Finished Drywall

Here's a video of the finished drywall that I took Friday afternoon. Then Saturday they sprayed on what's called "orange peel" to complete the process. Now it's time to paint (I think), and Joe and I plan to do that ourselves to save some money.

Facia and soffit

Well, apparently Blogger, the entity that hosts these blogs (a function of Google) has changed the way it does things so that now as I'm typing this I can't see the picture I'm writing about but just a very long string of letters, symbols, and numbers. I don't like that nearly as well as being able to see the real picture. Anyway, what I think I'm writing about is the new soffit and facia panels that were put up at the end of last week. It's the white stuff just under the edge of the roof. Looks very good.





Here's another view of it looking down the length of the front porch.



And here is an enormous pile of left over drywall that was left on the porch. It's so big that you can't walk around it -- you have to step down off of the porch to go around. The Mexican crew who did the drywall were very efficient, very fast, and did a very professional job, but they were also very messy. They did clean up this pile later, but they left drink bottles and food containers all over the place.

Worker on stilts

This is a short video of a drywall worker applying "mud" to the ceiling in the living room while he's attached to stilts. I took it with my phone camera, so the quality is not very good, but you can see that he is very mobile on them. The last guy I saw doing that was even going up and down the stairs in them. They're very cool, and I want a pair!

Another roof video with sound

Here's another video about the roof. Again, once you've played it just ignore the little icons at the bottom of the video screen. They have nothing to do with me or the house.

Video With Sound!

I finally figured it out. Here's a video of the front of the house and the walkway going up with me talking in the background. I've spent hours trying to get this to work, but now here it is.

After it plays just ignore the extra videos at the bottom. They have nothing to do with us or the house. That's something that YouTube does and I have no control over it.

Drywall!

I went by the house this evening to see how the insulation was looking, and walked in to find this in the dining room and kitchen.  It's a ton of huge pieces of drywall.  I wish I could have had a picture of them getting it into the house because we can't really figure out how they did it.

I walked around for a while inside looking at all the piles of drywall (the above picture is of just two of them), and I kept seeing dust and scrap pieces and wondered what was going on.  Finally I looked up and realized that in just this one day they had drywalled almost every ceiling in the house!  This picture is the ceiling over the stairwell leading into the lounge.  You can see that the lounge ceiling is done, and actually, all the rest of the upstairs is finished, too.  I need a video of them doing that.

I was on the "Evita Porch" and got this shot of Vicki coming up the steps.  Brian is right behind her, but didn't make it into the picture.  

Roof videos

Here are some videos of the house.  I took some great ones with Joe's fancy camera that had my voice in the background, but I can't get them to upload to this blog for some reason.  These videos don't have sound, so I have to describe them and you have to add the sound in your mind.  This first one is rather dark, but I hope you can see that it's a young man blowing the insulation into the house.  One reason it's so dark is because the room is FULL of the dust that is a natural part of this process, but the installers didn't wear any kind of mask.  The nice part is that it's cellulose insulation -- basically recycled paper -- so it's not particularly dangerous.  It was a fun process to watch.

Here's one of the roof while I'm standing on the roof.  I'm on the southeast corner of the house on the part of the roof that is over the porch which is not slanted very much.  The steep part of the roof is VERY steep and I don't get on it.  This video starts with a view of the east upstairs bedroom where the window is, and then it pans over to the upstairs porch.  Joe's "Evita" Porch where he can stand and wave at the cheering crowds.

This last video starts with a view of the west upstairs bedroom and pans down to the west side yard and the large oak tree that shakes the whole area.  We're fighting to make sure that the tree stays alive and healthy by trying to keep traffic off of it and by watering it each weekend when no workers are present.

First new post in a week

Some of these shots are from the weekend, but this one is from this morning at about 10:00 am.  Somebody got in there early to spray this termite protection around every exterior wall and anywhere the plumbing comes up through the foundation.

Here's a shot of the upper and lower porches from down at street level.  We cut out a small cherry tree so the view would be better.
The upper porch roof.

This is our builder, Kevin.  He's actually talking to someone on the phone about wiring for the speakers we plan to install both outside and inside, and that's why he has a far-a-way look.  He and I walked around the house for about 2 hours this morning looking at various things and making decisions about lighting and wiring mostly because he's ready to blow in the insulation as soon as this next inspection is completed tomorrow or the next day.

And here's a video I took late this afternoon (Monday, July 14th).  There's no sound because the camera I used isn't capable of that, but it gives you a sense of the whole house.  I think I'll do more videos in the future and use Joe's camera which will do sound.  You'll have to hit the play button -- the right facing triangle -- to get it to play.  This may not work on a dial-up modem.

Shingles again

Matt trying out the new kitchen floor.

The valley is the upstairs bedroom roof and the lounge and "Evita Gallery" roof.  I wanted green shingles and Joe agreed and I picked out several houses which had shingles I liked and pointed them out to the builder.  He assured me that he could match them -- then he picked out the shingles he liked and started putting them on before I had a chance to see them.  These are OK, but they're not the ones I picked out.

I don't know why this one came out so dark, but it's a telephoto shot of one of the roofers way up on top of the roof.  Don't know how they can stand to be so close to the edge.

Shingles

After a week of not having any pictures it's hard to catch up, but here are the latest.

These are the double doors leaving out to the upstairs porch.

Here's Matt drinking from our newly installed upstairs tub.  I don't know why it was filled with water, and come to think of it it might not have been a really good idea to let him drink from it, but he was insistent so I let him.

New shingles going up on the roof.

More shingles and more waiting to be installed.