Weekend Update

I am happy to report that the downstairs portion of the house is relatively secure now with the newly installed windows and door from Home Depot. No more pesky cats sneaking in to do their smelly business while the humans are away. They are still leaving their calling cards around the yard though...

We had our first trash pick-up last week, it made me feel really good for some strange reason. Is that weird? I guess it makes me feel like the house is more a part of me with every little thing that I am taking responsibility for.

We finally freed up some space in the garage. I had the scrap metal guy take away the blue cast iron tub that weighs a ton, and an old washer and dryer that didn't work. Someone else took the other washer and dryer that I think still work but we had no use for. We noticed the garage door is slightly damaged in the bottom, just one more thing to add to the long to do list.

This used to be a door, it is now a window. 

The greenish siding is the premium pre-primed stuff that I agonized whether to spend the money on or not. It's not an exact match to the original siding on our house, about quarter of an inch wider, but close enough. We needed two new doors for the ground floor units, so I tried to save some money by getting these cheap steel doors for $99 from Home Depot. 

We took down some original siding from one side of the house and used them to patch up the other side of the house after we took out two windows and made it into one. The boarded up opening to the left of the new window is where the bathroom window will go. 

These windows were too small to be an egress window (A window large enough, as defined by local building codes, for exit or entry in case of an emergency. Typically required in bedrooms.) on their own, but too big if combined as one giant window for the bedroom. So we took both out and reframed to create one 3'x5' window, which is the minimum requirement for an egress window. 

The interior dirt is being scooped out to get 10 inches below the top of the middle concrete foundation, so there will be enough room to lay down, 1st: 2 inches of sand, 2nd: 4 inches of gravel and finally 4 inches of concrete slab to finish the floor. 

I was falling behind in the priming of the wood siding this week but thanks to my lovely assistant, Justin, who helped this weekend, I only have one final coat of primer and 12 planks left to prime on Monday. Yay!

 I did some research about scaffolding rental and found the price to be around $500-$600 per week. By building our own scaffolding out of 2x4s, the cost was about $300, and the lumber can be reuse after the scaffold comes down. The plan for this week is to take down rest of the back siding, rebuild the horizontal beams that are damaged and put up the sidings! Once the siding's done, the plumber can start working on bathrooms and kitchens. When he's done with the underground pipe placements, we'll pour the concrete slabs. Things are slowly moving along...