Days 18 and 19 - Wood chips and Venting and Progress, oh my...

I thought I got a picture of the piles of wood chips, but apparently not. I love the smell of fresh cut wood! I must have gotten side tracked. Shocking.

Days 18 and 19 brought vents upstairs. Exciting stuff, right? They run from the basement, through a closet in the room that will be my "office". And honestly, it took up a lot less space in the closet then I thought it would. I'm still skeptical that this will work. I am convinced that my A/C unit is too small, and have had discussions with several people that agree. So I'm in a wait and see mode. I can deal with some lost closet space if, down the road, I upgrade to mini-splits. I wanted to go that route in the first place as I thought it was a better option. But it was cost prohibitive. I'll put it on my list of things to do in 10 years, maybe!

So the vents lead upstairs, of course. And here's where you can really see something taking shape...there are 4 vents. 2 in the main bedroom, one in the bathroom and one in the closet/dressing room.

The ceiling height is pretty much determine by where the (insert word I can't remember) is on the eve. So I'm going to have good height.  The area I worry about, though, is at the top of the stairs, where it turns to the right, because we have to bring the joists down to provide enough room for the insulation and electrical, etc. I lose about 5 inches of height. Not a big deal in the center part of the room or even against the wall. However, at the knee wall when you first enter the attic... It may be an issue to get furniture up the stairs. I have to talk to Mike.

I can see a door coming to fruition on the right! The bathroom is a lot bigger than I had pictured in my mind. I'm a bit spatially challenged.

In addition to framing, I dropped the tile sample off. We'll see what Mike thinks tomorrow about my "green" selection of glass subway tile for the kitchen backsplash. I'm going to wait to share that picture until it's actually up in the kitchen. For now, I'm on to thinking about how the cabinets need to be painted. I toyed with stripping the lower cabinets, but I have no idea what kind of wood I would be dealing with on these original cabinets. And they are original. I scrapped the paint off the windows of the uppers, for about 2 hours. The previous owners didn't believe in taping things off! But at least they only painted the kitchen.

The plan going forward is to focus on cabinets for the next day or so and then return to the windows. The best laid plans...

Day 15 - RIP Mold, Hello A/C

This is one of the milestone days I've been waiting for since the day I signed the paperwork on my sink. 

I hefted 2 couches and a big ass TV out of the moldy basement (with help!) just so this day could happen.

And finally, I am mold free and can turn on the A/C. If I knew, with any amount of certainty, that the A/C worked. 

Embarrassing factoid #1. I was never able to have the A/C inspected in May when all the inspections took place because it was 55 degrees or colder for a WHOLE WEEK.  IN MAY! So I went into this with my fingers crossed that the unit still worked. It's only 10 years old. The furnace worked. What could possibly be wrong...

I had every finger and every toe crossed.

Thanks to Jenn and Mario for saving me copious amounts of money. Mario arrived with tools and a hose, and promptly went to full "I AM MAN" mode, cleaning out the ex-changer. And saying things like "I'm not getting the heat exchange ratio I want" and other stuff that totally made NO SENSE to me. But he turned it on, it was quiet and it dropped 5 degrees in the house within 20 minutes. I was ecstatic!

I also bought a dehumidifier for the basement. I know the A/C is on, but I thought this was a better option than relying solely upon A/C for airflow. I bought it, carried it in (after the guy who put it in my car asked if my husband would be able to lift it for me...um...NO!) and set it up, complete with a garden hose from the garage. I'm pretty bad ass when I want to be!

Also, miraculously, the shop vac started working again. I gave Mario credit for that as well. He looked at it and it magically decided to fix itself. That's just money saved, right there!