Little Surprises

A few days ago, after work, we swung by the house to make sure that our front yard and back yard had been edged and mowed.

We pulled up in the driveway, did a quick survey and started to back out when I caught a glimpse of something on the front porch. I don't know how I saw it from the car but I made Paul stop, I hopped out and went to investigate.

What I found when I got to the porch was this:

Someone had anonymously left us this book, propped open to our house. What a thoughtful and sweet surprise.

I flipped through it on our way back to the apartment and loved seeing all of the old photos of the homes. I especially loved seeing ours. We determined the photo had to have been taken in the 60's since a window air-conditioning unit is front and center. But look at that baby maple in the front yard.

That's one of the two that we just had to cut down. We plan to plant some new trees and I have a good feeling we can get some big ole trees grown in no time now.

Once we got to the apartment, Paul changed, grabbed some water and headed back to the house to do some work. When he got back to the house there was another book. The same one, laying on the same doors. Either I was so focused on the one propped open that I didn't notice the 2nd copy or someone left us another copy. Either way, we now have two.

So, to the person or persons who left us these books, thank you. After the stress of the previous thoughts, it's nice to see that other people are excited about what we are doing.

Lessons Learned

At work we have this phrase we throw around constantly...

"Lessons Learned."

Every project something happens (a.k.a. mistakes), we learn our lesson and implement different directions on future projects.

We even have full meetings devoted to Lessons Learned topics. Everyone has at least one. Some have hundreds (slowly raises her hand in the air).

Well now, Six Twelve has one (or maybe twenty) and there will probably be plenty more by the time we are done.

Lessons Learned #1: Dumpsters

We ordered our 3rd dumpster this week. We had budgeted for construction dumpsters but not three of them. When we determined we needed another dumpster we decided this one was coming out of our pocket. We had already used our alloted money from our house budget and we didn't want to take away from other important items. Our family budget would be the one that would take the third dumpster's financial hit.

So, I became a price junky. I wanted to make sure that we got the biggest dumpster available at the cheapest price and for the longest time. This was eating into my furniture/decorating funds here. We were going to get a better deal.

Previously we used what we would consider the most well known dumpster company, Waste Management. They have the best marketing out of all the companies in town and it was the easy, order-online choice.

I (of course) created an Excel sheet to compare prices, terms, fees, etc., this time.

We found a cheaper company than the one we had used the first two times. By about $60. So we called them up, placed the order and scheduled delivery for today.

We met the plumber at the house this morning that is taking care of our gas lines and there was our third dumpster. From the same company the first two dumpsters were from.

SUCK.

We could have saved another $120 if we had just gone through this other "middle-man" company first. Same dumpster as before, same pick up as before, but we get it longer without extra fees and the base price was even cheaper.

So, if you're in the market for a temporary construction dumpster, tell us and we'll give you the steps for a cheaper but identical product.

Lesson learned.

It happened...

The inevitable finally occurred.

The freak out.

The "what-in-the-world-are-we-doing" freak out. I'll give you two guesses as to which one of us had the panic attack.

If you said "Christa" for both answers you'd be correct. Your prize? The satisfaction of being right of course.

Stress has been slowly ebbing and flowing around our family. Everything seems to be feast or famine. Work. Church. Friends. Parenting. Tests. The House. Some days, everything is great but on others, everything has gone to hell in a hand basket. That's part of life and we know that. And we knew the freak out was an inevitable event, it was just a matter of time.

But so far, when we've been asked how things are going (especially with the house) we've been pretty positive. A few of our friends hear the "eh, its a mess" comments but we've tried to stay positive. The whole, put on a happy face thing.

Well, Saturday morning, I lost it.

Addison was at a friend's house (weird that I can already say that) and so we both went to the house to get some work done. And within 3 minutes of being in the house, I was having a full fledged panic attack. My chest was pounding, tears were streaming, I couldn't focus and I couldn't stop pacing the house. I couldn't calm down enough to pick anything up and make any progress. I just kept thinking about how much of a mess it was and how far we had to go.

Paul has been working basically two full time jobs. 40 hours at our day job and then another 30+ at the house. When I have these moments about the house he takes it very personal. And I don't blame him. But it's not personal. It has nothing to do with Paul or what he's accomplished. In fact, if it wasn't for him we'd be up a creek, not only without a paddle but probably without a boat.

I finally calmed down, picked up a trash bag and a broom and started cleaning. Paul repaired the front door latch and deadbolt and we took some deep breaths. Sunday night, I tossed and turned, got out of bed and kept busy (painting my toenails, washing my hair). I so desperately wanted to feel like we had made a mistake. I was scared, I was on the verge of another panic attack in the middle of our little bathroom apartment floor.

I wanted to have an internal conversation where I would determine that we had made the biggest mistake of our lives. That this was a disaster and that we needed to find a way to get out of it.

And while my mind was racing and I was upset and worried, I couldn't convince myself that this was a mistake at all.

While we are behind and money is getting tighter and tighter, this is the house that I want to live in. This is the house that I want to throw parties in and have slumber parties at. It's where, one day I want to host Christmas or Thanksgiving for my whole family. This is our house.

And it wasn't a mistake.

Even if we can't do it. If we fail, if we run out of money, or run out of time we'll just have to figure it out.

It's ours and it is going to be done one day. And when that one day is here, we'll be thankful we saw it through. 

Insulation Part 1

Who knew there could be more than one part to the story of insulation.

"Not I," said the duck.

Anyone? Anyone?

OK. Insulation. Our house is 82 years old. Built right at the beginning of the Great Depression. Turns out conduit was already a thing, but insulating your home was not.

So we own a very large, very drafty 82 year old home.

We used to throw away money during the hot, hot summers and ridiculously cold Oklahoma winters in our first house, the little bungalow. We never undertook this size of a renovation while on 20th Street so we sucked it up and paid our outrageous heating and cooling bills practically year round. Well, not this time. This time, we'd take the right steps and distribute the money in order to insulate those bills into submission.

Our realtor, Gary, mentioned that he had a friend who specialized in energy conservation in homes and would have some tips about the insulation portion of the job. So before the house was even ours, we had Trey come out and take a look. He gave us some quick thoughts and then recommended we call a company he uses quite often.

So, we met with that company, Oklahoma Foam. They're actually doing our whole heating and cooling system, insulation included. Trey ran calculations and did blow tests, they came out and surveyed the house and determined an entire insulation/HVAC system that would give us incredibly low energy bills. And for not much more than our originally planned budget amount.

 

To put it briefly, Insulation Part 1 involved all of our spray foam insulation. We were advised (by multiple people) to have a non-vented attic and to treat it as conditioned space. Not the same temps we would do in our living room, but a somewhat climate controlled space nonetheless. So as soon as the roof was done, and our HVAC installer had the new ducts in place, he called them in to spray the underside of the roof deck. See the third photo. This means when our attic would have been 135 degrees in the summer, now it'll be 90. This allows for us to use this space for storage without worry and maybe, one day, transition it into another space. It's also going to save us a ton of cash. Funny how that works, paying to condition the attic will actually save us money.  

 

They also sprayed the entry vestibule walls (see last photo), the underside of our sitting room (see second photo), the underside of the first floor (the basement ceiling), and the rim joist around the perimeter of the house between the 1st and 2nd floor. They spray and then come back with a thin wire and slice through it to even it out for gyp board wall installation. They had everything done in less than a day and a half and once everything is covered up you'll never even know its there. But our bank account will know. 

Framing

Things are progressing at the house. This past weekend, I had to spend two days in Tulsa taking my licensing exams so Addison spent the weekend in Texas with her grandparents. That way Paul (with the help of family, friends and myself when I returned) could accomplish this:

 

That is our entry. No walls, no floor, no entry door frame. We are about to start the insulation process, electrical work and then we'll be ready to put this room back together.

 

Paul and some of the guys framed the opening between our bonus room and the kitchen. Previously it was full of studs and now its a clear opening. They also removed the studs between what used to be the breakfast room and kitchen and added a new beam. We still need to frame up the ceiling in here. The existing beam (the one above the back door) is a foot lower than the rest of the ceiling in the kitchen. Since we added the second beam, we decided to drop the ceiling all the way across. It still leaves us with an 8'-6" ceiling in the kitchen and allows for us to add recessed down lights.

 

Paul and I framed in our closet. Turns out, the "bonus space" that was in Addison's new room that we would be converting to our closet was originally the master closet anyways. Someone along the way closed off the opening and created the larger space in the other bedroom. When we busted the plaster out we found the original door opening (SCORE!) so we just had to put the wall back where it was originally on Addison's side. Now I don't feel so guilty for changing up the floor plan.

 

We also framed in 2 of the 3 doors that lead into our master bathroom. Previously, this bathroom served as a jack-and-jill. We're converting it to our master bathroom and the door on the left used to lead to one of the spare bedrooms. Since we closed that off, we decided to close off the door that lead into the room over the porch. We have french doors from our room to this sitting room and decided the wall space was more valuable in the bathroom than an extra door.

 

We have some framing to do between the dining room and the kitchen and the kitchen ceiling that I mentioned earlier.

 

Our list is still long but we're trying to make progress, hopefully before we know it, we'll be doing nothing but putting it back together instead of the prep.

 

Today, the HVAC installer is continuing to work. He's already cut almost all of the supply vents, is working to get the duct work in place and is moving along at a pretty good pace. The insulation crew comes out today and applies the spray foam to the underside of our roof deck and will come back later to blow in the insulation for our exterior walls.