Our house is closed in! We finally got our doors and windows on, and stairs going down to the basement. That means we are waiting on sub contractors to do heating, electrical and plumbing! It can finally be warm on the inside while we work, and it looks more and more like a finished house every day! Fun fact: I did the math and Daylen and I alone have worked on the eight houses in our group over 800 hours! Volunteers have contributed more hours as well. Crazy!
First, we finished our stairs to the basement right before our Christmas break from building. They start in our living room, and go to a hallway in the basement. We built a platform in the middle, and built the stair stringers and steps off of that. The step boards are temporary for now, until we start finish work. It's nice to finally have a way down besides the window wells!
Our doors and windows were delivered at the beginning of January. It was cool to learn about installing door jams and windows! We were lucky enough to have lots of volunteers during this process so we got done fast.
Our windows are all energy star certified (like everything else in our house) and were much easier to install than doors in my opinion. We had a really fun Saturday putting windows in with our family! We got them all done in one day. It's crazy how much of a difference it makes with windows in vs. house wrap for the warmth of the house. Big thanks to our parents for volunteering on window day, we wouldn't have gotten them all done by ourselves! It was awesome to see how quickly everyone picked it up.
The doors that arrived are exterior grade doors, which we have six of. Interior doors will arrive once we have drywall. The ones we got include our front door, back double door, garage to house door, garage to outside door, and two exterior grade basement doors.
We spent a Saturday in January with my Mom and Rob installing the back door and two doors in the garage. We waited to put our front door on until our bathtubs arrive, since they won't fit in with a door on. Once our bathtubs arrived, Daylen and I installed the front door! The back door is a double door and was super heavy. We don't have doorknobs yet, but should soon.
Our basement windows were the most interesting to install to me. They are held on by wood shims and extra sticky expanding foam! In the summer when we check on them again, if they need screws we will screw them in. But if not, the foam is enough! Our supervisor explained this is his favorite way to put in basement windows because it doesn't allow for as much draft and stays on really well. We installed the basement windows the same day we did doors. After the windows and doors were in, we cleaned out the house for the subcontractors.
Our house is almost dried in! In the mean time, we'll be working on odds + ends and shingling our roof now that our shingles have arrived. We'd love the help if you'd like to volunteer so we can move in faster! Every Saturday we are out working all day and would love to have you out for a little while.
If you're interested in our program, there is an open house February 13 for our neighbors, the group that started before us! Our house plan will be included in the open house as well. Message me for details!
Thanks for reading! Keep up with house updates here.
Commentaires