During this odd weather for North Dakota (rain in February?), we were supposed to be getting some drywall delivered to our porch yesterday. But due to the wet weather, it was put on hold to avoid ruining it. Instead, when I opened the garage door last night, I saw several lengths of Douglas Fir flooring! Yes, our bathroom floor is finally going to be installed.

Today I decided to come home for lunch rather than eat at my desk like I normally do. The contractor, who is a really friendly guy, was about half way done installing the floor. While it wasn’t getting installed the way I would have liked with getting it blended in, I think it will still work. Essentially the left half of the room is old flooring, the right half is new flooring. As of right now, with the old flooring not sanded yet, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Hopefully after a good sanding it’ll blend in a bit more.

I apologize for no pictures, I will do my best to take some tonight and hopefully get them up. I’ve been asked to remove the crumbling plaster in our kitchen. It is the only wall that still has plaster and it will make the contractor’s job easier to just throw a sheet of drywall over it. I don’t mind since the rest of the room is drywall already. So that is in my list of to-do’s along with taking pictures. Also on the list is getting our cast iron claw foot tub painted on the outside. We have decided to use the tub epoxy paint on the outside that is normally used on the inside for repairs. It should be a much stronger finish than regular paint.

I should really post more, I am going a million different directions with this post. Last night when I got home from work, I went down to our basement bathroom and removed some old insulation that was laying down in the exterior corner of the room. Lucky for me, when I pulled it up, I found 1/4″ of standing water. So our concrete is seaping in a bit of moisture. To fix that, I called up an old high school friend who happens to do spray foam insulation for a living. He drove over and said that he could spray an inch of it on for around $1.75 a square foot. So around $250 to get it finished. To me, that is pocket change compared to having to fix mold issues down the road. So hopefully he can stop out soon to spray it down. We’ll then put R11 fiberglass batts over the top of the foam and finish it with drywall. Hopefully I won’t see any more standing water on the floor.

Over the weekend, I also ran a couple runs of speaker wire (12 gauge from www.monoprice.com) to the kitchen to eventually have a couple small speakers in there.

Like I said, a million different directions… I have an excuse though… I went to bed around 9:3o last night as usual. However, I woke up at 12:45 and literally laid in bed until 3:45, when I took a Tylenol PM to knock me out. I finally fell asleep around 4. I’ve never had that happen before. I am going to blame it on the few Diet Captain Morgans and the Washington Apple I had with the previously mentioned high school buddy to catch up. Normally that would help me sleep better, but it is the only guess I have.

Here is the corner I’ll be tackling next for insulation (depending on an issue that will be described after the pictures):

Excuse the mess. That is what happens when you move into a house that was just water damaged and you know that you can’t really put much out as it’ll all have to be moved around at some point during restoring.

You can see the 7 and some odd pieces of foamboard I have left. Should be enough to do that little left corner, the wall on the back, as well as up to that window on the top right. However, before I can do those areas, I need to figure out what to do with this:

That bottom pipe is our water supply line (just to the right of the picture, it drops down to the floor to the main valve). The top pipe is out main gas line coming in from the meter. While the gas line isn’t in the way of the foamboard insulation, the water line is directly up the concrete. Is this too critical of an area to learn how to do plumbing or is it pretty hard to screw up? I’d like to move it through the joists and keep it out of the way. If you recommend going forward with this myself, would you do copper, PVC, or PEX? I like the look of PEX, but I’m not sure if it well suited for your main incoming water line.

The gas line I’d be more likely to hire out. I just don’t like the thought of a pin hole in a pipe leaking natural gas into my basement. Here is where the gas line comes in (you can also see another water line run):

Once I figure out how to do this plumbing thing, I’ll get lots more practice over by the washer:

That knob valve is for the exterior water faucet. Looks like at some point someone didn’t like the amount of pressure they were getting off of that line that runs to the washer so they decided to T off the main incoming water line and run one straight over here.

And here are some pictures for Todd at Home Construction Improvement. These are the boards between the joists I was talking about in the comments on the last post. They might be able to be removed. I’m not sure what their purpose is nor what is behind them. I think they are just holding in rock wool if I were to guess.

Here is a few joists over in a another area I’m not exactly sure what to do… expanding foam?

And some dreaded knob and tube wiring that is going to be in the way. They run directly between the joist and the concrete. I’m not exactly sure where they are going to be honest. Either to the porch light (less likely) or to the main floor bedroom outlets (more likely). I’ll have to look into it a bit further to determine it.

During a leisurely stroll through Lowes a week or so ago, Casey and I managed to find ourselves getting ahead of ourselves by looking at foamboard insulation to start insulating the basement. We were just looking — seriously — when we found a deal too good to pass up. Foamboards that were originally $13 per 4×8 sheet were being clearanced out for $3 a sheet. We had no intentions on starting this basement project for a while. However, who can pass up a deal like that? We went home to think about it, and early the next day while I was at work, Casey ran over to buy every last one they had in stock. Fourteen when it was all said and done.

Of course, buying some sheets of foamboard can’t be as simple as buying them, loading them, and bringing them home. No, of course not. She borrowed her parent’s Chevrolet Blazer. Who knew that 4×8 sheets do not fit into a Blazer? So I borrowed my boss’ truck and ran out there to pick them up, when the wind chill was in the -30* range. It isn’t fun tieing sheets down to a truck without gloves when it is that cold outside.

All said and done, we had 14 sheets of foamboard insulation tucked away in our garage.  Now I was on a mission.

First, I moved all my junk away from the walls. It is amazing how much smaller a room gets when you take everything from the sides and put it in the middle. Next, I washed the concrete walls off and put a fan on it to let it dry. Well, before this was done, I had to also remove an outlet that was nailed into the concrete. That is harder to do than you’d think…

Next, I put some foamboard adhesive (yes, that is what it is called) on the back of the foamboard and slapped it onto the concrete. The stuff doesn’t hold well at first, so I pushed some boxes of tile up against the bottom, and used some masking tape to hold the top and side edges down for the night. By morning, it wasn’t going anywhere. As I worked with it more, I realized that in my basement, with the uneven walls, it works better to apply the adhesive to the high points on the concrete rather than to the foamboard as I’m sure that the low areas are never in contact with the foamboard.

Here is the one corner of the room insulated up to the joists:

All-in-all, I’m quite pleased with the method and the result (looks a lot better than the rough 80 year old concrete!).

From here, I will eventually frame up walls against the foamboard and use R11 (possibly R13, depending on if I can hit a sale) between the studs. If you want to learn more about this method, check out Todd’s website, Home Construction Improvement for the intricate details. I bugged Todd a couple times with some questions and he has helped out quite a bit in answering them. Thanks again Todd!

I’ve got some surprising, breaking news for all of you: contractors are slow. I know, I know, set your jaw back. Who would have thought? After bugging the general contractor, and giving the subcontractor a push, they contracted (yes, that is correct, 3 layers of uber-efficiency here, my friends)  Roger to come out to throw some insulation up as it had been more than two weeks with bare walls in a North Dakota winter.

And here is that attic space to the left… the insulation you see is on the backside of the bedroom’s closet wall:

There is my project room, the ole do-your-business and turn the fan on on your way out room. To both collect our thoughts and put something down on “paper,” here is what we are planning for this particular room:

• Douglas Fir floors are going to be patched and mixed to blend the new material with the old
• Standard 5′ cast iron claw foot bathroom is going to be placed parallel with the bathroom window (just hauled that pig up the stairs Sunday! due to the really nice, original faucet, we will not be adding a shower to this unit as we have a shower in the basement)
• Walls will be painted (we will eventually look into bead board or subway tile, but not right away)
• Still not sure on paint vs not painting the trim
• Two antique wall sconces will be placed where they were originally before being covered up and having a single light
• We will leave our chimney exposed (I cannot for the life of me find the commentor who originally suggested this. I re-read all the comments 3 times and either missed it or imagined it. I apologize if it is the former for not giving credit when credit is due!)
• We are moving the light switch from outside of the room to the left of the chimney
• Walls will be painted a light yellowish color (you’d have to ask Casey for a womanesque description)

Moving onto our kitchen, that also is now insulated:

Both are temporary insulation jobs until the electrician shows up. We demanded the insulation be put up as I doubt the contractor is willing to write a check out for our soon-to-be-outrageous natural gas bill. While I had family (read: slaves/helpers) around this weekend, I yanked out the second window that was in the kitchen. I’ve got back and forth on this a few times. The entire back half of the room was originally a pantry is my guess. It was about four feet wide and spanned the entire width of the kitchen. That area that I suspected was originally a big window? Well, my mother actually thinks that the window that I just took out was originally over there.

When one of the POs converted what I suspect was a pantry into a bathroom, they moved (according to my mother) the window from that location to the next location to make room for the stand up shower. Well, we’ve decided to not have any window on that wall in order to give us much more options when it comes to laying out the kitchen cabinets. I was torn about not putting one back in, but in the end I decided that I’d take a nice layout over a window that looks into the neighbor’s kitchen.

Also, as you can see, we took out the old “bathroom” door that was in that corner that made cabinet configurations impossible. Not to mention a bedroom with two entrances:

Lastly, we finally got some dollar amounts for a replacement refrigerator and stove. We first ran to Lowes and didn’t much luck. Off to Sears (which was my first, out of high school job). There we found a floor model fridge that was being clearance’d off. A Kenmore Elite model that was originally almost $2000, down to $1100. It was definitely on the top end of what we wanted to spend (essentially the entire insurance money was spent on just the fridge). For the stove, we went a bit lower end and picked up a gas model that had to be ordered. So for now, the doors for the fridge:

[apologies for the white out, the sun is shining away and the picture wasn't reviewed until later (ie: now)]

We had a heck of a time getting the fridge into the house. The doors to our porch up front had to be taken off, as well as the doors on the fridge. In the process of first trying to get it through, we put a nice sized scratch on our brand new door:

(Thanks Casey for taking the picture for me ). You can see the scratch in the reflection, right where the camera is at. That vertical white line, about an inch long that is down to the metal. Any suggestions on fixing that?