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A little while ago we received an e-mail from someone asking about the wall panels. Michael gave him a very thorough description of the ordering and installing process, including a stern lecture about double-checking the drawings before completing the order. This is very important, we said, because sometimes the drawings are wrong. You need to make sure that all of the measurements are correct. We found multiple mistakes in our spec drawings, including a wall where all the windows were all off five inches from center. Can you imagine if we’d missed that? What a mess that would be. So check your drawings, okay?
Of course, noticing the mistakes doesn’t help if you forget to mention them to the company making the panels.
This is how the wall should’ve looked (and, yes, Cherie does have Mad Art Skillz, doesn’t she?):
This is how it actually looked (in red):
Our moms will be happy to know that we didn’t swear. Not once. We did mope a bit.
We decided to leave the two end windows where they were. They are in the master bedroom closet and laundry room, and who’s ever going to notice? (Any particularly anal retentive houseguests should consider this a warning to not come to our house.) But the one in the middle had to be moved or else it would be half-hidden by the tub wall.
So we pried it apart:
Then we cut it apart:
We reframed:
And finished it off:
Then we went to get a stiff drink.
Got that, Mr. Wall Panel Question Man? Don’t let this happen to you. Check your drawings AND make sure you remember to tell the wall panel company.
We’d thought that what we were building was a house. It had walls and rooms and a roof. It was the general shape and size of a house. We talked about it like it was a house as in, “Hey, are we going up to the house today?” But we were wrong. It wasn’t a house.
It turns out that a house doesn’t really look like a house until the roof is shingled. Because now that the roof is done, we can see that what was there before was just a construction site.
This is a house:
Answer to the asked question: Gregory was correct. It is a sun tube, or Sun Tunnel. We’d originally planned on putting a skylight into the bathroom to bring in more natural light but it became immediately clear that there wasn’t enough room for that. The Sun Tunnel will help brighten up the bathroom without taking up the entire bathroom ceiling.
Answer to the unasked question: Yes, Cherie is still dipping shingles. See above picture?
Before we started this project, Cherie was warned by some other self-building idiot that there are parts worth paying someone else to do. “It’ll cost more,” he said, “But what price can you put on your sanity?” He was referring specifically to taping and mudding drywall, but we think roofing can safely be put in that category as well.
In other words, humble pie doesn’t taste so bad if you get to watch your roof go on while eating it.
That’s Dana, roofer extraordinaire, waiting for the boom truck to deposit the shingles on the front. The back is completely done. By the end of the day, the front was up to four feet.
But don’t worry. Michael’s been busy too. Look closer. Do you see it?
Our first windows. We’d better be careful, because soon the rain won’t have any way to get into our house. And what fun will that be?
Pop Quiz Time!
If you were looking closely, you may have noticed something strange on the back roof, right above the roof brackets.
Q: What is this?
Answer tomorrow. (Or the next day. We’re really busy getting pedicures and whatnot while someone else is building our house.)
We’re not sure if we mentioned it, but this weekend we finished plywooding the roof. This was by far the worst thing we’ve slogged through, and getting the %$^@* roof done was a huge relief. Sunday we tinkered with the dormer some more, putting up the fly rafters and ice and water shield. It looks great. Too bad we forgot to take pictures.
With luck, we will be ready for the roofing guy to start on Wednesday.
Yes, we hired someone to do the roof shingling. We listen to Kenny Rogers. We know when to fold ‘em.
Look! Look at what we have!
A ROOF!
Okay, yes, the porch needs to be finished off, but that is minor. We have a roof.
We’ve decided to not put up the picture of us doing a happy dance under the shelter of our roof.
But there was dancing. And it was happy. Oh yes. It was.
Okay, we’re done feeling sorry for ourselves. Time to look ahead a little bit. Or back. This might actually be looking back.
Either way, we are definitely looking in a direction instead of just staring down at our feet and complaining.
We’ve finally put together a photo album of the house plans and added the original Stickley design so you can see the changes we’ve made. Please, enjoy. No really. We insist.
On Sunday afternoon, full of splinters and sore from hauling around slabs of wood, we sat in the truck and nursed our bruises. We’d just spent hours dangling from the second floor, fighting with the porch rafters, arguing with each other, and managing to injure ourselves in a myriad of ways (okay, that was just Cherie) and we’d only put up nine rafters. We sat there in the truck, silently swatting at black flies, eating Reese’s Pieces and feeling generally defeated when Michael said, “When do we get to the fun part?”
Because, wow guys. This wasn’t the fun part.
The weather’d been spotty, with five days of rain for one of sun. We’re short on hands because it’s May in Bar Harbor and everyone we know is working overtime to get ready for the busy season. After working seven days a week and thinking about the house every moment, we didn’t seem to be making the slightest bit of progress.
We only had half a roof. After we’d finally managed to get the place dried out after the past rain, a storm was headed our way again. And we were out of time for the day.
In marathon-speak, we hit the wall.
We drug our sorry carcasses home to make dinner and spend a busy evening feeling sorry for ourselves. But then we remembered the couch. We bought a new couch last week, you see. We had to get it on Monday. Our ugly and broken old couch (the ugliest, smelliest, most uncomfortable couch in the history of couches, by the way) needed to leave the house somehow to make room for the New and Beautiful couch. We dug in and wrestled Ugly and Broken out of the house (a long, tedious story that involved cutting off all four legs to get it to fit out the door). We dumped it on the front lawn, propped a FREE sign on it, and grumped back inside.
That was at 7:30.
At 8:10, we watched someone load it in their truck and drive it away.
Well, heck.
If Ugly and Broken can find a second wind, I suppose we can too.
Michael went back to the house today and put up the rest of the porch rafters. When he picked up New and Beautiful, he bought a 40×20 tarp to go over the other half of the roof before the rain came. Because what is it they say?
Failure is not an option.
I took this week off to work on the roof of the house, which meant, of course, that it rained almost the entire week. So I decided to take a salvage trip to Augusta. We always pass this place and we never stop. Time to stop, since I can’t not work on the roof again.
The people were great at the salvage shop. I highly recommand stopping in next time you are in Augusta, Maine. If you are ever in Augusta, Maine. I know I’ll be going back. It is a good feeling to go to a salvage shop and leave with a car full of stuff.
We got
a door (which is how I know I’ll be going back. I still need to pick it up),
a chair, a corner sink,
and even a
kitchen sink.
Of course, salvage isn’t necessarily pretty. There is so much stuff at Finally I Found It that some things, including the tubs and sinks, are stored outside. That means that before anything else happens, our sink needs a bath.
This is what Michael discovered when he went up to the house to do some work on the rafter tails:
Can’t tell what those are? Here’s a close-up:
Birds’ nests. Birds’ nests in every bay. Birds’ nests in every bay of almost every truss.
What can we say? It’s a nice neighborhood.
We are happy to report that none of the nests had any eggs, and most were barely started. Somehow, murdering a bunch of little birds-to-be seems like bad karma for a new house, doncha think?
We’ve removed the nests and are encouraging the little squatters to build outside.
In case you missed it because you have a life, there was some controversy over at this post about whether the tool Michael asked for was called a "Cat’s Claw" or "Cat’s Paw."
In fact, as is often the case, both names are correct.
Here is a Cat’s Claw.
And here is a Cat’s Paw.
There’s also a Bear Claw.
The differences between all these seem pretty superficial. So let’s call an end to this madness and have a group hug!
