The Little Inspector pays a visit.

Posted on by David Maxwell

I awoke this morning to the sound of drywall being sanded. It was a little chilly so I didn’t exactly jump out of bed. After messing around a bit I went to Home Depot to get my dad an electric sander for the drywall. It is a cordless Ryobi, and uses the same batteries that I already have. Back at the house I did a lot more spackling. I am basically finished with everything but the highest reaches of the walls and vaulted ceiling in the kitchen/dining room. Liz and Luke came in the afternoon. She brought seven (7!!!) samples of white (or close) paint, which I proceeded to put at various spots around the house and apartment. She decided on one of the not so white options. It will be used on the walls, trim, and vaulted ceilings. I finished up the day and daylight by installing most of our last old siding accent wall in the spare bedroom.

Priming.

Posted on by David Maxwell

Another kind of slow day. I started off the morning by going to the bank up in Franklin, then visiting two Lowe’s stores, the same number of Home Depots, and a Sherwin Williams. All trying to get some reliable information about paint. I also bought some chisels and a protractor at Home Depot. After lunch I went by Big Box and ordered more cabinets and vanities. Back at the house I uncovered my cedar and ogled it for a while. They are pretty nice boards. I installed a couple more deadbolts using my new chisels and mortising device. The latter is very neat. When my dad arrived we started priming the shiplap in the apartment. I really wasn’t happy with the quality that we were getting from brushes and rollers, so we drove down to Pulaski and got a sprayer at Home Depot. We also bought the tile for two bathrooms. We had dinner at a buffet there in town before driving back to the farm.

Slogging through Thursday.

Posted on by David Maxwell

It was a fairly discouraging day. The issues actually started during the middle of the night. It was very windy and the French doors kept blowing open. I set some of our new interior doors in front of them, and then they got blown over and damaged. That scared the hell out of me. I woke up at 1:30 and it took hours to fall back asleep. My dad arrived at eight, and I was still in bed. I got up shortly thereafter though. It rained hard all morning. I don’t even remember what we worked on before eating a very late breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Next we went to Lowe’s for some painting supplies and primer. We started in the apartment – my dad sanding drywall and me spackling the nail holes on the shiplap. Talk about tedious! But I finished the living room at least. My dad moved on to the spare bedroom while I tried to do more cleaning and organizing around the house. I really need to haul some stuff to the dump soon. I did manage to install a couple of deadbolt locks. I like the door hardware we bought.

The leaves are really starting to change, and that is nice. I would like to drive around to see more, but really need to focus on finishing the house. We close on the condo four weeks from today. Little Man turns seven months tomorrow. Busy times.

Strike up the band.

Posted on by David Maxwell

It was a disjointed, but still productive day. The interior door were delivered first thing this morning. They look good. Next we put our pressure treated 2×12 band around the house where the deck is going to go. I’m getting really excited about the deck. It will be fun to build and should be a great addition to the living space. It started raining just as we were finishing that up, so I went over to Chapel Hill to buy some cedar lumber. I bought about 750 square feet of v-groove 1×6 in 3-5 foot lengths. It looks pretty good and will be the ceiling for the porch. At least about a third of it will be anyways. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the remainder. It would be great if I could lift the whole bundle up onto the porch with my tractor. I also pressure washed the green corrugated roofing metal that we will put on the vaulted ceiling in the apartment. Lastly, I knocked out the accent wall in the apartment bedroom. We used the siding from the old house for that. I think it looks pretty good. My dad continued his heroic efforts on the drywall mud. It is supposed to storm all day tomorrow. I hope to get the last accent wall done and complete the aforementioned sheet metal ceiling. I was just at Lowe’s browsing around. They started their Black Friday appliance sale, and have some good deals. Now I’m about to order a few things of the Home Depot and Amazon websites. But first, dinner.

Slip-siding away.

Posted on by David Maxwell

Well we finished up the last of the siding and all but one piece of soffit. That took most of the day. After that my did work on some sheetrock mudding and I organized around the site and worked to get prepared for tomorrow. Now they are saying that it isn’t going to rain. After dinner I went to Home Depot and bought some lumber for the deck band and all of our exterior door knobs along with some for the apartment’s interior. I bought more expensive ones than I was planning on, but they are really nice. It was another lovely fall day. The leaves are starting to change and it is so relaxing. I need to take some pictures.