Heat and More Heat!

(NO, WE ARE STILL NOT IN!)

Now that I've got that out of my system....have my blogs become more frantic as we go?

Anyway, WE HAVE HEAT, both the radiant floor heat is now on and a new fireplace is in! First floor heat. I'm sure some of you remember that we did our own tubing. This happened quite a while ago and I blogged about it some time in the summer of 2012. To turn on that heat, quite a bit of boiler stuff had to happen. 

 First off, meet John, John is our magic man. He makes all these boiler pieces work. Both Curt and he have been working on the system now for about a month or so. I wish I could truly explain it all, it's just crazy, but the amount of parts he had to put together boggle the mind. I'm serious!

This is kind of a good overview shoot of the boiler room.

This funny little copper square box like thing is a heat exchanger. The hot water from the water heater goes through it and then comes back in after heating the floor. It's kinda crazy how the water is really pretty cool when it comes back through, but hot after it hits this little box. There are all sorts of gages and tubes and pipes and they all do something and I'm just not that interested in it all except that IT WORKS AND MY FLOOR IS HEAVENLY WARM!

This part below tells you how much water is needed in each of the tubes and each area. It's pretty cool. But again, beyond my care to comprehend such things.

I am MUCH, MUCH more interested in the fireplace. It literally went up in a week. It was  really exciting to watch and I was disappointed I was at work the whole time.

First things first, we were going to do a really modern type of fireplace out of concrete block, however, my scavenger of a husband found these bricks for free, yes that's right, free! As I've said before this is the house that craigs list has built.

A little more traditional than what we were going for in the beginning, but free is free and the fire place is really cool!

We had a mason friend of ours build it for us and he did an amazing job. 

Here is a stack-o-bricks that they used. And you can see, it was literally the coldest time of the year. I think it was a whole 20 degrees out.

 And the brick saw!

Then they start with a base. I will apologize for some poor quality pictures. I could only get up there in the dark for most of the week, so the lighting was really bad.

You can see it's a really good size!

After they get the base built they fill the fire box part with concrete.

The fireplace turns around the corner and has a huge section for firewood storage.

This angle is taken from the hallway to the bedroom. So the fireplace adds a bit of privacy to the back of the house where the bedrooms are. It gets taller. :)

These blocks get removed from under the heart, they are holding it up while it dries.

The kind of fireplace we build is called a Rumford, these are some of the pieces that are used for the flue and fire box.

These are the only picture I have of Jody and his worker actually building it. Curt had to get them for me. I was at work.

It's starting to take shape now.

As you can see this goes all the way to the ceiling. Which adds the privacy to the back.

And here is is almost all finished. We have not got the mantel on and the chimney covered all up yet. But we can now build a fire in the house. As you can see the fire box is shallow, we have to build a taller fire and this allows for more heat to go into the house. The whole top of it that looks kinda messy gets covered up. And we have some glass blocks with lights coming to fill in the holes you see on the left hand side. 

Next up should be cabinets. One of the showers is done, but I'll blog about that when then are both done.

And here we are at the end of October and are we in the house?

NOPE!

Things just move a bit more slowly than I would like them too.

OK, now that I have that out of my system, I'll catch you all up on what is done. 

The Septic system has all been put in!! YAY, so that would supposedly mean that we can put a toilet in the house so I don't have to keep running over to the park to pee. But alas, I've see no toilet yet. May be soon.

You can see how they made a giant mess of the front yard. And of course by the time they got around to doing our septic system it was quite literally the rainiest day of the year, and it had to be done since we can't move dirt after September 30. So soft mud every where. I sank to the middle of my boots in this mound.

These are the tops of the tanks, I was at work while all this was done soo, I only have after pictures. Curt calls them potty chambers.....

We now have to wait until May 1 to get them covered since we can't move any dirt until then because we are in the Lake Padden watershed. AUGH, I have to look at potty chambers right outside the front door all winter. BLARG!

They had to do a trench all the way down to the bottom of the property for the drain field. Where they built this lovely mound. With tubes coming out of it. 

Then we have to cover everything with hay. This was really exciting and full of sneezing.

Seriously, enough with this boring stuff. Our DOORS are also finished and up. So we are entirely closed in!

A friend of ours made the doors and he did a really lovely job. This is the small patio door, it's getting it's final coat of sealer. 

It looks like this all hung up!

And the big front door is really nice, it's 4 1/2 feet wide by 7 1/2 feet tall. It weighs 150lb. It also has a special Dawn closer on it. It closes all by itself so I don't slam it. I'm not a door slammer but apparently I close doors to hard for Curt's comfort. He is also Dawn proofing all the cabinets. I'm not sure how I feel about that.....

Here it is getting it's final coat of sealer.

And here it is all hung up! I need to find some cool hardware for it. Since it's just a dead bolt I think I'll look at for some great funky iron pieces.

And I found these crazy mushrooms at the property the other day. They were kinda cool looking!

Lets Talk about the Floors!

Things are moving along at the house this month. We are supposedly going to be in at the end of October, but I'm still a bit skeptical about that. What I have worked on for the last couple of weeks is the floor. After the sheet rockers left this is what it looked like. All covered up with paper. 

It was important, ( and I did not know this) to fold up the paper in a burrito type style to remove it. I did not know that you could not just wad it up....

Creating a nice tidy little bundle that will not drop dirt etc. all over the floor and will fit into the back of the truck. My first attempt was, shall we say, less than perfect, thus creating the large mess on the floor, and I got the huge eye roll from Curt. Double Whammy.

However, the rest went fairly good.

Ta Da! Perfect paper burrito!

All loaded up in the pick up! However by the time I was done it was super full.

Next up was sweeping and washing. For this I got to play with this enormous beast all weekend.

It was pretty hard to manage and would not get into the corners very well. But did clean the middle parts fairly well. 

So because we could not get all the soap off the floor we got a smaller machine the next day and just rinsed it several times. Here is the baby beast!

After cleaning it all up and rinsing. Its looking pretty good!

After vacuuming up the floor for what seems like the 400th time I get to wax it...........

This involves these tools and me pushing them around the entire house 4 times in a row. Heck it only took 3 days.

I should be done by now you think, right? But know, I have too much on and it's starting to chip up.

So I will have to run a polisher over it. Right before we move in. It will be the last thing on the list. Since it also scratches right now.  

UGH! Sometime I really just feel like I'm just one of these guys!