Drywall is here!

90 sheets of 8 foot, 1/2 inch drywall arrived in the driveway from Home Depot Saturday morning. Of course, I was alone with the baby at the time...with a chance of rain on Sunday! The dads came down to help load in, but hubby didn't arrive from work until four hours later!


They got it all loaded in before the bad weather settled in (and it did rain on Sunday!). Tools were bought on Sunday and the practice pieces were installed; re-interior closet, my closet! Yay! I have a new closet!

Can't wait to fill that thing with clothes and shoes. Maybe we'll do a few more practice sheets and then get the dads down again to help cut and hang. Mud and tape guy will come down end of this week or early next to give us a quote. Hopefully it's good because we really don't have a plan B...besides giving up and moving to a cookie-cutter neighborhood.

Yay for drywall! Early December?!

Insulation complete!

It took two days for American Insulation to completely re-do the insulation upstairs. $2200 later and we have this beauty. They did such a great job, even filling the holes where the electricians drilled in the 2x4s for the wiring. They sealed up the skylights, cracks around the chimney, space between the new windows.

Now, when you close a window upstairs, you could hear a pin drop...it's so quiet. Maybe not THAT quiet, but it's pretty quiet. R23 for the walls and R15 for the ceiling. The ceiling is 2 1/2 thick rigid board. The trusses are only 2x4s, so not a whole lot of space. It'll be interesting to see how hot it gets tomorrow.

Electrical roughed in! Prep for insulation

Finally, we have lights! Not really, but they're pretty much wired in. Above is one of 4 lights on the stairs! That's right, FOUR LIGHTS! Light that puppy up like a runway.

Below is one of seven 4-inch can lights. Apparently they "don't put out much light." Great. But there's not a whole lot of room in that ceiling.




The bathroom fan and light switches will be on the outside of the room. Not ideal, but whatever. Also, we'll have a thermostat in there to turn on a toe-kick heater! We didn't even know you could get one of those.

Below is one of the heaters. They'll be on one thermostat at the top of the stairs. Also, we had a dedicated 20 amp circuit wired for a potential AC for next summer. What other bells and whistles? Not a whole lot. Each closet has a light going to its own switch. We have the bathroom fan, a couple extra sockets for behind the bed.


Next up is insulation! It comes tomorrow. So I had to crawl into the attic and move insulation away from the bird block holes, which I drilled just before July 4th. Tore up a good pair of jeans when my finger got stuck on the drill switch. Left a pretty good bruise too. Anyway, rather than mess with it all, I made this handy "spoons taped to a stick" contraption to move insulation away from the vent holes. Works like a champ, especially when wearing a head lamp.

You can see all that blown in insulation...and a storage bin! That's what attics are good for, right?! Xmas decorations are on the other side! So the insulation bid came in around $2200. That includes a bunch of 2 1/2 inch rigid for the ceiling...that's what's so expensive and time consuming.

After that, we have a few plumbing issues to wrap up (setting the tub, pea trap, etc) and setting the bathroom pocket door, before we begin drywall. Those bids came in around $4500, so we're opting to do it ourselves! YIKES! The good thing is we know a guy who will mud and tape for us....Thank God. I hope to be moved in by Thanksgiving. Geesh.