Day 66-80 Drywalling mostly

Well, looks as though I haven't had much time to update the blog site so let me bring everyone up to date.

Drywall - Well, that is hard to say complete. I battled with the drwall gang several times to get them to fix little dings and knicks and marks in the plaster. I did the whole upstairs and thought it was fair for them to return to finish the downstairs area. I then found more to do downstairs after they left. Will this drywall mess ever end?????? Meanwhile there is drywall dust on absolutely everything in the house, including the basement.

Exterior - 90% complete. Deck remains and some small tweaks. We did pick up the decking material since they just arrived.

Interior Plumbing - The shower lines have been run and the bathtub is installed in its final spot.

Painting - 2 Coats of paint are everywhere except the hallway and stairway, waiting a little longer for more contractors to finish. I had help painting 1 day and the rest I took a week of vacation and have been working my way around the rooms. I am a bit sick of painting now.

Tile - The laundry room got tiled late this week and he is starting on the bathroom floor in the morning. Nice to see some finishing happening.

HVAC - The furnace and A/C units are mostly installed, waiting for the gas line to be run to finish them up.

Lighting - The lights finally arrive and I picked them up today, wow that took almost as long as the entire project to get those babies.

Day 64/65 (Wed/Thu) - Taping and Color Selection

Wednesday the drywall taping guys arrived and applied a first coat of mud to everything and taped all the seams. I am dreading the next phase, sanding. Ugh there is going to be a layer of dust everywhere. We just have to keep telling ourselves just wait until it is finished and we'll love it.

We also went to Home Depot and picked out the Deck material and placed it on order. We have decided to try that new composite deck material. We figured it was a small enough area to try it out and see if we like it before we do a big deck in it down the road.

Thursday I met with the fireplace surround/cabinet guy, and we ironed out all the details for the building of the fireplace. Another 50% deposit out the window. He is the same guy who did our current fireplace and bar cabinets so we know he does good work so we felt better about using him versus another new person.

Nobody else showed up today to work on the project, another rain day in paradise.

We have also been experimenting with color options. I think we have selected the ones we are going with but we keep looking at the color wall and rethinking ourselves. Any opinions? If you double click on the photo you will be able to see a larger view of the picture.

Day 63 - Siding

The carpenters were back doing more siding, it appears it wants to rain about every other day so it is taking forever to get the siding done. This is the second side of the house complete. Now just the river and driveway sides to go. But more rain is in the forecast so this may take a while.

Day 62 (Mon, Oct 12) - Drywall

Today was a very eventful day. DRYWALL DAY.

The carpenter was here to quickly install the pocket doors so they were ready for drywall, then the drywallers took over. Holey cow, don't get in their way, they are like busy little beavers at work.

Then I found out about the drywallers aftermath. They are a messy bunch of people. Jeff and I spent 2 hours that night cleaning up the wake of destruction.

Day 61/62 (Sat/Sun) - Pam's Work

Sometimes you just have to make things right yourself. I spent part of this weekend framing things to get ready for drywall on Monday. I framed an access hole to get into the bathtub in case I ever need to work on it. Isn't that just the prettiest access hole you've ever seen. I spent most of Sunday admiring my handy work.


I also frame the old attic access hole so it could be drywalled over. I demo'ed the downstairs hallway trim the leads to the bedrooms. and added a few filler pieces in the old basement stair soffit area.

Day 59/60 (Thu/Fri) - Siding, fireplace

Sort of a quieter set of days, the guys were back siding. Here is a picture of the first side of the house just about done.

The HVAC guy semi-installed the fireplace to in its location, they still have to finish some pipes out the roof.

Day 57/58 (Tue/Wed) - Shower, Tub

Tue - It was raining today so apparently the carpenters wanted to work inside so they framed for the shower area and prepped for the tub area. The tub also arrived, it is in the garage now.


Wed - Back at some more little framing projects, the tub framing is done and so is the half wall for the toilet area.




Then they demo'ed the rest of the soffit in the kitchen/dining area. Now that was a messy project, I have dust everywhere in the house.

Day 56 (Mon 10/5) - Soffit, Facia, Siding

The carpentry crew arrived this morning and they started working on the soffit and facia on the exterior of the house. Can't wait for this to get finished, then at least the outside will look complete.

Day 55 (Sun) - TV/Stereo Cable Pipes

We decided to get going on adding the pipes to hold the stereo cables. We need to run cables between where the stereo will be and where the TV's will eventually be mounted. This ended up taking longer than expected, but what project doesn't around here. Finished this about 10pm.


Sitting room side



Master bedroom side

Day 54 (Sat) - Granite

We went and picked out granite today. Drove to Mundelein and actually tried to stay within our budget for a change. We'll see what the price ends up being but here are the colors we picked. Then we drove to Itasca to pick out the slab for the vanities and the vendor was out of stock so we drove to the second location in Addison and pick out a slab there. The fireplace is a remnant so no slab selection was necessary.

The one on the left is the vanity granite.

This one is the fireplace, it is tough to get a good photo of this one. The granite is mostly black with a copper type of color showing thru rather faintly.

Day 53 (Fri) - Insulation

It was a big day today for warmth. The insulation was installed today. They did all the exterior walls. Then after they left I did some interior walls to soften the noise in the bathroom and laundry areas.


Then I took some of the blown insulation from what the guys had removed and filled up with bathroom floor with it. So nobody below should hear noise coming from the bathroom now plus the pipes should be nice and warm too.

Day 51 (9/30 Wed) - Rough Inspection Day

Today was a milestone day, we had rough inspection on plumbing, electrical, and framing. Each only made a few comments, nothing significant. The wanted the plans changed to show the placement of the furnace. They wanted to remind the carpenter of the stair length and wanted the fireblock caulk in place before the inspection. I guess the contractor is used to an insulation inspection and the caulk is usually part of that. Now the inspector has to return to look at caulk, go figure.

I did a lot of little projects. Added a few studs for mounting the TV's later. Helped configure the "old" attic access area. Put in some insulation along the outside walls under the floor as long as it was up. And of course did more staining/finishing of the trim in the garage. Getting close to being done with the trim, at least what they have brought me.

Day 49/50 (Mon/Tue) - Finishing up for rough inspection

Mon/Tue - The plumber brought extra help and got a lot done with the rough plumbing so he would be ready for inspection on Wed.

The carpenter came and roughed in the fireplace, then we realized we made an error and he had to redo part of it. Oops. This picture is before the redo.


The HVAC guy came and put the fireplace in it's framed spot.

Days 43-48 (Tue/Sun) - Plumbing and Staining

Didn't post all week because it was just a week of me staining during my vacation week and the plumber putting in the rough plumbing.



Jeff thought it was funny watching me climb into one of the windows to stain it. Can't reach it with a ladder because it would sit on the stairs uneven so it is the only way to access the window that I can think of.

Day 42 (Mon) - Plumber and Staining

Woo hoo, the pain in the butt plumber was fired over the weekend and a new one started this afternoon. He actually showed up which is a plus over the other one. He has a few new ideas so back to looking into the plumbing fixtures a little.

I took vacation this week to stain doors and trim, can't do everything at the last minute since it all takes time. I waited all day for the stuff to arrive, finally at 3:30pm the carpenter showed up. Good thing I didn't wait around for him. I got some errands done and followed up on the cabinets, Home Depot toilet order, and returned tiles from a lot of places. Here is my garage full of doors and trim. Not enough saw horses to do everything in one batch. Looks like this will take all week as I expected.

Day 40/41 (Sat/Sun) - Tile and Decisions

Sat - Since our last tile selection fell thru we decided to head out tile shopping. But first we went to a close out sale at Intermatic and bought a ton of Malibu type lights for $1 each. what a deal. Anyway, back to the project.

We drove to 1 place in Elgin, 2 in Crystal Lake, and 1 in Cary. We brought samples home and let everyone debate over them at my parents house while we celebrated our nephew Bradley's birthday.

Sun - Looked at the tiles some more in the daylight and made a selection. Unfortunantly our selection means now we have to drive all over the place and return the tiles. And we selected tiles from 3 locations which means more driving. My contractor thinks we are nuts. To make sure everything matched we drove back to Lake Zurich and picked up the decorative tile from there.

Day 39 (Fri) - Poly and Fireplace flashing

Today nobody showed up so I decided to get some of those yucky projects done myself. So.....I removed old flashing on the fireplace where it used to stick out the roof. And then I sprayed bleach on the brick to clean it then washed it down with soap and water. I didn't want moss and mold growing inside my drywall in the future.




I also polyurethaned the windows, one coat so far.

Day 37/38 (Wed/Thu) - Staining Windows and Fireplace

Wed - I started to stain the windows in the addition, there are a lot of them when you start staining it feels like forever to get thru a round of staining them.

These french doors lead to the balcony once it is built.





Thu - Another round of staining for the windows. And the see-thru fireplace arrived. Hard to take a picture of it because it is in the garage. We needed to get it here so we could frame for it.

Day 36 (Tue) - Fixtures

Nothing big today on the project, mostly debated on the plumbing fixture list with the pain in the butt plumber.

Day 32 - 35 (Fri-Mon) - Fireplace and Windows

Friday - The brick layers came back and finished the fireplace, now we are ready for winter again.

The carpenter gang was back and they installed all the windows so we can actually stop looking at the word Tyvek on the windows. They also opened up the stairway area so we now have head clearance.

It was a busy day, I also met with another cabinet guy and my fireplace guy. Now I just need some quotes to figure this all out.



Sat - Ran around all morning to get the laundry room sink, faucet, and drain purchased. Then we ordered the toilet and will get that in a few days.

Sun - A day of number crunching on the budget but no real work on the project.

Mon - Nobody is coming today, woo hoo, Bailey can sleep and I can actually go into my office for a change. Lot's of phone calls and following up though.

Day 31 (Thu) - Fireplace Day

Today is fireplace day. The brick layers are here to extend the old 2 wood burning fireplaces up thru the addition and new roof.


In addition to that fireplace I am also working on a design for the new gas fireplace and mantel area. We are trying to decide if the whole thing looks too big. Any input?

How about this option, with has no mantel.


Or this with a mantel?

Day 29-30 (Tue/Wed) - Electrical work

Tue and Wed were primarily consumed by the electricians. They have about 1 day of work left which will be done next week sometime. Hard to show progress via pictures on that but here is an attempt. I also ran all the cable for the internet so that is complete too. My work are the blue boxes :) (5 internet connections, leave it to Jeff to overkill that one)

The other things we are working on are more quotes on cabinets, plumbing, and the fireplace.

Day 26/27/28 - (Sat/Sun/Mon) My little project

Fri and then again Sat we picked out our master bath and laundry room tile. These pictures aren't that great but the 4"X4" is the wall tile and the 13"x13" is the floor tile. The one in the middle is an accent tile we are going to do around the tub and around the shower area in one stripe. Hard to explain but more photos will come later at installation.


I decided to make the stair landing between the basement stairs and the new set of stairs my little holiday weekend project. We added a double support beam along the chimney which really firmed up the floor and it even took out the 1/4" sag in it.



Then I dug out more the chimney area and capped it with a piece of wood and filled it with mortar mix to make it solid and reinforce all the pounding the chimney has taken during the project. And as we always do, we left our mark on the project for the next owners to find some day. Jeff made me put Bailey's actual footprint in the mortar mix.

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the making of this project.

Day 25 (Fri) - Shopping

Today Jeff and I took a vacation day and we went shopping. We looked at another fireplace the builder wanted us to look at, then lighting fixtures, then another cabinet place, and finally to the tile shop we went to a month or so ago.

Here are the lighting selections we made, they are all on order.

We picked out tile but are waiting for pricing to see if we are in budget. And waiting for cabinet and fireplace pricing for a comparison.

Day 24 (Thu) - Stairs

Woo hoo we got stairs today!!!! No more scaffold and ladder.

Here is the old way to access the addition, plank to ladder to top of scaffold.

Here is the lower set of stairs to the landing where the direction changes.


Here is the upper set of stairs down to the landing.

Day 22-23 (Tue-Wed)

Tue and Wed were slower days, just the roofers were here. Although the roof was a lot of work and it does look nice. It is nice to finally not worry as much about rain in the forecast. The shingles have a small red accent in them to pull out the red in the brick. Hard to see in the photos.

The biggest accomplishment was actually selecting all the plumbing fixtures. We went to Fergusons in Mundelein on Wed night and picked out everything from the bubble jet tub to the sinks and faucets and shower door, everything in one trip. I can't believe we made all those decisions in about 1 hour. We decided to go with brushed nickel for the fixtures.

Day 21 (Mon) - Lots of activity

Today there is a lot of activity going on. We have the roofers, the electricians, and the HVAC people all here at the same time.

So far the roofers have torn off the old roof and have replaced a few small bad boards. The shingles will be going on soon.

The shingles arrived via huge forklift. Don't anyone tell my dad is wasn't a Nissan forklift or he'll be mad.

The start of the shingles going on.

Day 20 (Sun) - Walls

My nephew Bradley was here and he really wanted to help on the project so we put him to work taking down a couple of the supports for the wall between my office and the spare bedroom.