It’s getting real now!

Last week, our contractor work started. We met with the crew that would be doing the work and went over the plans again just so everyone was on the same page. Sonya and I left, and the crew started right in on demolition. And they are going fast! (But, it sounds like demo always goes pretty fast – it’s relatively easy to tear things apart!) The dumpster was delivered to the front yard later on the next day and it filled up quickly as well.

Part of the demo work that they did was to pull down the ceiling in the kitchen. Our original plan was to leave the 2nd floor joists and deck boards exposed, paint the deck boards and sand and finish the joists. Well, you can see from the picture, the deck boards don’t go all the way across the floor. Above the kitchen is what will be Seth’s room and the room part has deck boards, but the attic part, exterior to the room, does not. We could add deck board all the way across. But there are some other issues also with doing that, so we decided to just replace the ceiling. We’re still tossing around some ideas of what we want to do, but Sonya is surely going to come up with something creative and beautiful.

My attempt to be a plumber continued this week as well. Overall, it’s going very well (much better than I thought it would). PEX piping systems are fairly easy to work with and straight forward. Throughout the week, I was able to continue on building the purification and distribution system in the basement. I disconnected the water heater from the old system and Eli hooked it up to the new system. We still don’t know for sure if the water heater is going to work, but we’re crossing our fingers. I ran a cold water line from the distribution manifold to a new toilet that I installed in the 1/2 bath off of the family room, piped in the isolation valve, and hooked up the water line. Then, after checking all of my joints and making sure everything looked okay, I disconnected the well pressure tank from the old system and hooked it up to the new. Then I slowly opened valves along the way, letting things fill up, checking for leaks, and letting it come up to pressure. There were a few leaks: two at the UV light at some insert fittings that I was already unsure about, a couple at some NPT fittings that just needed some tightening, and another at a fitting that had a bad clamp ring installed. Replaced and tightened the fittings and ring and it all looks good!

On Sunday afternoon, the rest of the family had a little demo party! They went right to work tearing out the ceilings of the living room and family room, along with cleanup (which finished off the dumpster). No real surprises when pulling down the drywall other than “a very very dead mouse” and an old cinnamon shaker. Unfortunately, no hidden gold bars were found.

So far we’ve been very impressed with the professional crew working on the house. They’re moving along at a quick pace and even have big plans this week for installing the electrical box and the furnace. Today (Monday), they’ve started on the roof replacement. They even came by the house on Saturday while I was working on the plumbing to drop off materials so that they could get started to work next week. They seem to be good guys!

Sonya and I are very excited today!!