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Demo the meditation room

Friday there was some more progress insulating the floor and the guys moved inside and tore apart the meditation room. When they removed the wallboard we finally learned what the house is currently insulated with: rockwool. …. It’s pretty good stuff, but you can’t put enough of it in a wall framed with 2×4’s.

In other news, the HVAC guys (in orange) came and reconnected the AC… whahoo! I’m not normally a big fan of AC but, with the construction going on, we can’t open and close windows at will, so a little help cooling down the inside of the house is fantastic….. plus, once the guys start working inside they will appreciate it.

And….. the camera moved outside to the cherry tree. We need to make some exposure adjustments, and I’m looking around for an inexpensive wide angle lense adaptor, but for the moment, it works. 

At the end of today’s movie you can see a big tarp being secured over the wall and the new foundation. That’s because it’s supposed to rain all weekend and we wouldn’t want to flood the new foundation or have rain driven in through our exposed walls. 

Floor framing, AC hookup, rain protection
  • baseboard heater gone
  • closet trim gone
  • wall board and rockwool insulation gone
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The stone wall

Craig has been working on extending our stone wall.  Some days he’s won the battle, and on other days it won the battle (and Craig ended up with a very bruised finger).  On Thursday, Craig declared victory… for now: 

Meanwhile… down at the roadside,  Craig built a stone wall from the spare stones that had to be moved
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Floor framing

Thursday there was some progress framing and insulating the new crawl space floor. This was held up a little because the HVAC guys said they want to plumb for the relocated radiator location and that would be easier to do before the insulation gets attached to the bottom of the floor joists. 

In other news, we moved the camera outside to the cherry tree and started filming from there. You can see Craig burying the extension cord that powers the camera in the background of the movie.

We need to make some exposure adjustments and see if we can add a wide angle lens adaptor to the setup, but the footage wasn’t too bad for a first try.

We start the day filming from indoors, and then move to the tree
  • how to mount a camera on a tree
  • floor joists
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Sill plate / Floor joists

The new addition to the house ties in to the original foundation and also to the 10′ laundry room addition that a previous owner added. Those two foundations aren’t perfectly level with each other so there has been a bit of extra time spent to get the sill plate for the new exterior walls dead on level. 

So far, we have been filming the construction from a couple of locations inside the house. At this point we really need to move the camera / raspberry pi outside so that we can see the framing action on the wall. We’ve picked a big cherry tree as the place to mount the camera…. tomorrow Craig will mount a 2×4 high up on the trunk and I will try to come up with a waterproof enclosure that we can put the pi/ camera into which we will mount to the 2×4. 

Up until today, the guys did not know that we had been making little time lapse movies of their work. Today we broke the news to them and they took it pretty well… or at least we think they did; proof of their acquiescence will be when the power cord to the cherry tree setup doesn’t magically get unplugged during the day.

attaching the joist hangers
Sill plate take 2. Can we get it level?
Hawley inspecting the new foundation
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First Try at the sillplate, plus another big hole

Tuesday,  materials started showing up for framing up the new exterior walls.  They busted a big (person sized) hole through the old foundation in order to give access to the new foundation…. Plus they started on capping the new foundation blocks.

  • The last of the overhang in the dumpster
  • new materials
  • The access whole to the old basement
Build a level sill plate
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The Last of the Overhangs

Monday, the 18th they removed the last of the overhangs.

Down comes the last bit of our old overhang
  • NE corner without overhangs
  • NW corner without overhangs
  • About to drop the last overhang
  • End of day clean up
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End of the day Monday

After the pizza was eaten and more work done, the dumpster is full and here’s where we stand:

  • foundation
  • E-side without overhangs
  • no more overhangs
  • south west view no overhangs
  • hunk of overhang
  • first full dumpster(s)
  • the other “dumpster”
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Pizza Monday

We made pizza on the grill for the guys today. Yum.  …. and, while they guys weren’t eating pizza, the foundation wall  was built and the roof overhangs on the east side were cut off. Yay.

  • Pizza day Craig & the guys
  • Pizza Day masons
  • Pizza break, mason
First half of the foundation wall
Second half of the foundation wall