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There is no chore that the two of us hate more than doing the dishes. We really, really hate doing the dishes. Our dish pile has been known to take up two sinks and two counters simultaneously and every attempt that we make at hosting sees one of us hunkered down over the sink, desperately trying to get rid of all the pile up before our friends arrive and learn about the dish squalor that we live in. (Guess we just blew that, huh?)
It is a rare morning when one of us doesn’t stumble downstairs first thing to make coffee, take a glance around our cluttered sink, and mutter sadly, “The Dish Fairy didn’t come again.”
Well, today, the Dish Fairy arrived.
And she brought friends!
And yellow walls! Well, okay, Michael brought the yellow walls. They look good with the floors, though, eh?
Here’s another view so you can take it all in. Don’t mind the drywall dust clogging up the camera; it will just help you see things how we see them these days.
The knowledge that we have a whole ten days extra before we need to move out, including two extra weekends, was an extreme relief. Two weeks we can work with. In two weeks, we can make this place livable. We hope.
After that inspirational intro, we’d like to say that we managed an extraordinary amount of progress and then show you tons of pictures proving that we are superhuman in our ability to build a house. Not quite so.
Here’s what we did:
Cherie put up more drywall in the master bedroom. You’d think this bedroom was enormous for the amount of drywall-hanging time it has required. You’d be quite wrong. Cherie is just the slowest drywaller in history. Plus, it’s a little complicated. It’s not done yet, but it’s closer. No pictures. We’re saving that until it’s done.
The kitchen received its last coat of drywall mud and then a primer coat. The appliances are ready to go, as soon as we figure out what color we are painting the walls. Any ideas?
But the real story of this weekend is the upstairs bathroom. Michael devoted himself to the tub surround tile. It’s done, and we think it looks fantastic.
The wood is just propping up the tile in the top of the shampoo niche until it dries into place.
Here’s another angle, just because.
We know it’s geeky to be so excited over a shower. We know. But this was one of the first interior design decisions that we had to make, and having it turn out exactly the way we hoped it would look is pretty exciting.
We camped out in the house again this weekend. Things went smoother than last time, mostly because we put the dog’s bed right next to our air mattress so she wouldn’t get lonely. Also, we gave up any notion of having an entertaining evening and just devoted ourselves to working until about 11PM, which is when we fell over in a heap. We didn’t mind, but it must be said that when you find yourself spending Saturday night eating your grilled shrimp dinner off a cooler while sitting in folding chairs in the middle of an unfinished “dining room”, all in the glow of a propane lantern that is balanced on a toilet, it may be time to reconsider your lifestyle choices.
Recently, someone found our site by googling the term "build a house in four hours." They didn’t stick around. We can’t imagine why, what with the lightening progress we are making.
In a comment to our last post Angela of Pete and Ange very politely asked when we were moving in. Ha! Not in four hours, that’s for sure.
It’s a very good question, but we don’t have a very good answer. Our plan from about five months ago was to move in at the end of August. Two months ago, we told our landlords we would be out of our rental at the end of August. We don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the end of August is…next week. Next Thursday to be precise.
We still don’t have a functional kitchen or bathroom. Oh, yes, and we still don’t have electricity.
We finally admitted this week that our chances of moving next Thursday were slim. Very slim. Slim like in an equation where slim=no chance in hell. This is particularly painful for Cherie, whose entire professional career has been concerned with meeting deadlines. This is a deadline that we will not meet. Period. End of story. A perfect streak of met deadlines blown.
We may be sulky, but we are not ones to live in denial. We bit the bullet and called the landlords for an extension. Luckily, they like us. Also luckily, they had not rented the place, mostly because they needed a few weeks to get it in shape for a new tenant. We have two weeks of grace.
September 10th is the new deadline. Wish us luck. Except for you, Mr. Build a House In Four Hours. Because you are just nutty.
It was a bit of a tough weekend. Saturday we finished drywalling the bedroom ceiling with our friend Jen (Thanks Jen!), then we split up duties. Michael put the last coat of mud on the drywall in the kitchen, coated the front door with sealant, and installed a pocket door between the downstairs half-bath and the storage room under the stairs. He had it easy.
Cherie fought with the Hardibacker–the tough cement board used under tile. In this case, it was going in the upstairs bathroom and the entryway.
Need we even tell you that the Hardibacker won the battle?
Turns out that Hardibacker is, well, hardy. We’re not sure exactly what one is supposed to cut Hardibacker with, but all we had were razor knives. Cherie struggled to cut through the board, struggled to break it in the proper place in order to fit around whatever little niche or doodad that Michael had thoughtlessly placed in the way (like, um, the tub surround! And the toilet drain!), and struggled to screw it down to the subfloor. Screwing it down wasn’t difficult in itself, except that despite being the relative toughness of steel, this stuff is such a little baby that it needs to be screwed down every six inches. It took hours to do the bathroom, and then she had to head downstairs for the entryway.
You know, no matter how Zen you try to be about whatever housebuilding/renovation/home improvement project you are doing, you reach a point where you just can’t take it anymore. It just won’t work, and no matter how many deep breaths you take, you just can’t keep the rage and frustration from building and building until suddenly you find yourself screaming at inanimate objects.
We aren’t saying that’s what happened. We’re just saying that at around hour six of the Hardibacker experience, when the next to last piece just wouldn’t fit into its space for Cherie, no matter how bitterly she complained and how creatively she tried, and then Michael came over and it slid right into its spot for him…well. There were words. Impolite words.
Hardibacker in the bathroom:
And in the entryway. See the slate tile in the back, sorted by color and ready to go?
We showed up on Sunday still in slightly foul moods, but ready to sand the kitchen drywall and prime the walls and then lay the floor. There’s a proper order to these things, you know. Get the walls in order and then the floor.
But it rained. It rained! It was too humid for the drywall mud to dry. On the wall. Thus making a dry…wall. If the mud wasn’t dry, we couldn’t sand it. If we couldn’t sand it, then we couldn’t prime. And if we couldn’t prime, then we couldn’t lay the floor. Because who would lay a new wood floor in a room that needs to be sanded and painted? Who would do that?
We would do that.
Logic told us that we should just go finish the drywall in the bedroom and wait for better weather to sand and prime the kitchen and then do the kitchen floor. But our morale told us that we needed a kitchen floor.
Our morale was right.
It’s been a while since we’ve given an update on our contractor list. You know, all of those things that we can’t do ourselves but must instead hire out to others for large sums of cash? The biggest problem with these things is that we are at the mercy of other people’s schedules, which in itself makes us nervous because the other people? Don’t care quite as much as we do about getting things done as quickly as humanly possible.
Last time we revisited this topic, progress was being made. Here’s what the to-do list looked like:
1) The Electrician
2) The Plumber
3) The Well Driller
4) The Septic System
5) The Electricity
We are happy to report that there has been further progress. The plumber is essentially done until it comes time to put in fixtures. And this is what we found waiting for us this evening:
Chambers for the septic system*.
And the newly cleared field below the house looks like this:
Michael isn’t always standing there. Really. At least we hope he isn’t standing there when they drop in one of those chambers.
But you can’t just have water running out of a house, right?
That’s the pipe bringing water from the well to the house.
So, yes. Progress. Still no electricity, but all the new poles are in. They just need to run the lines and hook us up.
Official tally:
1) The Electrician
2) The Plumber
3) The Well Driller
4) The Septic System
5) The Electricity
So close! We aren’t fully into the 21st century yet, but we are squarely into modern life. It’s a shame those contractor folks refuse to work 24 hours a day. Then we’d really see some action!
*Quick lesson for those who are unfamiliar with septic systems. All wastewater travels through the plumbing to the septic tank. It feeds into the bottom of the tank and gradually moves up to the top of the tank, where it overflows into the chambers. The chambers are spread throughout the septic field, and serve as holding tanks while the waste breaks down naturally.
Well, it arrived. The first overnight in our house. We had some work on the roof that needed to be done early in the morning before the shingles heated up and we needed to push ahead on the drywalling. So why not work late and stay over?
Saturday
9:00 Finally make it to the house. Finish the last tiny bit of framing: building in a shampoo niche in the shower, building the front edge for the tub, and framing the small door into the attic.
12:00 Lunch! Yay!
12:30 Begin drywalling the master bedroom. The cathedral ceiling that seemed like such a good idea back when we were putting in the rafters suddenly looks pretty daunting. Luckily, we were able to borrow a drywall lift from a kindly acquaintance (thankyouthankyouthankyou!) that made the job, if not easy, at least possible for two people.
1:00 Still drywalling.
2:00 Still drywalling. We said it was easier, not faster.
3:00 Still drywalling.
4:00 Still…you get the point.
5:00 After 5 hours of drywalling, we have managed to finish only one half of the cathedral ceiling and place one sheet on the other side. We weep for a bit.
5:15 We head back to our other house to forage for dinner supplies and fetch the dog.
6:00 Back on site. The dog gets a good run through the woods while we fire up the grill.
6:30 Grilled shrimp, mushroom, and onion kabobs with corn on the cob. Blueberries for dessert. Cherie begins blowing up the air mattress herself after Michael’s ingenious plan to use the air compressor fails utterly.
7:00 Back upstairs. We decide to abandon drywall. Cement board in the tub surround, then. During breaks, we continue to make ourselves lightheaded trying to inflate the air mattress. Dog begins campaign for another run through the woods.
8:00 It gets too dark to see and we are forced to fire up the generator so we can use the stadium light. (When are we getting power, anyway? Sheesh.) The air mattress is getting full, but our brains are shutting down from lack of oxygen. Dog has turned her back on us entirely.
9:00 Start to feel bad for being “Those Loud People” in the neighborhood. Consider that the house next door, which has three small children, probably deserves better. Turn off generator.
9:05 Decide to go have a look at the meteor shower that is supposed to be taking place right now. Grab sleeping bag, emergency bottle of port, and newly awake dog.
9:10 Settle down in the open space of the power line easement on our property. Get ready to have romantic evening communing with nature.
9:11 Dog sits bolt upright and stares intently in one direction, extremely tense and in full alert mode. We shine our flashlights around entire area, listening to every little noise from the woods, convinced that the dog is protecting us from rabid raccoons or vicious coyotes. See no evidence of any animal of any kind.
9:20 Realize that the dog is actually protecting us from the headlights of cars passing on a nearby road. Express our disgust with the world’s most useless watchdog and settle back down.
9:30 We see a meteor.
9:40 We see another one.
9:50 Another one.
10:00 C: Well, that’s about all the fun I can stand.
M: I think I just fell asleep.
10:15 We set up the air mattress and sleeping bags by lantern-light in the master bedroom. It’s just like camping, only without bugs or rocks in our backs or raccoons trying to eat our food. The dog settles into her bed (which is 100 times more comfortable than our air mattress) and we shut off the lantern.
10:15:03 The dog hits the air mattress and wedges herself between us, shaking uncontrollably. Apparently our new house fills her with even more terror than car headlights.
10:30 Dog still shaking.
11:00 Dog still shaking. We give up hope of calming her and go to sleep.
Sometime in the next hour: The dog goes to sleep.
3:00 Michael gets kicked in the head by the dog one too many times and boots dog.
7:30 Holy crap. Do we really need to get up?
8:00 Michael hits the roof–literally. Cherie spends the next two hours handing tools up through a hole in the roof as he installs the vent in the bathroom and the sun tunnel.
10:00 More drywall. Oy.
Okay, we’ll spare you the rest of the drywalling. Boy, that timeline thing gets old. Here’s what the bedroom looks like:
(We don’t know why the photo looks like that. Too much dust in the air, maybe?)
Other side:
The finished bathroom:
And the finished dog:
And so ends the housebuilding marathon. We won’t be doing it again next weekend because we will have another houseguest! Those people never learn.
For months now, we have felt like an embarrassment to the neighborhood. We’ve secretly suspected that the neighbors have been gathering to complain about us and to strategize our demise. We’ve been kept awake at night, worrying that we would never be invited over for coffee. And all because our front porch looked like this:
Between the bathtub, the gaping hole, and the housewrap, we felt we were dragging the reputation of the neighborhood down a bit. It’s true, you can’t actually see the front porch from the road, but we knew. We knew how bad it was. And, deep down, we felt trashy.
But! Things have improved a bit. A few days ago we showed you a glimpse of the bathtub in its new home. And then this arrived yesterday:
When we ordered the door, the estimate was 6-8 weeks for delivery. But the salesguy told us it would only be 4-6 weeks, “They always overestimate and it never takes as long as they say.”
Hah. We’ll say it again: hah. 8 weeks later, and not a day sooner, our door came in.
But that is neither here nor there. Because look at our new and improved entryway*!
Well, okay, there’s still the housewrap situation. But we don’t want to get neighborhood expectations too high. Then they’ll just be disappointed when they see the beer can tower we have planned for the front yard.
*Yes, we know we are lacking certain vital components, such as a doorknob. It’s coming. We also are strategizing ways to spiff up the door a bit more and make it more unique. Some trim under the windows and stained glass insets should work wonders, doncha think?
Sorry to be so late with the weekend update. We had to clear some more trees for the septic system tonight after work and were a little busy trying to stop a stubborn tree from falling into the road and taking out phone service to the entire subdivision. Oh, and we were trying to accomplish this task before it got dark and while mosquitos attempted to carry us away to the next county. It was absolutely, 100% as fun as it sounds and it was one of those moments when we were thinking, “Boy, this housebuilding thing is the best idea we ever had!”
We had planned to give you the full story about this weekend because it was really exciting and we felt very accomplished. Here’s the short version:
Drywall.
Heh. Okay, the slightly longer version:
We are beginning our push to make at least part of our house livable. The priority rooms are the kitchen, the upstairs bathroom, the master bedroom, and the laundry room. This weekend two of them got walls (mostly).
Here’s the kitchen before:
And now:
That last little bit is nothing to worry about. It’s getting plywood to provide more support for cabinets.
Moving along, upstairs there is the bathroom.
Before:
And after:
From these pictures you should notice two things:
1) We are missing pieces here too. We ran out of drywall. Not a problem, we aren’t panicking. They are easy pieces.
2) The color of the moisture resistent drywall in the bathroom is the exact same green as the handle of the left-handed scissors used in elementary school art classes across the nation, the kind that never worked right and, as a result, only made it more noticeable that the left-handed kid was a bit of a freak who couldn’t cut construction paper properly.
Upon reflection, that might just be Cherie’s issue. But that is the same green.
How about this alternate:
2) The bathtub is no longer sitting on our front porch, but instead is upstairs. In the bathroom. Like a real, grown-up bathtub.
We are very proud. Perhaps it should have a talk with the trees about how inanimate objects behave in our household.
Yesterday we had a great time shopping for kitchen appliances. For years we’ve been dealing with substandard appliances in our rental, including an electric stove that doesn’t heat evenly, a refrigerator prone to freezing vegetables, and a cranky dishwasher named Cherie. So, the chance to poke about the appliance department, debating features, brands, and looks was actually quite a good time. The range of options out there is quite amazing (does anyone really need a digital readout of their refrigerator’s temperature at all times? Really? You do?), but we prefer less fancy and more dependable.
So we spent some serious time poking around ovens and comparing fridge doors. Quite fun, much more fun that the whole flooring issue.
It was a little less fun paying for all three appliances at the same
time. We’d like to tell you that at this point in the housebuilding
process, we are immune to flinging about large sums of money. But, no, we aren’t.
Anyway this is what we got, but first a note on color. We went with white. Boring, yes, but… there’s something about white that is classic, clean, and bright. (Yes, white is bright. This is the kind of design wisdom you can expect here. Black is dark, too, in case you didn’t know.)
Kenmore stove, with completely removable grill top.
Kenmore three door, bottom freezer refrigerator (we aren’t trying to be Kenmore pushers, it just worked out that way).
And a Whirlpool dishwasher that is not named Cherie.
Life is good. Now we just need to finish the kitchen they need to go in.
Well, we survived the 16-hour one-way road trip to Western Pennsylvania, despite the best efforts of Interstate 80 to trap us forever in that state. We foiled you, Interstate 80! You and your endless construction!
Also, did you know that a faulty alternator can overcharge your battery, causing said battery to spew sulfuric acid all over your car and, in the process, creating one of the most putrid scents known to humans? We didn’t know that either. We do now.
But, we’re fine. And we’re home. And look what the insulation fairies left us downstairs,
and upstairs.
We continue to be amazed by the miracle of hiring people. Things were accomplished…but we didn’t do them? How is this possible?
We hired out the insulation because insulating, frankly, is a lousy job. It would have taken us close to a week swathed head-to-toe in protective clothing and dust masks to accomplish what this team did in a day. Plus, they can purchase insulation at a bulk rate, which means that hiring them to do this only cost us a few hundred dollars more than the insulation itself would have. 100% worth it. No question.
(For those interested in such things: that’s R-19 insulation in the walls plus a vapor barrier and R-30 insulation in the roof. We will be adding another layer of R-19 in the attic crawlspace. The cathedral ceiling in the master bedroom, which won’t have the benefit of attic insulation, got R-38. Oh, and we sealed the heck out of every header, window, and seam before the insulation went in.)
Hey, how was the trip, anyway? Well, we got to spend quality time with some of Michael’s family.
And we got to do this:
Automobiles, weaponry, and fairies. Not your ordinary houseblog.
