Any one for some chocolate???

Well there is some colour now in the house in various rooms. As referenced by the title the bedroom has it's "chocolate" brown colouration. I've even heard rumours that the brother was so enamoured with the colours they may repaint their bedroom as well :-):-):-). So how did all this colour get there and when is now the story.
I'll start on Monday with the plan of painting. However when I got to the house it was a little chilly. I had turned off the furnace the previous Saturday while doing some drywall in the basement and forgot to turn it back on. So I decided it would be a good time to finish all the drywall in the basement. Well by midday it was done, so I loaded up the truck with all the scrap drywall for delivery to the dump later that day. To finish off the day I installed all the plugs, switches, and lights in the basement with the exception of the north bedroom. Since this bedroom is all drywalled and mudded I might give it a coat of primer before I install the electrics.
Well by Tuesday the temp was just fine so we gave the ceiling a light sanding and the painted the second coat of flat ceiling paint. One thing I noticed right away was that I was having a lot of small threads in the paint at times. I initially thought it was the paint rollers but it happened with multiple rollers. In the end I think it was a multitude of issues. Some roller were better than others so age had a bearing as well I noticed that the second can of paint was better than the first. In the end it all worked out however I did spend some time during the painting to stop and remove blemishes. I really hoped that after this coat was done the ceiling would be done.
Well when I came into the house on Wednesday morning and looked at the ceiling I had to roll out at third coat. I'm sure this is when people would say you should of hired a pro. Well that may be the case but I'm still cheaper than they are. So another day was spent giving the ceiling a light sanding and then putting on a third coat. This time I was real careful and made sure there was good overlap as well as rolling in two directions at ninety degrees to each other.
So Thursday I came to the house and looked at the ceiling. It was not perfect. It was a lot better than before but there are still areas in sunlight where you can see roller marks. Well there would be no fourth coat. I'm leaving it as is and we'll see if maybe it changes with a little more time to dry. So I then went and painted the second coat of light brown in the Master bedroom on the rear wall and ceiling. I also painted the Master bath with a blue coloured paint. Man was this paint thick, you could almost spoon it out like porridge.  Well here us a picture of the bathroom.

So on Friday I decided to paint the stairwell as I had installed my scaffolding in there to be able to reach the ceiling to cut in the wall paint. So we climbed the scaffolding and cut in the wall paint. Since it was a little unstable I used painters tape to help with the cutting in so that I would not get any paint on the ceiling. Here is a pictures of the scaffold. I installed that scaffold and then used a piece of 2by10 lumber on the rungs of the scaffold and the stepladder. By standing on the 2by10 I was high enough to comfortably cut in the wall paint. The second picture is once the painting was all done before I removed the actual scaffold.

I then went and painted the second coat of blue in the bathroom and painted the first coat of dark brown in the master bedroom. Once you see this picture you'll understand the title of this piece.

I know that my brother is not fond of these colours but so far I am quite happy with them. Once the trim is in and the doors are installed it will be a nice cosy sleeping area.

So this brings us to today, Saturday. Well today we painted the living, dining room, kitchen and hallway. As the day progressed I became much more proficient at cutting in the paint at the wall/ceiling interface. It took some time but by mid afternoon these rooms were all done. Here are two photos showing this.

I have also picked up the material I needed for the underfloor heat in the master bathroom. I am using what is called Ditra heat from Schluter. Hopefully by the end of the week this will be installed and possibly the floor tiles as well. I also picked up the wood flooring for the Master bedroom so once the bathroom is finished we'll be able to install the flooring in the bedroom. I'll probably also take some time this week to work on the wiring for upstairs. After I put my second coat on the walls I'll be able to install all the plugs and light switches. After all the sooner that is done the sooner I can get my final electrical inspection. 

Well that's all for this week. I'll see you again in a weeks time.

Harold

And the painting continues

Well this week was all about painting, with a little bit of drywall and electrical thrown in for good measure. My guess is that I've got at least a week of solid painting to go and possibly more since I'll probably work on other things in between. As well I plan on letting the paint thoroughly dry between coats.
On Monday I spent time priming the spare bedroom, the spare bathroom as well as the front hallway. I only had the back entrance left to do but ran out of paint and since it was late in the day did not feel like opening a new can just for the one room.
So on Tuesday we opened the new can and finished the side entrance and the three small storage cubicles I have. By the time I was finished I had used up approximately 50 litres of paint through the entire main floor. I have a sinking feeling that the paint budget might be woefully inadequate. Oh well just one of the joys of building a house. Nothing every gets finished on time and nothing costs what you think it will.
On Wednesday I spent the day driving back and forth to London Ont to bring my Mom to visit with my brother for a few days during spring break. The brother and half the family brought her back today. So we spent no time at the house working.
On Thursday I spent the day starting to put up the first coat of Flat ceiling paint. Let me tell you painting white on white is not an ideal situation. I really wish I had bought that paint that changes colour when it dries so that you can see where you've been. You really had to look close sometimes to figure out where you stopped and started. Oh well just one of the joys of painting. Another one of the joys is painting the stairwell. Later on I plan on installing my scaffolding in there when I paint the final ceiling coat. Then once the ceiling is done I'll paint the two coats of wall paint before removing the scaffold. So for now to paint the corners we need to improvise to be able to reach 12ft above your head. Well as the attached picture shows this is how I improvised, I taped the brush to the extend-able painters stick.

On Friday finished up with the first ceiling coat and then put a coat of semi gloss in two of the storage cubby holes. I plan on using white semi gloss in all the closets as well. Once I finished the painting I spent some time downstairs installing some drywall  and installing plugs, switches and light fixtures. The circuits weren't livened up just wanted to put the fixtures in. I also went out and bought 16 more sheets of drywall and with the Brother in laws help brought them down stairs. Once they are installed I should be short just a couple of sheets but we'll she how that goes.
On Saturday I decided to paint the light brown paint that will go in my Master bedroom. I've decided that not only will this light paint go in the recess but it will also go on the ceiling. As the Brother stated when he came today, boy is this room going to be dark. Well that's the whole intention. I want a nice cosy dark room for sleeping in. Here are two pictures a before and after of what that first coat of brown looks like.

After cleaning up I decided to try and install all the drywall I had picked up yesterday so that I could see how many more sheets were required. Well did not quite get that done before the family showed up. However I anticipate I will need another three sheets and then the drywall installation will be complete. So we'll finish that next week Monday or Tuesday.

Well that's it for this week. Next week will be another week of painting and possibly some tile flooring work. Going to order the Ditra heat materials on Monday or Tuesday and should be able to install the Ditra material at least I hope by end of week.

Until then have great week.

Harold

The joys of painting

Well I will apologise right away because there will be no pictures with this blog entry. First of all I left the camera at the house and secondly the photos won't be all that different than the last few. After all how many times can you look at a picture of a room with just primed drywall.
It has been a decent week here. Sunshine has finally started to arrive and this of course brings warmer temperatures so that we will now be dealing with water, mud and settling fill around the foundation.
However on to the story. First of all the drywallers finished on Monday evening around 7pm after all the sanding was complete. During this time I had the furnace vents blocked as well the furnace was turned off. I ran my electric heater to keep temp up. While they were sanding upstairs I finished off the north basement bedroom such that it is ready for a coat of primer. Of course what do you need to do once they are finished, well clean house of course. I spent the next two days carefully cleaning all the dust and excess drywall mud up. I carefully wiped down the walls to get as much dust off them as possible without scratching the walls. I learned really quickly that this new drywall mud is really dainty. It does not take much to put a scratch into it. The mudding crew actually told me to leave the dust and just paint over it as a vacuum brush would scratch the drywall mud. Well maybe some of the painters do this however I was not about to paint over all that dust. I bought a fairly soft brush and carefully wiped down the walls and no scratches were left by my brush.
On Wednesday the plumber came down to install a dedicated dishwasher line from the HWT directly to where the DW will be. I added this last minute and thankfully the plumber had some free time so was able to come down and finalize this. Of course this also meant he could hand deliver the bill as well and get his cheque. Previously on Monday the gas inspector came and passed all the Gas work. So with these two items taken care of I can now finish the remainder of the drywall installation.
On Thursday and Friday I started priming the entire house. By end of day on Friday I estimate 70% of the house has been primed upstairs. Next week Monday I'll finish the priming and the start painting the ceiling with it's two coats of ceiling paint.
Today I spent the morning installing the remainder of the drywall I had in the basement. With this installed I can calculate how much more I need to finish all the drywall. Looks like I need another 14 sheets of drywall 4by8ft. I'll probably pick them up sometime next week and finish this chore during the week. In the afternoon went out with Mom and the sister and brother inlaw to choose some paint colours and to pick-up the bathroom tile I had decided on last week.  Always nice to have a feminine touch when doing this. I've chosen a dark brown for the bedroom, an off blue for the bathroom and for the majority of the house a cream colour. One extra splash will be a red wall behind the desk in the office area. It will take a few weeks but hopefully it all works out and the pictures will hopefully show this as well.
Other than dealing with a broken laptop that's been my week. Well that and a broken tooth that needs repairing but can't use glue on that.

Well until next week keep dry and lets hope that sunshine continues.

Harold

There is a light at the end of the tunnel

Well it's been a dirty week at the jobsite. That's one result of mudding and taping, you get a lot of pieces of mud on the floor. However the work is almost done. The drywaller figures to do the final sanding on Monday and if nothing goes wrong he'll be done and that should be the last of the trades people that need to be hired on the job until the brick work gets done later this spring. This won't be a long post in that other than drywalling not much else happened on the job site.

Yours truly did the following, I primed and then painted two coats of semi-gloss white in my storage room. I then livened up the electrical cct in that room which also includes the sump-pump. This allowed me to remove the extension cord I was using and thereby was able to fully close the cold cellar door. Here are two pictures showing the storage room all painted the sump pump is in the cold cellar behind the door in the first picture. Now all that I need to do to make it functional is install some shelving at the one end.

The only other thing I did this week was work on mudding the North basement bedroom. This is one of two completed rooms in the basement. The other is one of the rec rooms that is full of my tools and other junk. I did not work at a furious pace and left plenty of time for the mud to dry between coats. I have now finished mudding and am halfway through final sanding. Will the job be as good as the professionals upstairs, no. However I am improving and for a basement bedroom it is fine. The rest of my time was spent watching the drywallers work and doing crossword puzzles. For info here is a picture of the house at the end of today in the living room area. Sorry no picture of the bedroom.

Since the HVAC people have finished installing the heating system and hot water tank I can now have my gas inspection. Once that is done on Monday, and we pass, I will be able to finish installing the rest of my drywall in the basement. As well once the drywallers are finished I can go around clean up, finish sand, and then prime all the surfaces as well as finish painting the ceiling. I have a paint colour picked out for the bedrooms, now I just have to pick out a final colour for the walls of the rest of the house. Then we need to install the underfloor heat in the master bedroom, then choose tiles for the floor and above the shower, pick a vanity, etc etc. The decisions will be coming fast and furious now in the decoration department.

One little side note. I knew that I was building an airtight house. Well the proof has really been evident this past week. The humidity level in the house is almost off the scale. I've had to turn the HRV(heat recovery ventilator) on full time just to help get rid of the humidity. As well I have a dehumidifier working almost full time that fills up a bucket of water every 24hrs. It was working so hard that the unit froze solid and I had to use a heater to defrost it. Once the HRV was running we managed to get the humidity down to 58% however It needs to go lower which will happen as all the drywall mud dries. Once I've primed the walls I hope the HVAC guys return to install the proper thermostat for the furnace and HRV and then it will run as needed.

Earlier on my Blog I talked about having issues with my shingles not sitting flat and therefore being susceptible to strong winds. I complained to GAF about this and submitted a claim. Well they came back and denied my claim saying that Blow off is not covered by warranty when you do not hand seal the shingles during installation in cold weather. Nowhere in the letter did it talk about the problem in regards to raised shingle tabs. So I contacted them again and they said if I felt they made a mistake to ship more shingles to them with this problem and their lab will look into it. I don't think I will win but I intend to continue this fight as long as possible. Stayed tuned for a Youtube video on my issues.

Last week I mentioned going to an interview with Home Depot. Well at this time they have advised me that they will keep my application on file but that they have no openings for me. Oh well maybe one of the other applications I submitted will come to fruition. Building a house can be quite expensive especially if you want to do it right.

Well thats it for now. The sun is starting to shine the temp is warming up and summer is on its way. Now if only the lottery gods would shine upon me as well.

Harold

Drywall is now a four letter word.

Well it has been an interesting week. I think this is the first time I've had to fire/lay off an individual. The mudding and taping company has been let go as of Thursday morning. The owner had some issues and at the end of the day he had no WSIB(Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) coverage because of this. It is law in Ontario that all workers on a construction site must have this coverage. No coverage no work. If I got caught employing people with no coverage it could be upwards of a 100,000$ fine. So after delays getting him to the site and then this I've lost another whole week of work towards occupancy. So we had to go back out and look for another crew. As of now looks like I've got one, he was one of the bidders last time around as well. If i'm lucky they'll start Monday morning. Note to self don't hire anybody going through divorce proceedings.

Anyway onto what happened this week at the job site. We're now at the stage that unless something critical needs to be done, I'm not working in the house on Sundays. So that leaves Monday to Saturday for work. So this week on Monday I had the HVAC guys back for a few hours and they started installing the Hot water tank. They finished this job on Thursday and as well installed the air conditioning lines, as well as insulated the intake lines for the furnace and HWT to hopefully prevent the condensation problem I was having.. So at this stage the HVAC people are finished until they come back later in the Spring to install the actual Air Conditioner outside. Here's a picture of the HWT installed in the house. This is a Rheem High Efficiency condensing HWT meaning that it also has an intake pipe drawing air into the combustion chamber from outside.

As for myself, I spent the week either working on the storage room or the North Basement Bedroom mudding and taping. One new product I'm using here I've never seen before but really seems to work well. Usually when I have done any mudding and taping I use the self adhesive fibreglass mesh tape. I find it easier than the paper tape with the exceptions of the corners where the mesh tape is harder to use. Well at the local Penner's Home hardware they that a fibreglass weave tape with a bendable seam down the middle just like the paper tape. The roll was 50% more than paper but I decided to try one. I am impressed it works really slick and the tape imbeds into the mud extremely well. I will end up buying another three rolls approximately to finish the basement. So in the scheme of things this will cost me an extra 15$ over paper tape but well worth it. 

I will admit there were lots of slow times and I quit early on Friday as well. On Saturday all I did was a quick sanding in the storage room and a little mudding on two seams that needed more mud. I also had the new mudding company in to look over the place and ensure they were willing to take on the job.  Next week I'll finish sanding and then start painting the storage room so that it can be used for it's purpose. Just for info here is a picture of the Basement Bedroom after it's first coat of mud.

                             

On Thursday not only did I fire the drywaller but I went to Home Depot for a second interview with the HR team. I have applied at various companies around here looking for a part time job to 1) occupy my time and 2) help pay for the mortgage I will be taking on to finish this house. So the interview went well and all I need to do to finish the process is give them three references for people I've worked for lately. I've tracked two of the three down I need and hopefully will talk to the third one on Monday. Then we'll have to see if I fit as their model employee. I had hoped that the lumber yard down the street from the new house would have called me for an interview but so far they haven't. I'll admit it would be more convenient there rather than the 20min drive to Home Depot but at this stage of the game money talks. 

Well the weather is slowly improving we've had some nice sunny days however the temp is still low, -15C today when I went to the house. Looks like around another week before temp moves above freezing. I won't have the entire winter but this will definitely give me a peek at what the gas and hydro bills will be like. For instance the first gas bill that was for approx 30 days was 50$ for just the gas portion, total bill was 138$ with all the extra costs they tack on. However based on meter readings I'm still cheaper than the house next door. 

Well until next week enjoy the milder temps and have a great time moving forward enroute to the Spring Solstice.

Harold

PS: Cor, Mark should do this as well but say hello to the people in the O Mess.

Drywall is beginning to lose it's lustre

Well for the past week I've still been working on drywall but now in the basement. I've also installed all the corner bead upstairs in preparation for the mudding and taping. I just hope they have no issues with it or if they do we can fix it quickly. I installed the plastic corner bead as it was I thought easier for me to install. In hindsight I should have used the metal stuff and left it for the mudding crew to install when they put the first coat of mud up.
One thing I realized was that I did not give you a picture of the water system in the house. As mentioned I went with a manifold system in the utility room. This means that every water using appliance has a hose that goes from it to the utility room. There are no joints in between. This was the ideal plan however since I had more points than the manifold would accept without paying lots of money, the basement bathroom is on one line and there are joints in that system but they are in the basement in the utility wall so would not create a huge issue if they leaked down the road. Here is a picture showing this hot and cold manifold, as well you can see the natural gas manifold on the right side of the picture.

I took Sunday off and just wandered around Lowes looking at stuff and picking up some of the cornerbead I would require for the house. Later I realized I had not bought enough so went to the Rona store in St Catharines for more and their plastic cornerbead was of much better quality than the stuff I bought at Lowes. Rona's seemed to be a little thicker and sturdier than the Lowe's product.

Anyway over the week I slowly worked on doing some drywall in the basement. The one rec room is done, one bedroom is done, the bathroom is done and the second rec room was almost done until I had to remove 4 sheets this morning. The intake and exhaust for the furnace go down one of the joist cavities in this rec room. I noticed that the intake pipe was sweating condensate due the cold weather outside and warm air inside. The HVAC guys were going to bring an insulating tube down next time they came however they have not been. So I thought I would just insert some pink fibreglass insulation around the pipe and this should work. Well it didn't there was a little drip coming down between the seams of the drywall so down came four sheets and out came the fibre glass. Some of the fibreglass had even frozen to the pipe right by the exterior wall. So I guess we'll have to wait for the insulating tube to come and hopefully that will prevent the condensation from forming. 

I also installed some copper piping from the sink area to the fridge are for future considerations with the fridge and ice making capabilities. Since I ran this under the floor I needed to do this prior to drywalling the second bedroom. However I also need the HVAC guys to run their Air Conditioning pipes in the joist cavities as well so until they are done I cannot finish drywalling this bedroom. Here is a picture of the one bedroom drywalled. I don't have a picture of the bathroom but lets face it it's just a bathroom nothing special.

Now initially I had hoped to have the mudding and taping start on Thursday. However Thursday came and went and no crew. I'm not sure what happened I do know it took me two days to contact him and his comment was that he had lost his phone and had no method to contact me. So he now advises they will be there Monday morning and he assures me by Saturday they will be done. Because of all this there were a few days where I did not spend the entire day at the house as I am running out of easy work to do there. I have some outside work but that is waiting for warmer weather and melting snow. I did decide to try and fix up my heating system in the garage. I bought a ceiling mounted heater but it did not come with a thermostat. Since it runs off of a 30 Amp cct I needed to insert a relay/contactor in the cct between the heater and the service panel. This contactor would be run by a standard line thermostat. Theory was that the thermostat would pass 120v current to the relay to engage it when called for by the heat setting. Relay engages and heater starts up. My intent was to keep the temp just above freezing maybe 5C in the garage. I also decided to insert an electronic timer in the mix such that the thermostat would only work between 7pm and 7am when we have cheap electric rates as compared to day time rates. I was almost done when I realized the thermostat I bought would only go down to 10C and no lower. So I now need to find a line thermostat that has a range from 0C to 20C at the most. So on to Google and Amazon later to search one out. Since I could not finish this job I decided to at least mud and tape the storage room in the basement. By doing this room I can use it for storage as intended as well the wiring cct in this room also has the sump pump on it and once the room is mudded and taped I can install the electrics and at least let the sump pump work normally instead of on an extension cord. Here is a picture showing my first coat of mud on this room.

It's not perfect but then it's only a storage room. Great spot to practice on.

Well it's snowing again and the cold weather just won't leave. Not only that I can't win on the lottery so no nice trips to the sunny south for me. 

Well until next week, keep warm and enjoy yourselves.

Harold

I'm still Drywalling

Well the word last week was Drywall and the word this past week was Drywall again. However as of this afternoon all the drywall with the exception of one sheet is done on the main floor. The one sheet that is left covers the back of the en suite shower and until I receive my replacement valve stem I don't want to install this piece. This means that I will need to delay the start of the mudding and taping crew. Funny thing was that last week Monday I was delayed due snow and again this week I was delayed a few hours for snow storm in the morning.
I will now finish off the basement drywalling. I hope to get the taping crew in before the end of the week but we'll have to see how their schedule interacts with mine.
A few other jobs we did this week was to install cement board above the shower stalls to accept future tiling. As well I installed the venting system for the stove vent.

Here are a few pictures showing the final result of all the drywalling. The house hasn't looked this clean in weeks.

Here is a picture of the cement board over one of the showers as well as the vent termination outside for the stove. This vent sits proud of the wall by 4" due to future brick work that will occur once the weather gets a little warmer.

Well now we need to finish the basement drywall and hopefully by the next time I talk to you we'll also have a taping crew working in the house. Until then keep warm thoughts in your heart because it's cold outside.

Harold