Drywall lift

We got the drywall hoist today! Burt came over and helped Kerry set it up to see if all the parts were there and make sure it wasn't broken. Kerry says she is going to leave it up in the entryway until I get home. She says it is a conversation piece.

I am in England right now, near Oxford. Tomorrow I fly to Kuwait and then back to Germany. They are supposed to send me home on the 5th of May but I won't hold my breath. The first trip I did was to Calgary where the temperature never got above freezing. I sure wish global warming would hurry up, it was in the end of April! I told the Canadian people that they just weren't running their cars enough.

Can't wait to get home to try out the new lift. I ordered parts for the plumbing today also. I hope they come in before I get home.

Drywall

This is DEFINITELY the way to get your drywall to the third floor! The best part of the whole deal is that I paid the same price delivered as I would have paid at Lowes or Home Depot at the store. Southern Drywall Supply had better prices than them even when delivery was included. These guys pulled into the driveway and pulled out 30 minutes later after placing the 44 sheets of drywall exactly where I wanted. I got two 14 foot, thirty three 12 foot and nine 8 foot sheets.

If anyone is in the area I will have a new drywall lift by time I get back home. I ordered one today off Amazon.com. It was 35 bucks a day to rent one and I bought one for 188. It will take 6 days to pay off but if I decided to sell it after I am done I am sure I could get at least a hundred bucks for it. I have always wanted a drywall lift though so I am sure I will keep it. It will sure beat trying to lift a 12 foot sheet over my head while Kerry places the deadman under both sides. I was 5 years younger last time I did that... I am a lot smarter now. =)

I didn't get much done today. I finished the drain plumbing and stubbed out the plumbing for the third floor bathroom vanity. In order to do that I had to make a run to Edmonson's Plumbing to get the pieces that I needed. I will have to remember not to send Kerry on any errands there now. They have really pretty vanities in their new showroom and I am afraid she will see them.

I am headed for Calgary, Alberta tomorrow to fly between there and Hanover, Germany. Already looking forward to being back home to start putting all this drywall up. Yee haw!

Colorful

The girls thought that I made it really colorful going through the opening for all the wires and pex tubing. The yellow is 12 gauge wire, orange is 10 gauge wire, black is coax cable, grey is cat 5 cable, beige is an extra cable just in case I have to pull a wire later, blue is for cold water, and red is for the hot water. There will be more pex tubing running through here by the time I get it all done. I am going to redo the 2nd floor bathroom with pex also. The pipe running up there right now is galvanized pipe and it must be pretty well clogged.
This is a picture of what it looks like at the third floor. I have to figure out how to insulate the pex really well to keep it from freezing. The area where it is will be an unheated part of the attic. I am hoping that I will just be able to bury it in blown in insulation and that will be good enough. This is my first time working with pex. It has been easy so far. I couldn't imagine trying to run copper pipe from the third floor to the basement.

My drywall will be here tomorrow morning. I should be finished with the plumbing by tomorrow too. I was able to finish the wiring today. I ran out of fittings for my drain lines so I had to stop.

Light!

I know it looks just like any other light... but this light is the culmination of DAYS of work! There are 3 more just like it throughout the stairwell. I had Kerry and the girls all take turns going up and down the stairs turning on and off the lights at each switch just so we could all appreciate all the work. =) You can also see some of the beadboard that is throughout the stairwell. Kerry really likes it and wants to keep it stained just like it is.
We also sistered up some ceiling joists to make it straight enough for the drywall. Kerry sure is a great help.

Tomorrow I will finish the wiring and hopefully get a ways on the plumbing. I might even go get some insulation if I am able to get a bunch done.

Sunday

We try not to work very hard on Sunday's. Today we went to Lowes and picked up the switches and lights. When we got home we measured and figured to see how much drywall we are going to need. It looks like we will get another 10 sheets of 8 foot and 35 sheets of 12 foot. I am going to call and order it tomorrow for a Wednesday delivery. I am scheduled to fly to Calgary, Alberta on Thursday. I will fly from there to Hanover, Germany and back. It will be a long flight, scheduled for 9 hours one way.

Tomorrow I hope to actually get some work done!

Whew!

Finally got all the wiring done for the third floor stairwell. I couldn't have done it without Kerry's help. All the wiring is in but I still have to hook up the switches and lights. I didn't have either on hand so I will make a trip to Lowes tomorrow and get them. It takes 2 three way switches and a four way switch. I learned how to wire them on the internet. I love technology!

Erin and Taylor spent a couple hours cleaning up the remaining insulation and plaster from the third floor. I think they created more dust than when I was tearing it all down. It was nice to have the entire family in dust masks together.

Well, the stairwell was a lot harder to wire than I ever imagined. It would have been much easier to just run the wires on the outside of the walls like the previous people did. I wanted to do it much better than that though. I will have to fix a few holes in the plaster now on the second floor... but it will be worth it!

Tomorrow we will make a trip to Lowes for the switches and lights and measure up to find out how many sheets of drywall I need. I found out the local rental place has a drywall lift. That is going to make the hanging a LOT easier. I can also get the drywall delivered to the third floor for only 1.25 a sheet and it is cheaper at the place that delivers to boot. Can't wait till I get to start THAT job.

Shopping

I was only able to get a few wires ran today. I spent quite a bit of time in Lowes trying to figure out all the stuff I needed. I always make a list but there are always more choices and different things that I never think of before I go. I also took a load of junk to the county dump. They let you dump for free if it is things that won't go in the regular trash and not construction debris.

I finally know how I am running the wiring for the lights and light switches in the third floor stairwell. Erin and I were brainstorming and figured out the route. She came up with some pretty creative ways to run the wire... mostly impossible... but creative. At least she was thinking outside the box.

Tomorrow I think I am going to finish wiring up the stairwell even though it is very time consuming. It will be nice to be able to flip a switch and have light in the stairwell. It is a very dark and narrow stairwell right now. Will have to do quite a bit more to catch up to what I wanted to accomplish today.

Back home

Omni sent me back home a day early! I had to work really hard this 10 days. I flew on Delta Airlines from early in the morning on Monday the 7th. Wednesday night I flew one of our planes empty to Ramstein, Germany. I sat in Ramstein from Thursday morning until Tuesday afternoon. That was nice because there is a congregation that I go to there and was able to be there for Sunday. Tuesday afternoon I rode as a passenger in one of our airplanes back to Baltimore, MD. They sent me home Wednesday night. It wasn't very productive for the company but I got a lot of research done on the internet. I am still trying to decide what kind of countertops to put in the kitchen. It is amazing what instruction videos you can find on youtube.

I put in a 14 hour day today working on the house. I mostly did wiring and figuring. I have never wired a 4 way switch before and I have to figure out how to run all the wires through the existing walls in the third floor stairwell. It is going to be a chore. I epoxied my first windows so I hope they turn out okay. I will be able to put the glass in tomorrow and see how they work.

Tomorrow I am going to finish up the wiring and see how much of the plumbing I can get done. Sure was nice to have an extra day! Only 6 more until I go back on reserve duty.

On the road again

Sunday was a busy day around the Paden household. After church services Kerry and I went up to the third floor and did some more of the framing for the bathroom/closet. After evening church services we went back up and finished the framing. The only framing that is left now is making sure all the ceiling joists are straight enough. When you put drywall up on ceiling joists that aren't all at the same height it gets pretty tough. We don't usually do much on Sunday's but I figured if I left all the fresh lumber upstairs for 2 weeks while I am gone that it would be all warped and twisted. Lumber now days is pretty bad, it twists up pretty easy.

After Kerry went to bed I went over to Burt's house and did our taxes. Burt and Kim are out of town so I spent the night over at their house to make them feel better about leaving the kids there alone. It's hard to know when it is okay to leave kids all by themselves overnight. I had to leave at 4am to fly to Atlanta to start my trip anyway. They made sure they got me here to Atlanta first thing Monday morning so I could rest up for my flight in 58 hours. I fly out to Germany on Wednesday evening.

When I get back home I will finish wiring the third floor and doing the little bit of plumbing that is required. I might hire out the drywall to make sure it is done by time we get all the visitors for Gloria and Holly's weddings.

Water!

Finally got started doing the rest of the framing for the third floor. Unfortunately, Erin came upstairs and let me know that there was water in the basement of the little apartment. It rained VERY hard for hours the other day. I knew that if there was water in the little basement then there had to be water in the big basement. I went downstairs and looked and sure enough, there had been as much as 3 inches of water over the whole basement. I am not sure if the sump pump wasn't keeping up or if it wasn't working properly. I had just talked with the next door neighbor about 4 days ago about how dry the basement stayed. I guess that was only when there wasn't a torrential downpour.

We spent the rest of the day going through all the boxes and stuff that we had on the floor in the basements. All of our framed pictures were in a box and now they are spread out on the living room floor drying. We had forgotten most of the stuff we had down there. Erin's baby book is in pretty bad shape, hopefully it will dry out and do okay.

I sure didn't get much done on the house today. Put down a couple of 2x4's for the wall and that was it. I will do our taxes tomorrow afternoon and have to go back to work on Monday morning. I won't get back until the 18th. I will have 6 days off and will try to get as much done then as I can. Hoping to have the third floor at least drywalled by time the family shows up in June.