Paint It Black

Today we are talking drywall (yeah for rooms!) and paint.

It is amazing that the more things that get completed on the house, the bigger it feels. When the footers were poured in October, it seemed as if we had made a mistake and made the house too small (1550 sq ft is not small, I remind myself constantly). The block wall in November didn't help a whole lot, but the concrete in December made a bit of difference. Every new stage that has put up walls, first on the outside and then the framing on the inside, created more defined space and restrictions, yet it continued to feel as if it were growing and not shrinking. Soon I could no longer look straight through the building, first from the outside in and then inside through all of the walls.

Before the insulation and wiring went in, I walked through the house over the course of several days and wrote on the studs throughout the house. Every window and door frame contains a name of God as well as scripture verses. Wall studs also hold favorite scriptures and lyrics to hymns and worship songs that are meaningful to me. I googled a few lists of verses that people write on new construction and then continued from there to add in names of God as well as verses that I love. While no one will be able to see them once all of the drywall and trim is complete, I will know that they are there and that the house is filled with God and good things.

As the drywall began to go up on the walls and the ceilings, the rooms began to take shape. The ceilings felt higher. It took them a couple of days to finish putting it up. But let's face it, it is a one bedroom, one bathroom space with 1550 square feet. There are not a lot of walls and other than the pantry and linen closets and the walk-in shower, it is pretty straightforward.

They started in the living room and did the upper part of the walls and the ceilings first. They did that throughout the house and then finished with the lower portion of the walls. They had very little waste. I was amazed at how exact the measurements were for the number of boards that were needed. I think there was a half sheet of green board from the bathroom left over.

The picture below is a two-shot with the real room on the top and the scale model that I made almost two years ago as we were dreaming and planning. In the model you can see two windows in the living room which was eventually changed to three, and the small dividing wall between the living room and the kitchen with the bigger wall in the foreground which divides the kitchen from the bathroom. In the top picture along the right side, you can see the scripture verse that is written on that doorpost.

The kitchen and the pass-through window area were next. In the shot below you can look down the very short hallway past the bathroom and pantry closet to the bedroom.

The kitchen is going to be well used in this house. The partial wall below will house my wonderful dual fuel range. I am so excited about this. Not only will I have a gas stove, but I will have an electric convection oven all in the same appliance. It is a cook's/baker's dream! Next to that wall on the left of the stove will be a large 5x7 quartz-top island. Above the island will be pendant lights. More on the kitchen in the big reveal hopefully in about three weeks.

This wall will house storage shelves and cabinets, the refrigerator, and the kitchen sink. My plan is quite unique. I daresay you won't find many kitchens like it. I can't wait to see it all come together. For now, the kitchen no longer looks into the bathroom!








Below the drywall is almost completed in both the living room and kitchen.

The bathroom got green board to resist moisture on the lower half of the walls as well as, of course, in the shower. This wall will have the vanity and toilet. There is also a 4x7 shower, a storage area, and a linen closet. I didn't take many pictures in this room because it is the only room with no natural light and at the time of the drywall, no electricity. I shot this one while they had their plug-in lights on to mud and tape the drywall. Other than this picture, I don't think there are any shots of Randy doing the mudding and taping. He did a great job though.

They started working on the sunroom before they drywalled the bedroom, so I was able to take a fun shot from the garage through the bedroom and into the sunroom. They also had not finished the insulation in this wall or the sunroom wall for some reason.



This shot shows you the length of the sunroom from front to back. It's all fresh and white. But not for long! Wait until you see the paint job we did on this room. One of the most fascinating things about watching these guys work is this tool that they have that cuts the holes around the outlets and fixture boxes that are already hung and wired. They have obviously been doing this for a while because it happens so fast. They mark the board with some strange hieroglyphics and then insert this little saw and zip it around and all of a sudden there is a hole that fits exactly around the blue box.

These guys that worked hanging the drywall were great. They were happy to be working, hard workers, and fast. One day at lunchtime David and I were walking through to check on the progress and there in the sunroom they sat with an electric griddle and their lunches, making tacos. It smelled amazing, so that means someone is a pretty good cook - or someone's wife is. Between that lunch and the mariachi music that they played all day, we all had cravings for Mexican food by the end of the week. Here is the bedroom looking back to the living room.

They were almost finished hanging drywall when I took this shot of the bedroom looking into the garage.






















As I mentioned earlier, Randy came and did a wonderful job mudding, taping, and sanding. It took him a while to get it finished, but when he was finished, we were raring to go with the primer and paint.

Paint choices. I knew I wanted to use grey tones - cool and neutral. Keeping the walls all the same color allows me to play with color and make more frequent changes with accent pieces, rugs, and decor. I also didn't want the house to feel as if a crayon box threw up in it. I love color, but the conservative, practical side of me needs that simple background to work off of. Plus after painting the entire space basically three times (primer and two coats of paint), we realize how much we don't like painting and don't want to have to do it again. Our realtor who sold our house last year, Ciera Netherton (an amazing woman and realtor, by the way) did some cosmetic changes to sell the Highpoint house including painting it. The inside was all painted Sherwin Williams Repose Gray.

I was pretty sure at the time that I wanted to do the same thing in the new house until I got swatches and realized it was a warmer grey than I wanted. I wanted to stick with cooler shades and then warm the space with wood pieces and other accents. After looking at the swatches, David and I (and our daughter, Ryn) agreed on this palette. The walls are all the lightest shade called Gray Screen (far left swatch - HGSW1467 in case you were wondering) with trim in the medium color (horizontal on the bottom of the picture), which is called Gray Flannel (HGSW1464). The ceilings in the bedroom and bathroom are the same as the wall color. The ceilings in the sunroom, kitchen, and living room, and one accent wall in the living room are the darkest shade on the far right called No Limits (HGSW1461).

The first thing that happened was to put a coat of primer on the walls. That makes for boring pictures since in every room except for the bathroom it is white paint on white drywall. Then the trim boards needed to be painted. These are the boards that will frame the windows, doorways, and run along the floor as baseboards. Our daughter Ryn saved the day and helped to knock the 100 boards, narrow and wide, that had to be painted before they could be hung. The doors that are between the house and the shop were also painted the same color as the trim - Flannel Gray. I love the color. The hardware for all of the doors is matte black and so simple and pretty.

The first room to be painted was the bathroom since it is the smallest room. Ironically, it was the last room to get a full second coat. I am not going to post pictures of every room, because the process was the same. Every room needed two coats of paint on top of the primer. Again, our daughter Ryn came and helped two days. Our son Nate and his wife Savannah came one afternoon and did a bunch of painting with us. It was quite welcome! Here are "in process" shots of the bathroom and bedroom.

Once the walls and bedroom and bathroom ceilings were finished, the final step - okay, steps - was to do the charcoal (No Limits) color on the ceilings in the sunroom, living room, and kitchen as well as the accent wall in the living room. I am not normally a fan of accent walls, but this wall is going to get one of the two cedar mantels that we have finished from a tree on the property. More on that in another post to come. It really draws your eyes up to the pretty ceilings. The dark color amazingly makes the space feel taller, which is amazing since the ceilings are 11 feet tall.

Compare this shot to the one earlier of the sunroom with most of the drywall up. It is taken from roughly the same spot. Those ceilings!













In the next post we are going to look at the chimney and mantel. We have tried to make it a point to buy and employ local people throughout the process. Yes, we also used materials from big box stores, but there is also quite a bit of work and finishing as well that is done by local artisans. Truly, construction and finishing is an art. It employs skills that I don't possess, so I am in awe of all that they can do.

Stay tuned!
Lizabeth

It's Electrifying!

I'm three for three today! I told you I am trying to get caught up. Today's title is brought to you by John Travolta in Grease. I almost chose "Electricity, Electricity" but wasn't sure who would get it - all 20 of my readers, lol. If you know where that flashback comes from, comment below.

As I told you in a previous post, David has made fantastic use of the fact that most firefighters have a side hustle - not because they have to but because they work 24 hours and then are off for 48 hours. They need something to fill the time...or their wives need them to find something to fill the time. Many of them work in different aspects of construction. This is a former captain of his from a previous fire hall, Capt. Gary Standley of the NFD and his father, Mr. (David) Standley up on the ladder. They are electricians and did a great job getting us "warred" up as Mr. Standley would say. Those of you who know me, know I love a thick southern accent. If it takes me a second to figure out what you are telling me, you have given me a bit of pleasure.

Before they started running the wires, David and I walked around the house and positioned the boxes for the outlets and switches. Then we had the boxes installed in the ceilings for lights, fans, and smoke alarms. Positioning required a great deal of thought not only about how far apart we needed to have outlets and how high up they needed to be from the floor but also to meet the building codes and our own anticipated electrical requirements. I have already picked out most of the furniture, so knowing where the bed and couch would be placed and their dimensions helped quite a bit. We had to think about where open doors would rest since you don't want a switch behind a door - or at least we don't. I don't know what you want :)

Still, we ended up putting up a switch box in the bedroom with four switches and had the wire all run to all of those switches on a wall that would be behind the open door to the bedroom without realizing it. In my defense, we were originally thinking of using a pocket door there, which would not have covered the switches. We made it through the first inspection without anyone realizing the mistake. However, when David was making the needed changes, he somehow realized (thankfully before drywall was installed) that the switch was positioned behind a door and moved it to another wall.

One thing that I have a love-hate relationship with about this process is making the decisions about everything. On the one hand, there are a lot of decision to make which feel tedious until I realize how important it will be to have a switch by the front and back doors for outside lights or a USB outlet next to the bed. On the other hand, there are so many fun choices that get to be made along the way to build our own home just the way we want it to be.

In the picture above, you will notice not only all of the boxes running on both sides of this dividing wall between the sunroom and the house but also the red pex pipe that holds the sensors for the thermostats for the radiant floor heating system.

You can also look straight through to the outside in the pictures above and not just through the window openings, so apparently these photos were taken before they installed the windows and finished the siding :) For a while, there were several things happening at the same time. It's hard to keep up with it all.

Mr. and Mr. Standley came several times over a few weeks to get in all of the wires both in the house and the shop/tractor shed and to connect both of the breaker boxes. I have a rather large collection of leftover copper wire that will be used this summer for something crafty - or more like many things crafty. I have most of it stripped of its coating already. Now I am making some plans. I'm thinking of a copper wire tree and a few other things. If you have some ideas of what I could do with leftover copper wire besides recycling it, comment below. I'd love some ideas.

We had to pass an electrical inspection before moving on to the next phase. We had a few minor things that had to be changed, which David was able to fix on his own over the weekend. We passed the second time and were able to move on to the next important phase, insulation. Who doesn't like to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. For me, the cool part is the most important part. I do not like to be hot.

We ended up going with three different insulation applications throughout the building. While we originally wanted to use spray foam insulation, we did quite a bit of research and reading about the different types as well as reading about other home builders' experiences. What we found out was that a tightly insulated home with spray foam, especially one on the smaller side, which will have a gas stove and a fireplace, will have issues keeping fires lit due to the limited air flow through the building. Apparently spray foam seals things up pretty tightly. However, because we have a ceiling in the sunroom that is full height to the roof (about 14 feet at its highest edge), we had to spray that ceiling as you will notice in the picture below.

The walls are insulated with standard fiberglass insulation including the dividing wall between the sunroom and the house for some sound dampening. I learned from the insulator that the color of the insulation is proprietary to the company. So the pink stuff is only made by Owens-Corning - you know the one with the Pink Panther? That is why ours is a lovely shade of brown.

Here is the fireplace all ready for completion in the fall or winter hopefully. At least we will enjoy the mantel and the hearth until then.

Here is a sneak peek at the door hardware. It is totally unrelated to electricity or insulation. It is just pretty.

The wall in the picture above is in the bedroom. The other side is the garage and my laundry area. The wall houses hot and cold water pipes as well as the fire sprinkler system.

Here is the dividing wall again between the sunroom and the house. Those horizontal boards are not structural in any way other than to hold in the insulation and provide something for the drywallers to screw the drywall into. The structure of the wall is actually steel tubing, which you can spot between the batts of insulation.

In this picture you will also notice some boards along the bottom of the wall. The outer walls are concrete block as you may remember. That block has been painted on the inside with a substance that keeps out the moisture. Then there are strips of wood screwed to the block so that again they can screw the drywall into something.

We had decided some time ago to drop the ceilings in the house proper. We originally wanted them to be full height to the roof and had plans to install skylights in the kitchen and bathroom which are the two rooms in the center of the building with no windows of their own. The cost and the struggle to hide the mechanicals and to drywall between the trusses was way more than we could afford to do, and I really do want furniture in this place, so the ceilings were dropped to 11 feet, which is still a substantial height, and we had them blow insulation in the attic space above once the drywall was up on the ceiling.

At some point, and I am not quite sure how it happened, we ended up installing mini splits in the garage, too, which necessitated insulation in the garage as well. So the ceiling in there got the same spray foam treatment as the sunroom and the walls have a vinyl covered fiberglass product. At least the garage can be temperature controlled since not only is my laundry area there but also we will have considerable storage.

Here is the king in his castle, aka shop. Due to an injury to his neck which he sustained at work back in October, he has not been able to put in the work he wanted to in building his home. He has been off of work recovering and waiting for a disc replacement surgery now scheduled for mid-June. I know it has been frustrating to watch it happen from the sidelines and not be able to jump up on the lift or up on the trusses to make things happen...and save some money. But God's plans are not ours. He works all things for our good. He has at least been off work to supervise the process. Someday after he recovers from surgery, he will thoroughly enjoy his 1,000 sq ft shop.


One last inspection had to happen before we request the "Final" and get our certificate of occupancy. That was the insulation inspection. We are thankful that we have passed all inspections and are moving forward.

Next up is drywall and paint. Are you counting the days? I know I am!

Stay tuned,
Lizabeth

Come to My Window

I know. It's weird. Blog posts two days in a row? Is there hope for a third new post tomorrow? There is always hope. I'm doing my best to get caught up. So, time for installing windows and finishing the siding. This all happened in February as well.

The day the windows arrived was a joyous day. I have had my heart set on black windows since we started dreaming about this house. What I really wanted was steel frame windows. But we all know that this family is not rolling in dough, so that dream went, well, out the window. I really didn't want vinyl windows. But since they had the best budget-friendly black window frames, that is what we got. Also, did you know that a window that is just a single pane of glass set in the wall with no opening mechanism whatsoever is more expensive than a single- or double-hung window? Isn't that just crazy? I thought I wanted just single panes of glass. I have allergies, so opening windows is not always the brightest thing to do. But again, that nasty budget thing... so single hung windows, but with no grids, it was. Black on the outside and white on the inside, again thanks to the budget since black on the inside would have cost more money. They are perfect and once the screens are installed, I think that we will use them often to enjoy the breezes that are usually gentle at the top of our little hill.

I was so happy to see them arrive that I did actually hug a window. Yep. We have 18 beautiful 3 foot by 6 foot windows running around the house. There are three in the living room, three in the bedroom, and twelve in the sunroom. They all slid right into place, making my heart sing.

Aren't they beautiful?

Ah, the fireplace there in the middle in the photo below. It is all framed in and ready for rock and the wood burning insert. We hope to be able to get that finished off before winter this year. The center opening is for the fireplace itself. The openings on either side will be framed in wood boxes that can be opened from the outside for loading in wood and then accessible from the inside. That should help keep things a bit cleaner in the sunroom.

Installing the front and back doors had to happen before they could finish the siding. The rear door on the sunroom has a full pane of glass. You can see that in some later shots of the sided house. I love the three windows in my front door. I wanted 5, but, you know, budget...

They were able to finish the siding once all of the exterior doors and windows were installed. They also finished the trim between the roof and the siding. As I had written in an earlier post, our metal came from Simpson Culvert in Pleasant View. We used the Central States product - PanelLoc Plus, I believe. The siding is Alamo (almost a putty white) and the roof and trim is Charcoal. I don't have shots of the gutters at this point, but those run along the sunroom and the tractor shed on the opposite side of the building. The gutters and downspouts are black which blend with the window and door frames.

Look at how pretty those windows are running down the length of the sunroom!

Here is the back door below with its single pane of glass. It was white then, but it is white no longer!


Here is an inside shot of the windows to show the white frames inside. You can see the electrical boxes in the ceiling, which are for the lights. More on electricity in the next post. The light that comes in through all of these windows is incredible. The back of the house faces east and the bedroom is on that side. You would think the sun would stream in at sunrise, but because we are surrounded by so many trees, by the time the sun is above the trees, it is above the windows as well. The same happens in the living room in the afternoon. It is on the west side, but again, the sun is below the trees before it can directly shine into the room. We get amazing filtered sunlight. During the day, the sun is perfectly situated to provide gorgeous natural light in the sunroom. You guys (don't make me say "y'all" because it isn't in my DNA), somehow we found the perfect building site and positioned the building perfectly.

Once again, here is my high-flying friend Thomas, just hanging out on the lift like you do.

This is one of my favorite shots below, showing the comparison of the frame itself and then the fully enclosed structure.

It felt pretty gigantic when we finally had it all dried in. Oh, and we passed the framing inspection, which was pretty exciting. The guys were all pretty happy about that one.

We could finally start working on the guts of the house. And by "we" I do not mean me! As I have written earlier, I do not have shots of several stages once this happened. I was teaching and running to Nashville and just didn't take many pictures. But here are some of the things that happened between this stage and the next post which will cover electrical and insulation.

Plumbing fixtures were ordered and the guts of the two faucets that come directly out of the walls (shower and bathroom sink) were positioned, and all of the hot and cold water lines were installed throughout. David took on the responsibility of handling most of the plumbing issues for the house. I did help with that a bit. Plumbing is pretty cool. The only things that remain aside from installing the actual fixtures is getting the hot water heater (boiler system) put together and on the wall and then installing the pressure reducer valve (yes, we have too much water pressure) at the street. Then we can turn on the water!

Fire sprinklers were installed throughout the house and shop. I mean, come on, my husband is a fire fighter. We can't build a house and not install them. We are thankful for firefighter friends who have helped us in almost every aspect of this build. We had one long-time friend and fellow fire fighter, PV Firefighter Ricky Reed and a friend of his install the system.

We also had the HVAC system installed. We decided to go with a mini-split system with units in every room as well as the garage. We also, if you remember, have a radiant floor heating system which will help to heat the house in the winter along with that fireplace when it is finished. Another firefighter friend, Ret. Capt. Bobby Pratt of Nashville FD, and his crew got those units all installed and working properly. They did a fantastic job. The concrete floor does help to keep things pretty cool even on the warm days that we have had so far. So hopefully we won't need to use the units often or for much of the year.

The next step is electrical wiring and insulation, which I will try and post in the next day or so. This time I have pictures!

Stay tuned!

Lizabeth

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Hammer and a Nail

Let me start off by saying in my defense, I teach essay writing to high school students online. This past year I had four classes and a total of 58 students. I know I mentioned that I would write a blog post once a week to get caught up with construction, but that was a month ago. I don't know what I was thinking :) I probably have a dozen posts to write to get caught up to where we are right now. I can literally see the light at this point. I mean that. David has lights installed, so I can truly see the light. But, where were we. Oh yes, framing and windows.

Remember February? Ah... back before we were all sheltering at home and social distancing? At the beginning of that month we had a bit of snow. Now, to this Yankee girl from New England, it was a dusting, but to southerners with little to no snow removal equipment, it was a blizzard and a reason to call off school. Ah, school...remember when the kids went there? But I digress. We had a bit of snow on February 7, 2020 and it looked so pretty on the newly framed in window sills.

Time to put in framing. The wall down the center of the building was put in before the roof went on. This is the door from the garage looking into our bedroom.

One of my favorite places in the house is the sunroom. This picture is looking from the front door to the back door. It is 50 feet of beautiful open space, full of light. It will be a place for eating, relaxing, playing music and games, talking, and laughing. I look forward to social gatherings here and sitting by the windows building jigsaw puzzles and grading essays.

The living room may look small to you, but it is bigger than the living room in our previous house. With all of the space we have in the sunroom, this is more of a parlor or front room (for my PNW friends). It will be cozy and comfy with a great view of our beautiful white oak tree at the top of the driveway.

Here are two shots of the kitchen. Same wall, just a different angle. One looks down the hallway past the bathroom and into the bedroom. I am so excited about my kitchen. I love to cook and bake. I have some great plans for this room that will be unique and make some people wonder about me more than they already do. Not much will be traditional other than the appliances, both of them. No dishwasher other than our own hands.

The bathroom is going to be perfect.  This first shot is looking into the bathroom from the hall. Just to the right is the edge of a dual-sided closet. On the hall side is the pantry closet. On the backside will be the linen closet. In the original house plan, this closet would have been on the left of the door much closer to the kitchen. As we were designing, David asked that we try to put as much of the plumbing on the same wall as possible. That request necessitated a move of the closet to the other side of the door to accommodate the vanity which was going to be on the other side of the room.

The white and orange pipe closest is the toilet. The one beyond is the shower. More on that in a moment.

Here is the pantry closet.  The sliding door for the bathroom will normally cover the pantry unless someone needs to close the bathroom door.

This is another favorite thing about this house - my shower. It is 4 feet by 7 feet of glorious space. For the last 30 years we had a very small shower. Now in the RV it is even smaller - and we have the pleasure of turning the water on only to get wet and to rinse off. No long, hot showers around here. I cannot wait for the shower to be finished and the water to be turned on!

Here is the bedroom looking from the sunroom doors to the garage. The windows in this room are higher than the other windows to account for the headboard to the bed that I have picked out. Hopefully IKEA will open up before we have to move in or else we will be without a bed and a whole lot of other things! I am excited for the extra space and room for my office here as well.

I have to say that Walker & Son Construction has been amazing to work with. They didn't even yell at me when I realized I had the wrong wardrobe dimensions and had to have them move the door over about a foot from where it is in this picture. Not even a tear :) But in my defense, we made very few changes from our submitted plans. Maybe two...or three.

And then they were able to start on the siding working around the garage all the way to where the windows start on the house side. We chose a white called Alamo. We purchased the siding from a local metal company, Simpson Culvert in Pleasant View. They had fantastic pricing and we love the product that we ended up using.

This is the back of the garage.

Here is the front side of the house and garage.

This is Thomas. He is the son of one of the contractors. I am pretty sure he fell asleep up there in the sun.

Once the framing was finished, we started on the electric, plumbing, fire sprinklers, and HVAC. I wasn't so great about getting pictures of those things. I wish I had, but... Next up, windows and siding is finished! If you follow our Instagram page, I post pictures much more frequently than blog posts! @notquitetinytn


Stay tuned!

Lizabeth