LEAVES!!!

Agghhh...So far, Jen has handled all the outside work on the house. That means lawn mowing, weeding, trimming, etc. NOW come the leaves. We happen to be the only house left on the island with HUGE trees in the yard. I love them, but they have a lot of presents for us in the fall. Jen spent a lot of time over haloween weekend raking leaves while I came out, dragged them to a big pile and lit a match. Fun fun, I love fire. The neighbors were happy to see this since we are the main source of leaves on the island.


While she was doing that, we continued work on the inside. We put the temporary "ceiling" in the laundry area. This will actually be a storage shelf when the roof get's redone next year. It's hard to explain but we will open up the spare bedroom / laundry room ceiling to be the same as the living room, a vaulted ceiling. We also put more plywood/insulation on the walls in there and the stairway and I finished the plumbing in that wall.


Last, we moved to the kitchen where we added the snack bar in the sun room area. 1.5" thick maple, that should support any table dancing in the future. And we cut the hole for the kitchen sink.

My dad is AMAZING!

This weekend was spent mostly at tailgate and cleaning/packing the bus before and after. It was nice but i thought about NOT working on the house all weekend. Our friend Ntina was in town from DC and wanted to see the house so we went over about 2:00 on Sunday....and GUESS WHAT!!! My dad and his buddy Richie had been there all weekend working, CRAZY! So awesome, I'm so happy, thank you soo much dad!

They built all the counter tops and finished the trim in the kitchen. It looks steller! The snackbar is all solid wood, 1.5" thick joined together. We'll then grind it down and clear it, should be very sweet! You can also see the upper cabinets in these pics...time to hunt for a range hood/microwave, lights, kitchen floor, dishwasher....ahh!

GO GREEN!!!

What a GREAT football weekend!

We had a big tailgate on Saturday with the Landis bus and MSU beat UM at The Big "Brother?" House!

I was interviewed and made the article in the Detroit news too...see the link below and email if you want to help with the bus painting!!

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008810250342

Upper cabinets and a wall...

My dad came down with mom and we had a little birthday celebration for Jen last weekend. We also got a lot of work done on the kitchen putting in upper cabinets and cedar on the walls. On Sunday we built the wall that will divide the basement entrance form the living room and support the stairway to the second floor...looking good. I also finished the plastic plumbing for the washing machine.

Catching up...

This past weekend I worked on the house and had some help from friends! G(eaton) and Chuck came over and helped with plumbing and scraping, thanks guys (GO GREEN)! I ending up finishing all the copper plumbing and put primer on anything that was scraped on the outside...of course Jen was there picking away at the paint.

Putting it together...

We've started rebuilding and arranging the kitchen how we want it. We made the ext wall 2x6 so we could stuff some more insulation in there. Rebuilt the wall between the spare room and the kitchen. We also rebuilt the knee wall towards the porch side. Berfore all this we had to rebuild and actually support the loft; the previous beams weren't doing their job. We also added two small beams for support and visual effect in the kitchen... I also completed my second wiring project...the kitchen. So far so good. This weekend will be a 3 day work weekend so we hope to get a lot done.

Fixing the Structure...

OK, basic construction is to reinforce the area when you cut a hole or remove some supporting members...this goes double for stairway openings. The guy that put my basement stairs in didn't realize this....so we had to fix it. 6 new floor joists to support the sagging and old ones. A couple plates to support the end of the ones cut out and two new posts for good measure. Now we have a stable and level floor in the center of the house.