Blood, Sweat, and Some More Sweat

To say that I will have more time to blog "soon" seems to have cursed me. Time has proven to be in short supply for us this summer and when the choice is work on the house or updates on the blog, there really is no choice. This will be a long entry, since there is much to cover, so read a little, skim it all, or if your summer has left you with lots of time, grab some popcorn and snuggle up on the couch for the long read.

When I decided to start this blog, I knew I wanted to report and reflect on the project honestly. Ryan and I knew there would be tough times and we wanted to write about not just the ups, but also the downs throughout the process. Up to this point there has of course been stress and tense moments trying to make the right decisions style-wise, in keeping with our green and sustainable concept while still trying to budget wisely. However, the months of June and July have brought some tough times and the most stressful period of the process by far.

When Ryan decided to take on a project beside our house, he knew it was going to mean a busier schedule. The opportunity both to work with a great couple on a green full-house remodel and the chance to begin work outside of our own house to promote green building in a community gaining momentum in that direction made the choice to tackle it all easy. This added time commitment, along with a bit of our own time-frame catching up with us, has really pushed us to the limit over the last two months. We just returned from our first three days off since I don't know when, but up until then the schedule was seven days, as many hours as needed and we are back on that. Many nights involve running back to the apartment to cook dinner, then bringing it back to the house, eating and getting back to work and of course the occasional pizza delivery. The owners of the other house Ryan is working on have been amazingly understanding and flexible, allowing him to take weeks off from their work in order to work on our house.

The lease on our apartment is up August 1st, but a little luck came our way and the guy moving into our place can't make it until August 13th, so we earned ourselves about two extra weeks, which turns out to be not just a nice cushion, but absolutely essential to saving us from bunking at a friend's or find a cheap motel room, we hope! That's right, if the stars align, we will be sleeping in the Zeller House on the night of August 12th. Let me just stop you from picturing us cozy in our beautiful new house, because it will be far from that. The house will be barely habitable. This means, drywall up, guest shower tiled and working, kitchen appliances plugged in and standing around the room that will eventually be the kitchen. We'll be able to keep food cold, cook it, wash hand and brush teeth in the kitchen sink, use the master bath toilet, shower in the guest bathroom and plop our bed somewhere to rest for the night.

If you have been checking the blog and have been disappointed to find it without an update, you are probably wondering just what has happened since the toilet arrived.

LIGHTING AND APPLIANCES:

In mid-June Ryan and I tackled lighting and appliances. We knew what styles we liked in both and figured we could finalize our decisions within a few days. Well, the more we looked and asked questions, the more we found to look at the more questions we had. It took about three weeks to read the consumer reports and find the most energy efficient and aesthetically pleasing appliances. We ended up with an LG brand refrigerator and dishwasher. The washer and dryer are Fischer Paykal's newest top-loading model that does not have an agitator in the washer. This model minimizes water-use. The stove was the most agonizing of all. The choice was range or range top and wall oven. We finally settled on a slide-in 36" gas range top from Electrolux and a wall oven, for ease of use, from FCI. Our local appliance store would not sell us FCI, because they do not service that brand, but we really liked the features for the price, so we drove to Philadelphia to pick one up when we were down there at IKEA to save shipping resources. All the appliances are angular, stainless steel that will fit our modern kitchen. We went a bit bigger on the range top with the 36" size versus the 30" standard size. I know I find our current range crowded on top when I'm using two or three pots, so I thought this would be a useful upgrade. The appliances are mid to high end and although they have a more industrial, professional look, we did not go with a huge Viking range or a double-wide fridge. Never mind that we couldn't afford them, they are a waste in most homes and although we love to cook and will use all our appliances often, we want to make sure that what is in the house will not be excessive.

As for the lighting, Denise, a local designer referred us to a mother/daughter owned lighting store in a nearby town. After speaking with both women extensively, we had a lot of thinking to do. We finally drew up our overall recessed lighting plan , or at least we though we did. Our first plan turned out to be about $1500 over our lighting budget, so we had to cut down and figure out what we really needed and what we could do with less expensive fixtures. I didn't realize how complicated lighting a space well can be. You can really mess up a room with too much, too little, or poorly placed lighting. We ended up with three, four, and five inch recessed cans, some with the ability to rotate to point towards a specific area that needs light or that we want to showcase. We ended up going with some track lighting for the vaulted ceilings of the the two front bedrooms and left the dining room, kitchen eating area, and entryway open for pendant fixtures which we are still shopping for. All the lighting is from a company called WAC, which specializes in recessed lights. We had to purchase some for areas with insulation, some for areas without. We have a mixture of low voltage lighting which uses halogen bulbs that last longer and are a lower wattage, and line voltage which we will use Compact Florescent bulbs in, also reducing electrical need and lasting much longer than traditional bulbs.

Once we finally got our order off, the lighting arrived within a week and Ryan installed all the recessed lighting housings. Prior to that he had run all the electrical for the house. We decided on all outlet and switch locations, another item that I realized I have always taken for granted. You could go crazy trying to think about which lights you want switched where and where someone else might want them in the future.

THE "EASY" JOBS:

What have I been doing on the house you might be wondering? Anything and everything that requires no skill at all. It's been a bit frustrating, because much of what I've been working on is not essential to getting us into the house. It is work that needs to be done eventually, though, so it is important none the less. In June I dug a six-inch trench around the new slab foundation of the house and coated all the exposed concrete below and above ground with Dryloc, a masonry sealer that prevents moisture from seeping in. Next I dug about two to three feet down around the old part of the house, the stone foundation. The foundation is in pretty good shape, but the mortar has dried up quite a bit over the years and so I used another product called Quickwall that has a similar effect as the Dryloc, but in addition it is meant for masonry rehabilitation and it contains fiberglass that strengthens as well as seals. This digging turned out to be lots of fun, when i realized that the concrete basement window wells went down about three feet. It took all my strength along with a pick-ax, a pry bar, a mallet and a few shovels, but it will save us some time when we get to landscaping the front.

Next, I hit the exposed brick walls in the mudroom and the laundry room with some soy-based paint stripper. Soy-Gel is all natural and biodegradable as opposed to most pain-strippers which are harsh, both in disposal for the environment and in use for the worker. Both of these painted brick walls, are so, becuase they were formerly exterior walls. The walls in the mudroom became interior when the original side poch was built in the 30's, but the second floor above mudroom was exterior until we enclosed it a few months back, so it had quite a few more layers of paint on it. I applied the Soy-Gel, let it work its magic overnight, then used scrapers to force the paint off. Let's just say, it didn't come willingly! I applied a second coat and went through the same process. It was no surprise that the laundry room paint was harder to take off, having been layered with more coats of paint over the years. After stripping, I took to the wall with a wire brush and enlisted Ryan's help to try to force off as much paint as possible. It was arm-cramping work, but worth it in the end. Although not all the paint came off the walls, the look we achieved is pretty neat and i think it will look great when the rooms are finished. Having discovered the lead content in the exterior paint, we found a product that is a clear elastomeric developed by a NASA spin off company used for sealing toxic based substances. I sealed all the exposed walls as well as the interior walls with lead that will be behind the drywall, just to be safe, with the semi-gloss product and am happy to report that all walls now test negative for lead!

Next, I moved to the basement. The basement was nearly done, I just needed to seal the floors and it would be complete. I did one room at a time, moving all the stuff we have stored down there into the other room. I swept, vacuumed and sealed the perimeter using Quickrete brand Hydrolic Water-Stop masonry mix. Once that dried, I vacuumed again and then washed the floors with a Biodegradable Pineapple-based cleaner. Once the floors were clean and dry I used a latex-based sealer to waterproof the concrete floor. Two coats of that did the trick and water now beads instead of being absorbed by the concrete.

At this point, Ryan worked on odds and ends while he awaited the help of his dad to finish up the electrical and to run the AC and ventilation system in the house. Ryan finished all framing left to be done, drilled the holes for all the venting and installed all the piping for the cast-iron baseboard heating. The rough plumbing was done, but Ryan finished things off in both upstairs bathrooms, and save for the shower head and knobs, both showers are ready to go. The tub arrived and went into the second full bath along with its fixtures.

THE ICING ON THE CAKE:

Meanwhile, up on the roof, one of the most energy inefficient aspects of the house was finally changing. In a matter of days, off came the rotting shingled roof and on went a standing-seam metal roof in a galvanized color that is one of the best options to reflect the heat. While the roof was going on, I was cleaning the upstairs beam by beam and ledge by ledge. The first few days, I was sweating bullets up in the rafters and had to come down for breaks, but as the new roof went on, the temperature dropped at least twenty degrees and some of the hottest days of the summer were easily bearable on the second floor. The roofing company was absolutely great to deal with. Overall, it has seemed like we are the only ones on our game. We understand that schedules change and work is unpredictable, but all we ask is communication and courtesy. Sometimes, it seems like that's too much to ask, but the roofers were a class act. Punctual, efficient, friendly, neat and on top of all that, they did an incredible job on the roof! This bodes well for the new roof along with our passive solar design and I can't wait to see how it feels with insulation, drywall, and ceiling fans.

DOWN TO THE WIRE:

Ryan spent the second week in July tying up all the loose ends he could, before his dad Mike arrived to help with the final push before insulation and drywall. We are using a spray foam insulation that completely seals all the walls of the house. On top of that will go the drywall. Once these two steps are complete, any additional plumbing, electrical, ventilation, etc. would require us to cut back through the wall, something we are really trying to avoid. The water heating unit we already installed is a tank-less water heater that will be used for the domestic water. On his way, Mike picked up the wall-mounted boiler room that includes a tank-less water heater, pumps, valves, and mechanical systems needed to regulate the temperature and volume of water flowing to the radiant heat in slabs and to cast-iron baseboard. First, Ryan and Mike installed the new unit. Next, they tackled the ventilation system and air conditioning duct work. Most houses do not need mechanical ventilation systems, because they "breath" on their own. Because we have designed the house to be so "tight" with the foam insulation, the house will not breath on its own. The ventilation system is mounted in the basement and duct work runs from it throughout the house. It works as a heat exchanger that takes the stale air out of the house, and replaces it with fresh air from the outside. When the two air streams pass each other inside the unit, the heat and moisture from the outgoing stale air gets transferred to the incoming air, so in cold weather it reduces heating loads and balances humidity and removes toxins from the house in all seasons. As far as the AC goes, we really hope that the house will not require AC. The house has been designed to stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter, but we feel that we must plan for future owners who might feel differently. We certainly don't want someone throwing window-units in and once a house is drywalled, it is a huge job to break everything down and install duct work, so we wanted to make sure that the infrastructure is there if it turns out that the house does need it or if someone wants to put it in in the future.

So, Mike and Ryan raced to finish the duct work as I followed behind them meticulously cleaning the house from top to bottom. Between the framing and the exterior brick walls dirt, sawdust, brick dust and anything else could collect in the house, did. It would be easy to just let the insulation and drywall seal things in, but remember, part of green for us is healthy living and that means cleaning up at every stage of the game. After a mad rush, we finished Sunday night and the insulators arrived on Monday morning. While the insulation and drywall goes in, there's not much we can do during the days at the house. We will be there nights, tiling and doing what we can to keep the house moving toward habitable. Once the drywall is complete it will be another mad rush to get the house move-in ready.

Wow, this is getting long. I better end it here for my sake and yours. There's still work to update you on and instead of saying it will be coming soon, I'll just say that eventually I will write again! Just to give you a little preview, the next entry will be about the "Drama" Our two biggest stresses have been dealing with our bank and with the unreliable, messing insulators. Also included will be updates on our choices for bathroom floor, counter tops and tiling.


A bit of bad news: Photosite, where we post the picture galleries, has just informed us that they are discontinuing service as of the end of September, so we will keep you posted how you will be able to view our pictures from that point on. For now, we will still post the latest ones, so check in a few days.