It has been a busy 3 weeks since our last post. First, we finished the floor in our side of the loft with car siding and garage doors. It was a hard 2 day job with Jeremy and the kids (and a little help in the evening from me), but it turned out great!
The view of the other half the loft in the middle
of framing the kids bedroom walls.
Then we moved on to more framing. First, we framed the walls around the bathroom so that Scott could get the electrical and plumbing going there. Then we did the walls upstairs around our room and between the kids rooms. It was so awesome the first time we could stand in the space and actually see the walls!
Completed upstairs interior framing
We weren't done framing yet though. All of the exterior walls have to have boards attached as a fir wall to mount the final wall covering to. That process took a while. We also had to cut channels in the garage doors for any wires that had to cross studs since the fir wall is only 1.5" deep.
Fir wall in Jacob's room
We also had to do the pocket door for the bathroom. It was the first time we had every done a pocket door and it was, thankfully, not too bad. That finished the last of the bathroom framing!
Pocket door!
While we worked on that, Scott worked on the plumbing. When he assembled the vent stack, I got to climb up on the roof to do the roof cut and seal. Did I mention that I hate heights? It was actually ok. Having the scaffolding available to set up and Jeremy there to help hand stuff up to me made it so much easier. We also discovered that rubber cement painted on the soles of tennis shoes gives great traction on a metal roof! That will come in handy since we have a couple more trips onto the roof to make before we're done (water heater vent and finishing the chimney).
Working on the washer drain
With the fir walls finally done, we started insulating the exterior walls. The rigid foam insulation both boosts the walls to around an R35 and gives some extra rigidity to the drywall since we built the fir wall on 24" centers. It does take some time to cut it to fit for each cavity though. We aren't quite done with that step yet.
Meanwhile, Scott has gotten almost all the water lines in! We finally got to set the tub in position permanently this week.
There's a bathtub! And we don't have to pick it up again!
Technically, we are ready to start hanging drywall in all the bedrooms and the upstairs bath now. Talk about an exciting feeling! We still have to finish insulating and doing the last couple of runs of electrical in the walls before we can button up the downstairs though.
First sheets of drywall are on site!
Lastly, Jeremy began trimming out all the windows and doors this week. They are looking great! More importantly, this is the last step before we can submit our "finished house" pictures to the county to get our certificate of occupancy.
Finished east door
As always, the work continues day by day. Each day there are small milestones - a washer drain is done, a door is trimmed, a new section is insulated - and over time it adds up to real progress. It is a long slow process though. Each new milestone feels great, but there are still so very many of them to get through. Every day, little up.
