Our new toy is a Bosch impact driver which is making installing the screws a breeze.  We've learned that having the right tools to do the job is a must, even if it means spending a little more than we'd like.  Here are some pics from this afternoon:

Here's the new toy...                                           ...which is awesome!

The first one's always the hardest, right?  I think Sarah's relived to finally have a floor, even if it's just a tiny piece!

It's been a long while since the last posting so here are some pictures of what we've been up to.  It's been a busy last month, complete with a hurricane and an earthquake, but the house has made it through just fine.  The marble tile in the foyer is done (pictures to come soon), the crawlspace is 90% insulated and we're getting ready to put the floor in the living room.

We found this big crack in our backyard after the earthquake.  Turns out the retaining wall moved about 4"....another thing to fix!

Sarah cutting open some insulation.  We decided to insulate the house ourselves to save some money, but turns out it's quick and easy.

It's always fun to take a look back at what things used to look like...here's the living room from August 2010...

...and here it is today.  It's ummm different looking; can't really say better, but different.

Marble!

This past weekend we started the tile in the foyer.  We chose white marble 12x12's for the outside, black marble mosaic for the interior border and 3x6 white marble in a herringbone pattern for the field.  It's a complicated job and about 60% done at this point so there's a ways to go...but here are some progress pictures.