Fall into Autumn

   Good morning and good progress in all endeavors for  our project and anything you may be trying to achieve as well.
   To the left is a picture of my kitchen. Those pipes hold the promise of the modern convenience of a dishwasher. Modern conveniences are so awesome. I am so excited about living in a house with a dishwasher again. I can not even begin to tell you how happy this will make me. My oldest daughter Barbi was an awesome dishwasher before she moved out. Her younger sister Angie is not that adept or consistent in this important endeavor.


Here is that same part of my kitchen with walls up. Yay! We love walls! The stove is almost where it will be. It is sitting out in the middle of the room now in front of the corner it will be in. This weekend we had some help from our friend Bobby.


Here is Bobby. Bobby has been a framer by trade but now beside being our sooper helper he works at the local dairy. I think he is missing his cows. I try to moo a lot and stand in the way so that he doesn't miss them to much. Thanks Bobby! We saw a bunch of sheetrock go up this weekend.

You boys definitely deserve a cold one.
Another friend that came buy this weekend was Greg. He got all my breakers in my breaker box. This little house will have 57 outlets when we are done. I guess there has to be one every 4 feet along the wall. Then each bedroom needs to be on a Arc Fault Interrupting breaker. The kitchen and bathrooms and laundry are all on Ground Fault Interrupting Breakers. Thank you Greg. I will try to get a picture of you soon.


My project is getting closer to complete. Wayne gets 1000 credits as he patiently allows me to play in the mud with only a little helpful advice and never making me feel like he could get this up much better and faster. He says I am doing very good and he is just glad he doesn't have to mess with it. I got a little slowed down with a design element that I changed my mind about how to do. Wayne says the more time I spend planning the less time we have to spend undoing things that didn't work. I did get my brown coat done.

This is what I started with. To the right and below right is the same spot on the wall



To the left is where I got to last week. To the right is part of this weekends work.
This is the coat that the plaster will go over. It goes on brown but will dry gray. The plaster will go on gray and dry white.






Not great lighting but you can tell where this weeks wet meets last weeks dry. This weeks mud goes all the way over the door and down to the floor.  It will all cure to the same color. Today I will get my wood trim cut and ready to go so and my secret, to be revealed, design element ready so that I can get the plaster done before the weekend. Bobby will be back thru this week to get more dry wall up and we have tape and mud guys coming in the evening. This week I should be able to get the kitchen cabinets assembled so that next weekend I might be able to have running water in the kitchen and a dishwasher. Ta Ta for today! Pam

sweet sore success

My personal project got a good start this weekend. Well it got a good start weeks ago as I started researching and planning. I started Friday with this-

    This is my front living room wall. A piece of which I shared before (above right). See under the right side of the window where there is a plastic bag. It is full of more plastic bags and fills a whole where the adobe bricks are missing for some unknown reason. This house has many mysteries as we try to decipher what Henry(seller) could have had in mind or thought might have worked somehow. 

     This is my wall. Wayne with a few friends has been very busy putting up sheetrock and taping and mudding the rest of the house making very straight square walls with smooth surfaces and square corners. This is where they have decided to let me have an outlet for my creative energy and let me honor more traditional building methods. Now adobe homes in this area may be structured out of more native natural materials but they are not fashioned in a native american style. They were built in mass for the miners that mined some gold and silver but mostly coal from the many mines that dot the landscape all through this county. 

     Still adobe structures are not perfectly flat and smooth and should not have square corners. 

    The house I rent next door is also adobe, but only the exterior walls. All the interior walls are of a more modern frame with dry wall. My new home has many interior adobe walls. They follow the lines of the original rooms. It is easy to tell the adobe from the others even if they have been covered by more drywall or paneling. The walls are 18 to 24 inches thick. 

    Tidbit- Adobe is not an insulator  at all. It is a capacitor and stores heat wonderfully. No heat can be stored in insulation. So adobe does wonderful things when it is understood and for that reason much of the world's population lives in earthen homes quite comfortably while nearby homes of new, manufactured, technological sources leave the occupants panting for air conditioning or screaming for heat. quote from green home.com 

   So Friday I visited my nearest local adobe supplier, my shed out back, with my trusty side kick and construction assistant Truth. She kinda looks like a blurry fat belly-ed pig in this photo but we are both getting lots of exercise hauling and toting and running back and forth between houses. 

She is assuring me that there are no spiders.

 She lies.

 I can locate at least 3 jumping spiders every day. Harmless but creepy just the same because they, you know, jump. 

Black widows are also plentiful. You can tell when you are in her vicinity. Her webs feel wiry and tough. more of an obstacle than some filmy  annoyance. She also doesn't really lay out a pretty symmetrical creation like Charlotte in Charlotte's Web. She tends to kinda glue other debris and leaves together. However she does not seem really aggressive and would rather hang on and hide or skittle away to safety.

                 The spider indigenous to this area that I have not seen but cause me the most heeby jeebies is the Brown Recluse or Fiddleback.  I have never seen one because, you know, their reclusive. But their reputation is much more aggressive when disturbed. Their bites are a lot more nasty to.

    Now a black widow bite may cause some stomach or leg cramping in a healthy adult and really only life threatening to children unless there is an allergic reaction. 

The brown recluse when it bites causes a flesh eating ulcerating sore that grows and deepens. 

 EEEEwWwWWW! 

 O.K. enough of the arachnophobic insights.

 Lets see how far I got on my project. 

Are you ready?

Ok this is just a step in the process and I still have 

a ways to go after this step dries.

But it is definitely progress.

Are you ready now?

TAAAA! DAAAA!

Two wheel barrows full of mud from my own recipe. 

Wayne shakes his head at me because I want to use my own tools that include but are not limited to the garden and my kitchen. A rubber spatula is awesome in so many applications. My purple flowered gardening gloves should be the next construction craze. Till next time, after two Ibuprofen and a hot bath, and 36 hours to set,   Pam

Progress and Perplexities

Wonderful Working Wayne!!! After Wayne has worked four 10 to 12 hour days this week, Friday, Saturday and this morning saw Him hard at work before 6 in the morning. This is still Angie's room. Lots of sheet rock going up everywhere but the focus this weekend has been back here where there are so many strange angles where the back of the old adobe structure has been opened into the back addition whatever it was...porch? laundry? mud room?
  Where he is measuring is the last place separating Angie's room from the kitchen and to the right you can see Angie's bathroom. I dont know if you can see the hot water heater just peeking over the top of the sheet rock to the left of the white pipe. It is where it belongs, not in the middle of her room. OK- the toilet is still in the middle of the bed room but not for long.

Wonderful Working Wayne

  Lets see some before and some where we are now(not exactly after yet).

Remember this ugly corner?

Taaa! Daaa!
 A wall is born!     

Perplexity but just a minor one. Ceilings going in! The beam is where the original exterior wall was. See the old adobe brick stacked in the wall? The right side of the room is a frame structure. The roof slopes with the back structure across the house. The ceiling and back outside walls are well insulated now. Probably not as well as the adobe but we are going to be cool in the summer and warm and toasty in the winter.

Lets see some more awesome progress!!!!

before

this morning

Come out of the closet Wayne! The obstacle at his knees is my kitchen counter. No- We will not leave it in Angie's room. 

One of the advantages of this do it yourself project is so many of the materials have been purchased already by Henry.

To the left are my kitchen cabinets to be assembled. To the right are my ceiling fans, light fixtures, faucets and somewhere in these stacks are bathroom vent fans and heat lamps. I also see a toilet tank behind the cabinet boxes. AWESOME GOODIES.

Ready for more progress???

This is from Wayne's room through the wall into my room.

 The black dog enjoying the view through the back of the closet is my muttly and  super construction assistant, Truth. She is named after Sojourner Truth. An ex-slave and activist for women's suffrage. If you have never heard of her you should google her and read her speech to the Continental Congress in response to the allegation that a woman would not go out to vote if it might muddy their slippers or their hems. I think its titled "Aint I a Woman".
 
I am going to run Angie to the store for graph paper and some other things she needs ...well I will ride with her since she has her permit now and is becoming a very good driver.
 
If you are wonder what I am doing while all this awesome stuff is going on. I am stuck in my garage trashing and packing. Get a break this afternoon while a bug bomb hopefully chases away all the black widows. Please picture arachnophobic dirty dusty heeby jeebies. I should get a picture of one of the pretty shiny Ladies for you. They look just like the halloween decorations.
Pam

Pamela's Positive Possibilities

  This is the key to my new world!
  As I wandered around the house yesterday getting some before pictures so that I could share my progress, it all seemed a little overwhelming. To easy to anticipate problems than to focus on the possibilities.
  I will put my sunshine glasses on and get you caught up with where we are now.
  My new home is-will be a 3 bedroom 2 bath with a finished attic upstairs. We entered in to this agreement-plan a month ago right after an electrical contractor helped pass the rough electrical inspections. We waited a week and a half for the plumbing contractor but last week we passed the plumbing inspection. All the wiring and plumbing is new but since this was started a decade ago not only were there some loose ends to finish up but there were some crazy things done that needed to be undone and some of the codes had changed. Contractors are wise people worth waiting for. The new central heat and ductwork passed inspection way back and once its passed it stays that way.
  The two men involved in this project are Henry, who is the seller, and Wayne, who is the father of both my children and partner in this project. Positive possibilities of project partner. AHHHH! We will save that for a future post.
  After a couple of weeks of work Wayne got the framework done and we passed that inspection Monday. 4 days ago. Well it was a lot more than frame work. Upstairs the old floor joists and new needed to be tied in together and turned into something level for a floor to sit on. Henry had done the framework for all the new walls but he ignored that wall joists have to be 24" apart so that there is one where the sheet rock ends to nail to. Also one bedroom door frame and the closet door frames needed longer headers above them to accommodate what is called a cripple support. This involved moving a few walls so that the closet doors would fit.  He also had to build a floor where my dryer will go. There were stairs to get under the house there. Wasted space. There will still be an access door to get under there.

My next project is to take on two of the living room walls.
 The house is adobe and with all the new frame work and drywall going up it is important to me to honor the original southwest style, other than all my doorways(the existing original ones- front door, from living to my front bedroom and living room to kitchen) are about 16" thick.
Still at the read and research phase of my adobe and
plaster project. Henry has left plenty of materials so I
 probably have what I need just have to plan out the how and decide what I want in my finished product before I get started.
    Playing in the mud! How awesome is that. This is a picture of one of my living room walls made of mud and straw(no big bad wolves or huffing and puffing allowed). They are not all like this. Its just where the plaster has been removed and the adobe has been carved out to accomodate the new electrical. It is by my front door. See, that one goes to the switch to turn on my porch light.

Here is the first piece of sheet rock going up in Angie's room. Angie is my youngest daughter in case a stranger reads this. No- She does not have a toilet in her room. The toilet will be in her bathroom I promise. This corner of her room was originally part of the kitchen. The weird wall to the left is where the wood burning cookstove was. It will be beautiful soon. This corner of the old kitchen and what was an enclosed back porch are a bedroom with bathroom now. Kinda the Master bedroom but with a shower not a bath. Angie is so excited it doesn't have a tub because if it did it would be mine and not hers.


This is the other side of Angie's Room.  NO- She does not have a hot water heater in her room. This picture was taken when the plumbing contractor was there. He reinstalled 2 brand new hot water heaters. One for each side of the house. Angie shares this one with the kitchen and the other is by the 2nd bath and is shared with the laundry. Less energy used piping hot water across the house and heating the water that replaces it for it to sit in the pipes getting cool. All the windows in the house are new double paned insulated. her window looks onto the back yard. The wall behind her closet is where the original window was. From the outside you can see the board where it is all ready for tar paper wire lath and stucco. While I am blogging my drywall is going up. This has been a long post as I try to show where I am. I will continue later because I have more pictures of possible positive probabilities.
Pam