Upping the ante

Tom and I went back to our insurance agent last week to increase our coverage to include all our equipment and materials. I'd been keeping track of all our receipts in a spreadsheet, but I hadn't totaled them until the morning of our appointment. Turns out we've spent over $10,000 already. Fortunately our labor is mostly free (save for a weekly dinner for Paul, Francesca, and the kids), or the bill would probably triple that. It's a little scary to see that huge number at the bottom of the page, but I keep telling myself it's worth every penny. Isn't it?

Back to work

Now that the hectic holidays are over, we're back to working on the house. Yesterday we finally got the master bathroom plumbing vented. We had to connect these two existing pipes:

You might not recognize the pipe on the right without the dead chicken beside it.

to each other and also to another vent for the sinks, and then run that all the way up through a hole in the roof. By the end of the day, the pipes looked like this:

The shower bone's connected to the...

Toilet bone. The toilet bone's connected to the...

Sink bone. The sink bone's connected to the...

Uh, I dunno. Roof bone?

It wouldn't have taken the whole day if we hadn't forgotten to get a couple of things from Lowe's the last time we were out there. While Tom was getting those few items, Paul and I prepared for the 4' knee wall we are going to build. Since nothing in the house is square or dimensional, every 2x4 had to be measured and cut individually.

I wanted the height of the wall to be slightly more than 4', so that a single piece of drywall could fit horizontally without cutting it. This accounts for the depth of the drywall on the sloping part of the wall as well as a small gap at the base. We tediously leveled, marked, labeled, and cut all the studs. With all the prep we did for it yesterday, I was able to pretty much finish it by myself after I got off work this afternoon. Here it is:

No top plate. We're connecting the studs right to the joists.

I still have to put a few more metal plates on the sides of the studs to connect them to the joists (you can see some installed on the right hand side of the previous picture), only because all our drill bits are just about worn out. I'll be hanging insulation on the sloping part of the wall in the next few days, since I can do that more or less by myself in the afternoons. It is kind of a pain to do alone, but it can certainly be done. I think that next weekend, when I have strong man-help, we'll be doing something about:


We're replacing the old cross-pieces with new 2x8s higher up. They'll be stronger, and the new placement will give a full 8' of headroom. Once we have those in, I'll be able to put insulation all the way up the slope to the peak. And that will be the end of my $500+/month utility bills.

Sticker shock

We got our first electric bill in the mail since we've had the HVAC installed. It totaled somewhere in the vicinity of $275. Ouch! Needless to say, we're spending New Years and the subsequent 3 days installing lots and lots of insulation in the attic and anywhere else we can find to stuff it.

Ghosts in the attic

When we first started cleaning out the attic in anticipation of sistering the joists, we found a bunch of hay and chicken wire stuffed into the eaves. We just figured the hay was being used as old-school insulation, and the chicken wire was simply keeping it in place. Now that we have some floor decking down, and I can easily reach the eaves without risking death by falling, I began a more thorough cleaning of the area via ShopVac. The first time one of these:

It's a bat, in case my photography skills don't do the discovery justice.

got stuck on the end of the hose, I was startled. But I hit the hose on a piece of wood and down the bat carcass fell. I resumed my work, picking up at least 4 more bats and 1 small bird. Bats and little birds happen in attics sometimes, especially in really old houses. Keep in mind that I was alone in the semi-dark, working by the light of a single bulb.

Then this happened:

Oh, yes. That's a chicken. Or, it *was* a chicken at some point in the past 140 years. Notice how I didn't even bother to take the ShopVac hose away. I switched off the vacuum, got my camera, and called it a night. Here's a glimpse into my thought process:

1. Ack! A chicken!
2. Why is there a chicken in my attic?
3. How did a chicken get up here?
4. I'm pretty sure it didn't fly up here.
5. I don't know of any chicken-sized holes in the house it could've walked through.
6. Somebody put the chicken up here on purpose?
7. Well, that explains the hay.
8. I've never heard of people keeping chickens in their attic.
9. Why is there a chicken in my attic?
10. Fresh eggs?
11. There aren't any stairs or steps leading up to the attic, so getting eggs would be a huge hassle (especially with a 10' ceiling height upstairs).
12. WHY is there a CHICKEN in my ATTIC?
13. Forget it. I'm going home.
14. Really, though. Why is there a chicken in my attic?

Any ideas?

I'm alive, I promise

I'm so bad about updating progress on the house. Two major accomplishments recently:

1. We have heat! After $4000 in supplies and $1000 in labor, we have 2 fully functional heating systems. Even without any insulation in the house, it cycles on and off, which means it's working pretty well. We've tried to stuff insulation in any place where there is a gaping hole (usually a missing brick or nailing block, and fortunately these spots are few). Not having to worry about frostbite makes working a bit more enjoyable.

The great tentacles of our octopus HVAC.

2. We (finally) finished sistering the joists on the east side of the house. That means that we're starting on attic decking! Walking in the attic feels much safer with the new, stiffer lumber. The old joists seemed a little spongy, if that makes any sense.

Our attic is really dirty.

Doing all that work on the joists was pretty time-consuming because we had to cut notches in every one that went up. We should be able to get a substantial portion of the OSB decking up next weekend. In the meantime, I'll continue patching "cold spots" in the brick with the half-ton of mortar-repair caulk I bought in anticipation of finally putting some insulation on the walls.

Little known fact

Getting hit in the back of the head by a piece of falling 2x8 lumber hurts. Like, a lot. It doesn't always do enough harm to cause a concussion, though. Little known fact.

Windows

The last of our vinyl windows was *finally* installed today after more than a month. All but two windows in the house had been replaced with energy-efficient vinyl-kraft windows. They both had leaded-glass upper sashes, and I think the previous owner simply wanted to keep that look. I don't blame her; they're pretty nice. However, both of those windows were over 4 feet wide and 6.5 feet tall and let in a lot of cold air. We also had a crack in another window that we decided to get replaced at the same time. The company had done a lot of work for Paul and Francesca at the company building, so they decided to cover the broken window under warranty and just charge us for the two new windows, a transom over the back door, and labor. We waited several weeks for the windows to be made, and were delighted when they called to say they were ready. The large window in the side bay went in without too much trouble (even though the window was bigger than it should have been), but the big window in the front:


DOA. A huge stress fracture stretched from top to bottom of the upper sash when they unloaded it from the truck. They already had the original window out by then, so they installed the new one and said they'd come back to replace the pane in a week or so. The transom window over the back door was measured wrong, too (this time, the window was too small), so they had to do some finagling to make it work. Here's the finished product:

which, while the area still needs work, is a vast improvement over what it was before:

Most of the junk pictured here was put out on the lawn and taken away by treasure hunters within 24 hours.

They also forgot the warranty-replacement sash, which I forgave, telling them to bring it back when they replaced the big one. A couple of weeks lapsed before they came with the DOA replacement. But they couldn't find the other replacement sash, the one covered under warranty. Fast forward another two and a half weeks to today. I got a call at 8:30 this morning, which of course I didn't answer. They called back again later when I was actually awake and said they had the last window ready to install immediately. I couldn't leave work, but Tom went over while they installed it. We still need to caulk the outside of all the windows, but we should be able to do that in a weekend with both of us working on it. We still have the original leaded-glass panes:
We'd like to include them in the house somewhere, but we're not exactly sure where. We asked about having that glass sandwiched between the two layers of glass on the new windows, but apparently the weight of the leaded glass causes the window to detach itself from the frame. After the living area is finished, we could hang them in front of the new windows. I'm sure that selling them on ebay would be easy and profitable, but I'd like to keep them with the house if we can. Any ideas on where I could showcase these ladies?