Highs and Lows from Last Weekend

Highs

- Sleeping in our house for the second time (Well, Curt’s third time) on the 4-year anniversary of moving to Colorado

The dirt-covered tarps enclosing our laundry room

That's me, in bed, underneath 20 layers including a moving blanket on top

- Hot crockpot chili and snow-chilled beers for dinner

Cooking in the kitchen!

Breckenridge brews, but of course

- Breakfast with the Beatles on the radio

- Breakfast burritos and sandwiches warmed up on our little gas grill

- My grandma’s fudge that Curt brought for us to snack on

- Making a ton of progress on the plumbing, electrical and PEX throughout the remainder of the house

- Stopping for beers and fried food in Frisco on the way home to avoid the heavy ski traffic, which saved us hours of trouble

- Not freezing to death

- Not dying from gas fumes 

Lows

- Burning up the drill we bought and used during our very first project together – tiling my first condo’s living and dining rooms (this makes 4 drills burned up total since July, along with a few other broken tools)

- Running out of a few materials and breaking the pipe crimper, meaning we couldn’t 100% finish the plumbing, electrical or PEX

- Checking the weather on my iPhone at 2pm Sunday to see it was 18 degrees, can’t imagine how low it dropped overnight

- Shoveling out the damn portapotty every single time – inside and out – due to the constant snowfall

- Spending 4 hours zip-tying PEX to the brackets because our contractor forgot, meaning Curt was left to do the electrical in the kitchen by himself (lots of trips up and down the stairs, while I was going up and down the ladder over and over – we were a grunty pair)

We’ll be back up today, spending the night in our makeshift tarped-off laundry room turned bedroom and hopefully wrapping up these lingering projects before we can get inspected and insulated. The temps look to be in the 20s and 30s, sunny with no snow, which is great.

Back to the Fireplaces

Now that our framing is up for the two fireplaces on the main floor, we need to pick out the material that will cover the surround. I would be happy with brick, tile or wood, but I think we will end up with tile. I'm pretty sure brick only makes sense if you build the actual structure out of brick. And though I love the look of the wood surrounds below, we already have a lot of wood going on so it may be overkill. But we have talked about possibly framing in the walls on either side of the fireplace with horizontal reclaimed wood planks. We both agree on the heavy, chunky solid wood mantel like all these photos show. We want to make this mantel out of the trees in our yard that are fallen and ready to be recycled. Some of the mantels below are plain, some have wooden bolsters, some have metal details or brackets...that's what we need to decide. In addition to the tile. Large, small, dark, light, round, square, rectangular, tumbled, shiny? Thanks to Pinterest and Houzz, I've found plenty of ideas.

Wood with metal brackets

One of my faves - wood bolsters, larger sized rock surround and concrete ledge

Plain old chunky wood mantel, but pretty

Not sure about the river rock surround, but another nice mantel

Love the mantel, love the ledge

No mantel (I like this but Curt's not a fan), with a TV mounted above

All-wood surround, I love this and we could DIY it cheaply

Prefer the horizontal planks above compared to this one



Another one of my faves using reclaimed wood with no mantel

I'm absolutely hell bent on getting one of these funky retro Preway wood stoves for our basement. Fortunately, we've found them on CL ranging from $50 (seller did not know what he had!) up to $2,000 (seller definitely knew he had a mid century classic on his hands) and in colors like red, orange, black, yellow, green, aqua, brown and white. Unfortunately, we can't put one in right away because they are not up to current code since they are a number of decades old. So, we need to put a cheap wood stove that meets EPA requirements down there, and then swap it out after we get our Certificate of Occupancy. There's nothing else to say - they are just badass, in my opinion.



Spool Success

After two eight-hour days over the weekend, we started and finished all of the PEX on the main floor! We installed 3,000 linear feet of PEX over 2,700 square feet. The spooler helped significantly, and we only ended up with three kinks that may or may not be an issue. We'll know after we do a pressure test. If we fail that, we just have to splice and repair a piece of the coil which isn't a huge deal. Saturday got off to a rocky start after we had to cut down the kinked PEX that was put up last weekend and start all over. Once the new PEX went up, we realized that the basset brackets used to attach the coils up to the ceiling (or what is the floor upstairs) were a huge pain to put in. We didn't make much progress with that and I was dreading spending the entire next day using power tools over my head to install those stupid brackets every foot. Luckily, Saturday night we lined up two inexpensive contractors who spent all Sunday doing that while we worked with the PEX in the rest of the basement. It took one of those guys another half day this week to finish the brackets, but basically we're done and it looks just like it's supposed to. A small miracle.

This weekend we'll put PEX up to heat the loft on the top floor, which is a much smaller area with only two bedrooms and a bathrooms. Piece of cake! I think we'll do that this Sunday, and spend Saturday doing our rough-in plumbing while all our ladders and other needed equipment are still in the basement. The plumbing requires a lot less material and tubing than the PEX because instead of covering the whole floor, it just travels from room to room, drain to drain, mostly single lines. After we do our own pressure test, we can have our framing, plumbing and electrical inspections. Once we pass those, the insulation guys will come. And then we drywall! I told Curt I'd be very happy if we were at that stage by my birthday next month. 


The biggest advantage of radiant heat is that we could do the labor ourselves. The materials for the entire house's heating system ran about $1,500 (thanks to Curt's eBay skills - he was told he needed to spend $4,000 on twice the amount of PEX that we ended up using, and we probably overdid it as it is) and with a little paid labor, maybe $2,000 total. Paying someone to put in a HVAC system for a house this size would have run upwards of $6,000 for labor and materials, on the cheap end. So we saved a bundle, in addition to racking up sore arms, sore shoulders, sore backs, sore necks and a bunch of scrapes and big bruises from banging our forearms and elbows into the floor joists. Weaving the heavy, rigid PEX back and forth through the bays of the floor joists and in and out of numerous drilled holes and over gas and electrical wires and already-installed can lights was not an easy, quick process but we are now that much closer to having heat. It was definitely great motivation for the task.


Two of the funniest things that I missed getting on camera were Penny crawling inside a wrapped, new coil of PEX and trying to curl her chunky self up inside it into a little ball, and Greta melting off her whiskers from standing too close to the diesel heater. Not the first time she's done that. The little lady does not like to be cold. She's in for a real surprise tomorrow when we attempt to spend the night again. We have two heaters now, the loud diesel one and a wall-mounted gas heater that Curt hung in the laundry room. We're going to wall in that room with plastic sheeting and hope a combination of down comforter, sleeping bags, electric blanket, wool quilt and many layers on top of an actual mattress can keep us all warm overnight. The temps look to be in the mid 30s during the day and 20s at night, which is pretty mild all considering, but snow is expected the entire time (about a foot Saturday and 4-6 inches Sunday), and the lack of sun means our house won't heat up as much. So, we'll see what happens.

It's the Little Things

I have wanted this simple but frivolous little doodad for many years, and when my friend got a gift card to Chiasso for the holidays, she and I both ordered one and took advantage of free shipping and a 10% off code – making it $17. I hate kleenex boxes. Actually, I hate kleenexes in general, I’d be happy to blow my nose using plain old toilet paper (and I do) but other people like my husband and mother disagree! They’re always looking for a box in each and every room of the house. I don’t care what color or design is on the box, they’re just big and ugly. I don’t like the covers for boxes either because they just make the whole eyesore larger. But now I have this shiny ring that freed me from the box, at least in my bathroom. Somehow the weight is just perfect to release a single tissue at a time. Now, if only I can find a way to buy the tissues in bulk without boxes at all, to reduce all that extra recycling waste… Also need to figure out how to keep my paper-loving dogs from eating an entire exposed box of tissues each day.

Mo' PEX, Mo' Problems

Curt spent last Saturday attempting to put in our PEX hot water coil heating system underneath the main floor. Our recent eBay purchase history looks a little like this:

There are more little parts and pieces but you get the picture. The goal was to have our floor look something like this (looking up from the basement at the subfloor):

It's fairly tedious and time-consuming but not that difficult, according to youtube! However, similar to our experience laying PEX in the basement, he ran into a ton of problems with the PEX coils getting tangled and crimped, slowing down progress immensely and probably not causing ANY swearing or yelling at all from my calm, mild-mannered husband... So we're anxiously awaiting the arrival of this new eBay purchase:

It's a coiler meant to help spool all the coils while being installed, preventing them from twisting and tangling. Hopefully it arrives before Saturday so we can take another stab at it. It sounded like the whole experience Saturday was maddening and I'm not sad I missed it. Those days are not fun and sometimes it feels like the whole project is going to get derailed from one little snafu, or a day of snafus. On the bright side, on Sunday they started and nearly finished the rough-in electrical in the entire basement. I believe our contractor Chris was working on the electrical on the upper floor this week. We have two sunny near-40-degree days forecasted for this weekend so it would be great to get this step past us and onto the rough-in plumbing so we can get inspected and insulated.

Bathtub Excitement

Bathtubs don't sound exciting? Well, I've never picked out my very own tub before! We finally purchased the new jetted Whirlpool tub we'd been eyeing for many months. First we imagined it would work in our bathroom space perfectly according to our architectural plans, until Curt realized he would need to move the motor. So we looked at a lot of other tubs both bigger and smaller, fancier and less fancy. After many of the options on CL and eBay didn't pan out due to cost, size, broken plumbing, wrong drain or motor location, cracks, weird color, weird shape and all sorts of other problems, we went back one last time to check out this dang tub for our master bedroom's bathroom at The Lumber Guy.

Curt decided he has a few options to put it in our tub nook, most of which don't involve moving the motor. But even if he does have to move the motor, at $500 it was so much larger (42" wide, 24" deep) and so much cheaper than anything else we saw that we bought it. (Check out how much it originally cost! http://www.faucetdirect.com/jacuzzi-sig7242-wcl-2xx-72-x-42-signa-drop-in-comfort-whirlpool-bathtub-with-basic-controls-center-drain-and-left-pump/p1279715?source=ntg_1279715&baid=512563782) He hauled it up to the house last weekend and it's waiting to be framed in. This is what I picture in my mind, thanks to Pinterest: a stone base that the tub lip can rest on with a wood-planked wall in the background. We even have a window on that wall which will be awesome, even though it's not low enough to look out when actually in the tub.

We also picked out the tubs for the upstairs and basement bathrooms. Curt tried to find cheap ones all over the internet and CL but finally we ended up at Home Depot because nothing was panning out. Luckily we found a decently sized soaking tub that is deeper than most (at 18"). I think in a ski house in the mountains, a comfortable tub to soak cold, achy, tired, sore bodies in is a must. We don't yet have any plans for a hot tub outside, nor a perfect space for one, so for now these tubs are as close as we're gonna get! They were just $209 apiece - not to mention "luxurious" and "practical" as their label states - plus we had a 10% off coupon and used some gift cards we received over the holidays. I think our friends have this same tub in their basement bathroom and they haven't have any issues. We'll take these two tubs up to the house this weekend. I guess that means toilets, sinks, faucets and fans are next on the list.

All Wood, All the Time

I was finally getting used to using the saw, nailer and hammer and now we're done with framing! Probably 99% done. Too bad, because I love the saw. I won't share any more pictures of that though, because Curt took off the plastic safety guide after it kept jamming, making it a wee bit more dangerous and my parents don't need to see any proof of that... A few holes in the floor have been patched and we had a contractor working furiously recently to finish attaching brackets and nails to all the ceiling beams that were left unattached by our original contractor Shawn. Our gas lines have been run and our big electrical box unit is now hanging in the basement. We spent Christmas Day screwing huge bolts into the brackets that support our exposed wood beams.

Drilling bolts that attach the brackets to the beam that runs in between the living and dining rooms

More brackets and bolts in our bedroom

Face in metal grinder

In their Christmas best :)

"Let me out of this car immediately"

A few Sundays before Christmas, we framed in the fireplace in the living room and that following Monday we took a day off and framed in the fireplace in our bedroom. The fireplace is sitting right next to the frame in the living room just waiting to be put in and turned on! Unfortunately, after framing in the basement bathroom, it appears we need to move the toilet, which means jackhammering up our beautiful, smooth concrete floor and desperately attempting to NOT cut into the maze of delicate plastic PEX coils which are difficult to patch and repair. On the bright side, Curt found someone with a jackhammer to borrow, saving us a little money. More on that potential disaster later, hopefully we can put it off for awhile.



Improper hammer hold shown here, but proper use of cargo pants - check out that pencil in my pocket!

Bedroom fireplace

On Monday, New Year's Day, we finished up the last of the brackets and Curt worked with a contractor to cut two huge 12 foot pieces of glue-lam Alaskan cedar into what is now the edge of our upstairs stairs, both below and above the landing. It took a few hours of measuring and playing with the angles to get the cuts planned just right. They made multiple templates using various pieces of wood, then made the diagonal cuts and hoisted the wood up onto the stairs. Somehow, they managed to nail it on the first try. They look awesome and I can't wait to see the next step of the metal railing added. Curt got the wood incredibly cheaply from The Lumber Guy, our source for reclaimed wood. I had fun scraping glue off the stairs and nailing in some 2x2 pieces of wood cut to the length of each stair to fill in gaps and provide a surface to nail our stair material (TBD) onto.

Here you can see the 2x2s I nailed in between each tread because someone used the wrong size wood to make the stairs...

Drilling in some more exposed bolts

More bolts on the lower stairs

We also decided to only do a half wall underneath the main set of stairs. Not only could we put a cool shelf on top that maybe Curt will fashion out of the downed trees in our yard, but it means we can see out the glass front door from the living room - extending the view and allowing even more light in. We had a contractor up there this week to finish that half wall and some other odds and ends. Curt talked to the guy who helped cut a few trees down in our yard a few months ago, our "arborist," and found out that he has a friend with a wood mill in Alma who can maybe help us plane some big flat pieces of wood for our mantels and maybe that stair bannister shelf, and maybe even a bar for our kitchen peninsula. I plan on reusing those fallen trees all over our house if possible.

Our couch will probably sit right here in front of this half wall

This coming weekend, we'll hopefully be installing PEX and pulling electrical wires! That’s super exciting, because it’s comfortable working in the house when the sun is shining and we have the diesel heater blowing, but when the sun sets or it’s snowing, the house doesn’t warm up and the dogs just look pitiful huddled together and shaking on their little sawdust-covered dog bed. Unfortunately they can’t dress themselves in warm layers like we can, nor are my attempts to dress them successful. Curt has been watching YouTube videos to prepare for this weekend, because installing PEX on these upper two floors is slightly different than what we did in the basement. There, we ziptied the PEX coils to wire mesh laid above the floor surface and concrete was poured over top to make the floor. But upstairs, the PEX coils get attached to the underside of the existing floor. So we will be in the basement drilling holes through floor joists and pulling the coils through that way. And to think, I imagined us just attaching them to the plywood floor...