Starting to Put it All Back Together

What could have been a bust of a week (I was sick and lost a couple of work days/nights) turned into a pretty productive week. 

The guys at Andrew Hurst Construction got started on the garage.  After one day, they had the walls up.

 After 2 days, it looked like this.

The garage is going to be huge!

The wiring and register ducts have been installed in most of the rooms upstairs. This means that the plasterers can start refinishing the walls, and the HVAC guys can set the furnace. 

1 Ceiling boarded and ready for plaster.

 CJ's Room, ready for plaster.

 So close, and yet so far. This kid was a big help today. He got Seth and I everything that we needed, fed the cats, and cleaned up after our messes. He really wanted to put the last piece of plasterboard up in his room.

The hallway is ready for plaster. I may or may not have cut the cord for the attic ladder in half while notching out the board for the lights.

In order to get the return and supply lines in place for the furnace, I needed to remove a portion of an 18" thick stone wall in my basement. Fortunately, my brother, Justin, has this amazing tool called a hammer drill.  But this isn't like any hammer drill I've ever seen before.  It did in seconds what the sledge hammer couldn't do at all.  When I grow up, I want one of these!

 The tool meets the wall.

 Sometimes it was still useful to have a sledgehammer and a chisel (courtesy of my mom and dad).

On a previous post, I mentioned how much I dislike spiders.  I'm not sure if it is all of the construction, the cold weather, or something else, but I haven't seen many spiders in a long time.  So while I was knocking out the stone wall, this enormous wolf spider ( this picture doesn't do it justice, but his body alone was over a 1/2" in diameter ) crawled out.  Although he put up a good fight, ultimately he was no match for the hammer drill.

The End result.  I mentioned above that CJ was a huge help.  He carried all of those broken blocks and stones out of the basement (some weighed about as much as him) loaded them in the RTV, dumped them, and then swept up all of the little debris.  He was so tired that when we got home, he headed straight for the shower and then to bed with no prompting and no fussing - we'll have to do this more often!

The best part of the week was that I got some good snuggle time with these two cuties.  I think we are all looking forward to the day when that can happen at our new house.

A lot of big things - plaster, furnace, enclosing the garage, will happen next week!

Until next time!

Chris