Ceiling and Can Lights

Monday, July 29

We have a little taper tool that is suppose to make taping off so easy! We have two of them, one for the shop and the other for the house. Kory uses the one at the shop almost on a daily basis with no issues. The one at the house, same as the other one, is a pain! The tape is always bunching up, getting stuck and come away from the paper.  So after work Kory brought his taper home from the shop. Oh my goodness did it work better. Not once did we have an issue! We will definetly be returning the other one and swapping it out. 

After taping the walls off Kory began painting the ceiling. 

As soon as the ceilings had there 2 coats we took the tape off so it wouldn't pull the fresh paint off with it too. It worked perfectly! I love my walls. 

Tuesday, July 30

The plan today was to haul off all the huge cardboard boxes that the pool came in and finish up our brick path to the pool during the morning. Our back yard is all dirt and we're just trying to come up a temporary plan to help keep dirt/mud out of the pool when the kids are constantly in and out. One day we'll have soft, curl in your toes grass!

We had a bit of a lazy morning, more than normal. At 8:30 Emily went out to check on the chickens becuase they were squaking up a storm and we needed to collect the eggs. She came back in saying the coop had a ton of water in it and had thought that maybe the pool was leaking but didn't see any water coming out of it. I went outside to investigate and NO the pool wasn't leaking but our neighbors were getting irrigation. Sometimes the drains have a little blockage and our coop can get quite a bit of water in it. No biggie. An hour later I went outside to start hauling off boxes to discover 1/2 my back yard submerged in water. What the heck? Tried calling the neighbors but it went straight to voicemail. So I texted them both saying there was problem this morning with their irrigation. Emily had somewhere to be at 9:30 so I ran her where she needed to be. When I got home it was about 10 and Brayden and Kylie both had friends coming over for a "pool party". After eating a popsicle and me making sure everyone had sunscreen on we went outside about 10:30. Oh my heck! My entire back yard was flooded. 

The water was above my ankles and was right up to my back patio. There is 20 feet between my pool and patio. That was a ton of water!

I tried calling the neighbors and again it went straight to voicemail. So I went over to their house hoping someone was home. Their adult daughter was home, had noticed their back yard was flooded and was calling around to her family members trying to find someone who could come help. The owners of the house were serving in the temple and wouldn't be done until 12:30. The adults were all at work and so a 16 yr old young man showed up. Luckily he knew were the irrigation valve was (around the corner and down the street) and was able to shut the water off. What a muddy merky mess! So much for hauling off the carboard or laying my bricks this morning. Pretty sure that's not going to get done for a few more days. It's going to take some time to dry out! I'm considering it a blessing that we didn't get the pool pump set up last night that will be sitting on the bricks I was suppose to lay out this morning. It would have filled up with muddy water and could have ruined it.  

At lunch Kory and I began installing the can lights up stairs. When we ran out I headed to St. George to buy what what we would need to finish the upstairs.  

After dinner we got all the can lights done! The bedrooms/closets and family room. 

We are going to have 3 fans in the family room and one fan in each bedroom. I didn't realize how much of the fans we would have to put together from the box. It's not hard, just time consuming. Especially knowing we have 5 to do.  

We got one mostly done before Kory had to go to mutual at 6:30. That's right, Kory not me! 2 Sunday's ago I was released as the 1st councelor in the YW's. Last Sunday Kory was sustained as the 1st Councelor in the YM's. It's funny we had the same calling just in the different youth group. We didn't even get 1 Tuesday home together. Going on about 5 years now...... Maybe one day!

Painting the Walls

Our tape and texture guy wasn't suppose to come until this week. Lucky for us he came the end of last week which gave us a bit of a jump start. I'm certainly not complaining. Unfortunately I had made plans for the kids and I so that we wouldn't be around while the "workers" were here. 

Monday, July 22  we had several errands to run and spent most of the day in St. George. 

Tuesday, July 23 my kids were hanging out with friends so I spent the day cleaning my kitchen. I put piles and piles of tools and and left over supplies from several different projects away. I cleaned out the bottom of my sink and vacuumed up all the debri that's been pilling up like sheetrock dust, insulation, etc. It took me most of the day!

Wednesday, July 24th was Pioneer Day. We spent our whole morning at the park participating in the festivites. That night we began sanding the walls in preperation for painting. 

Thursday, July 25th The girls and I were up at 6:30 sanding the walls. We worked hard until 9:45am. At 10am I took all my kids and a few friends to Las Vegas to go to Wet n' Wild. After a 2.5 hour trip we got there just to be told they had seen lightening and we had to wait 30min. After waiting for almost 1.5 hours and still not being able to get in we headed home and stopped in Warm Springs where we spent several hours before heading home. That sheetrock dust went everywhere!

Friday, July 26th we were up at 6am and began our day. We finished sanding what we had missed in our haste the day before and vacuuming. Then Kory spent the time taping off the windows. 

Several weeks ago we decided to order an above the ground pool. We spend most of our evenings working on the house. During the day the girls and I are quite often doing little things or finishing up what we didn't quite get done the night before. Seems like its just been a summer of work, work, work! It was time to take the time and set this bad boy up. It ended up being a lot bigger than expected! But oh my goodness how we have enjoyed the water in our very own backyard. My kids are living in it. 

In between setting up the pool Kory was spraying our walls upstairs. By 10pm every ceiling/wall had a coat of primer on it. We hope to get it all painted tomorrow. 

Saturday, July 27th

We only had until 2pm to work. My youngest sister, Hanna, was going through the temple for the first time. Between finishing setting up the pool, helping someone who called asking for help and 2 different people "stopping by" to talk to Kory we almost did it. We had 2 coats of paint on all the walls!

My camera had a real hard time taking pictures. Cousins were in town so we didn't have the kids help. I was holding the light so Kory could see and trying to take picts at the same time. The rooms were filled with paint dust and my camera just didn't want to focus. Oh well.... We would have liked to get the ceiling painted too but we just ran out of time. That will be the first thing we do next week. 

Sheetrock Complete!

We had a wonderful reunion this past weekend with Kory's family. It was a nice little break getting away from the house. We're back now and we are ready to work again! On Monday, July 15th the girls and Brayden and I cleaned the upstairs. With the 2 bedrooms and closets being done we swept and vacumed up all the sheetrock dust. Brayden wasn't a fan of vacuming. He would have much prefered to be screwing sheetrock to the walls. 

Monday night after dinner we all jumped right in and began sheetrocking the family room. 

We only had about 6 smaller pieces left of the family room when it got to dark to finish. It was past 8pm and the 2 big kids had been invited to a friends house to play games. So we called it quits, let the big kids leave and we played a game or 2 with little ones and then went to bed!

Tuesday night mutual started an hour early again. I had dinner ready at 5pm so when Kory and Hunter got home for work we ate and jumped right in. We were able to finish the family room and hang another sheet in the bathroom before we all had to leave.  I hate that it's taking us so long but we are making progress. I just have to be patient! 

On Wednesday Kory's lumber didn't show up to the shop. So after lunch he brought an employee (our other guy took the week off) to the house to work until his lumber was delivered. We were able to finish the bathroom sheetrock and the stairwell! I will never have a 2 story house again. I hated setting the walls for the upstairs, being so close to the edge. I hated being on the roof so high of the 2nd story, I hated having to carry sheets of plywood up the ladder to the 2nd story on the outside. Carrying the lumber and sheetrock up the stairs was also a pain, thats some heavy material! And now having to hang the sheetrock in the stairwell, It was hard. My arms and hands are tired and sore! I know I will love it when it's all done but it really was a lot harder to do than the main floor.  

We are done with the sheetrock upstairs. It feels so good!

The guys then came downstairs and began working on the kitchen plumbing. They didn't get to far when Kory got the call that his lumber had finally arrived! 

Kory took off Thursday from his real job to go on a Priest Horse Backing Trip with Hunter. They left early Thursday morning and didn't get back until Saturday night about 6:30. They had an awesome time. 

Thursday afternoon there was a knock on my door. It was our texture guy! He had come to start taping the upstairs. 

It took several hours but they got most of the upstairs taped and screw holes filled before they had to leave. 

They did not come back on Friday which I will admit I was a little dissapointed. However they did show up Saturday morning. They taped off my stairs so that when they start sanding hopefully the majority of the mess will stay upstairs! They got everything taped and filled. They hope to come back next week sometime to start texturing. WooHoo! I just might have kids upstairs by the time school starts afterall. Just 23 days left of summer. How awesome would that be?

Our heating and air guy also showed up Saturday morning. We had a busy house! He was able to connect a few ducts together and move the duct work in the upstairs bathroom. The duct was coming out of the floor by the door. He moved it across the room so it will be under the vanity. It will make it easier to clean the bathroom floors this way. Knowing I will have 3 girls with long hair upstairs I really didn't want that vent to collect all the hair!

He didn't get quite done when his wife called to say that she was in labor!  

He took off to Cedar and said he'd be back!

Congrats J.C

So awesome to see so much progress done on the house this week. I am getting excited!

Starting on Sheetrock

People are always asking, "So when do you think you'll be done with your house?" or "Do you have a date set to be done yet?". Oh how I hate these questions. We are not in the process of buying a house. There is no "closing date". We aren't paying someone to build our house. So again there is no "finish date". It will be done when it gets done. We're going just as fast as we can. To be honest we ALL wish it was done yesterday! But it's not. We are fully aware of how long it's taken us. But we didn't get a loan, we are paying for everything in cash. We are not in debt! We are going as fast as we can and we are tired!  But it is coming along. And so we don't have a "date" or a goal. Although I am starting to tell everyone, "by the end of the year". Our landscaping probably won't be done, the cement we want poured to the back shed and our driveway might not be done either. But I am hoping the inside will be done. I'm hoping my walls will be painted, my home decor will be on the walls, we will have more than 1 finished bathroom, I will be curling my toes in carpet (something we haven't had for 3 years now) and I will have a "real" kitchen again. All before Christmas is what I would really like. But time will tell.....

What I would really, really like but something I just recently voiced to my kids is that I would really like our upstairs to be done by the time school starts. As of today (July 8th) school starts up again 5 weeks from today or 35 days. I would love it to be all painted, have a working bathroom and carpet. We are so close I don't see why it couldn't be done but something always seems to come up, whether its a different kind of expense, like Kory's truck breaking down, so we have a lack of funds, or time getting away from us with other things that need to be done.

And so this week I was really hoping that we could get the whole upstairs sheetrocked.

And so on Monday night, July 8th we all began working in Maddies bedroom.  We didnt bother with the sheetrock lift since we had all the kids help. We lifted that sheetrock high and then Kory and Hunter would screw it in. 

Emily went around sweeping up the insulation mess. 

We let a friend borrow our sheetrock lifter we use for the lower sheets and he "forgot" to bring it back to us. But we got all the upper pieces in.

Even Brayden took his turn putting in screws. 

Maddie and Emily took turns drawing our lines so the boys had a refrence where the studs were underneath.  

Miss Kylie was our girl who kept our hands full of screws. 

On Monday we were able to get all the upper sheets up in Maddies bedroom. We got 2 upper sheets done in her closet. We realized we had forgotten to blow in insulation behind the bathtub, which share's the wall in the closet. Uggghhh... Kory wasn't quite done with the plumbing the 1st time we had the insulation machine. We figure we'd finish that wall the 2nd time we had the machine but we forgot. Oops! So we hung one sheet in Emily's bedroom and one sheet in the family room and then it was time to call it quits.   

Tuesday nights are a hard night to work. We've got scouts and mutual. This week everyones activities started an hour earlier so we really didn't have time to work. But Kory and I did install all the electrical boxes in the dining room area and the office. 

On Wednesday the girls and I worked most of the day. We were able to get the office and dining room electircal boxes wired. Now we just need Kory to put in the can lights and we can wire them next. 

We also had to cut little squares of insulation and then shoot them where the top and bottom floor meet. What you see above Emily's head in the picture below. Emily went around and foamed the edges for us. 

Maddie putting the pieces in.  

I sat on the floor and cut, cut and cut. 

Wednesday night we had pack meeting. So once again we didn't get as much as we would have liked done. We did get our toe lifter back so we hung the 3 bottom sheets in Maddie's room and another sheet in the family room. We won't be able to hang anymore sheets until we insulate that last little bit.  

The kids and I spent Thursday getting ready for our last family reunion of the year. We are going camping in Alton tomorrow and are in charge of dutch oven potatoes. So we spent the day packing, finding all our camping gear, slicing potatoes and cutting up onions. We are going to work a 1/2 day tomorrow but need to be in Cedar about 3pm. Although we insulated last weekend we quickly realized we are still loosing a lot of our cool air into the attic. We were able to insulate one side of the stairs but not the other. And so we haven't been running our AC this week like we had planned. Kory and I aren't sleeping well due to how warm it is at night. And so instead of finishing the sheetrock on Friday we decided we're going to rent the insulation machine for in the morning. 

Saturday morning, Kory was up and gone about 5:30am. He had left to Cedar to buy another case of insulation so we can actually finish the upstairs and attic for good this time. At 8am we began.... 

We first went around the upstairs and finished blowing insulation around the bathtub and little crevices we had missed the 1st time. And then Kory climbed into the attic over the 1st part of the house and we added more to get that higher R value than what Sun Roc had done several months ago. When we were about 1/2 done the family switched jobs. Hunter climbed into the attic while Maddie and Kylie kept the insulation coming.  

Look at that cute little girl doing her best to help!

That left Emily, Kory and I to start on sheetrocking. 

When the insulation was done everyone helped with the sheetrock. 

We ALL worked until about 1pm and then we began hitting the showers. We still had to return the insulation machine and be to the Cedar Temple at 3:30/4. Wow did we work well together. We were able to finish Maddies room and closet 100% We also hung sheetrock in Emily/Kylies Room. So it and the closet is also done 100%. 

I was hoping to get the whole upstairs sheetrocked this week, we didn't. but we still did good. We worked almost every single night plus 1/2 day Friday and we got a lot accomplished. We have 2-3 sheets hung in the family room and 2 sheets hung in the bathroom. Hoping to get both rooms finished early next week so that we can get our tape and texture guy back out. It will take him a few days to get his part done and then we can paint which will also take a few days, hang light fixtures, install all the electrical covers and hopefully get our carpet going. We've got just under 30 days before school starts. We can do this!

Insulating the Upstairs Attic

Thursday July 4th

We have a family reunion to attend this weekend. So instead of playing Thur, Fri and Saturday we decided to work Thursday and probably half of Saturday too. If possible we'd like to get more insulation for our attic on Saturday. It's only getting hotter!

Thursday morning we got up bright and early and got started. We had 34 pieces of sheetrock that are 4 1/2 ft wide by 12 ft long to unload from the trailer. These suckers are heavy! But we love them that we only get one seem in the middle of the walls instead of 2. We decided that since we had run out of the felt we might as well just hang the sheetrock on the ceiling instead. 

We worked and worked and worked. 

We got the entire ceiling done except for one piece we purposely left off so that Kory can climb up  in the attic and blow insulation on Saturday. 

We also hung sheetrock on the walls in the utility room. Hoping our mud guy can come next week to tape and mud. Then we can have our AC installer come back and install our 2nd unit. We wanted this room done before he installs since it's a pretty small utility room. We also hung 1/2 the bathroom walls too. Kory decided last week that we had better wait to blow in that wall until we had sheetrock hung above the shower. We've never done this blown in stuff before and he was a little worried about getting too much in the walls and then haveing problems with the sheetrock.

We are ready! Hunter and Maddie left at 4 and went to the St. George concert, Emily went to a bbq with a friend so it was just the 2 littles and Kory and I. They wanted DQ for dinner so we took them there and then came home and watched a movie. At 10:30 we drove up to the park to watch the fireworks with them. It was a good day! 

Saturday, July 6th

We spent yesterday at a family reunion. Decided to come back last night instead of camping in 100+ weather. We do that already at home. The kids wanted to stay with cousins so we let them but it gave us most of Saturday to work.  Kory took off to Cedar again to grab 2 palletts/36 bags of insualtion and the machine. 

Being we had done this once before we got right on it. We were able to insulate the attic of the 2nd story. Then we insulated the wall that goes around our storage in the attic. We also got the stairwell done. We had to run a few more wires from the panel box out in the garage to the kitchen. We wanted to get this done before we seal up the attic and make it a lot harder to get into. When Kory climbed back there he wasn't too impressed with the insulation job we hired out months ago for the first part of the house. Our AC guy told us from his experience a R-60 usually means that the majority of your duct work is under insulation. A R-49 means there about 1/2 way covered. Our ducts are mostly visible meaning we probably only have a R-39 which is what our current bid came in.  The thicker the insualtion is keeps the ducts cool during the winter or warm in the winter. Do we need it that thick? Nope! But everyhouse we have lived in over the past 18 years has had sucky insulation over all. We are always hot in the summer and cold in the winter without cranking the AC/Heater up and down. We've lived in many homes that you can feel a breeze. We are not doing that. We will be staying in this house for many years to come and we want it done right and effectively. And so we will probably be buying more bags of insulation to add to the attic. 

Breaking down our insulation bid to do the radiant foil, insulate the attic, attic storage area and exterior walls would have been $3337. We have done that all with a much higher R value and did the interior walls for a cost at $2429. True it would have only taken them one day to do it where it took Emily and I ALL day to felt plus another 10 hours of blowing in the insulation (4 hours of that was driving to Cedar back and forth to get our supples.) We are up almost a $1,000 from the bid and probably another $1,000 we were told due to the increase of R value and doing the interior walls. So we estimate we saved $2,000 by doing it ourselves in a good 2 days worth of work. Im thinking it was probably worth it to do it ourselves.   

Not very good at taking selfies but here I am!

We had a great day! It's awsome to know we can finally turn on our AC!

Insulating The Upstairs Walls

Friday, June 28th

This weekend our goal is to get the upstairs insulated. The walls, attic, everything so we can turn on our AC. Before we could put the felt or sheetrock on the ceiling Kory wanted to hang up a foil radient barrier. This stuff is suppose to bounce the heat off our house, keeping our attic cooler. My parents did this in their house and are glad they did. They say their electric bill is always less than others in the neighborhood. To them it was totally worth it. The bid to do this alone in our insulation bid was $1125. We bought one roll and we have more than half left for $55.80. We also used a box of staples which was another $10. Not to bad!  I won't lie, it was a pain to hang/staple this stuff to the trusses. On both edges of the house we had to cut the foil and staple it around each truss.

Our attic space is not big! So we had Brayden crawl up there and drag the foil down the house for us. It went a bit quicker with his help. 

 It wasn't hard just very time consuming and we were working with our hands over our heads the entire time. We did 2 runs down each side and then one in the middle. I seriously hated every moment of it. I was sweaty and it was seriously dripping off my chin. My arms hurt and my fingers were numb having to use the manual stapler. Brayden was using the electrical one since he didn't have the strength to use the manual one. It took a while but we finally got it. I just hope it's worth it. It's kind of an optional thing. We've got friends who install it on all their personal and spec homes and then we've got friends who have never installed it. Go figure.....

Kory and Kylie also finished the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom. 

Friday afternoon Kory took off to Cedar to grab the insulation and machine from Home Depot. The one here was broken of course. When he got home Brayden and I were done with our jobs so it was time to finish hanging the felt on the ceiling so we could start blowing it in. 

We got 2 runs of felt on the ceiling when we ran out. Kory didn't realize that Emily and I were already on our 2nd roll. We had ordered another roll a few days prior knowing we were going to run out but it hadn't come yet. Originally we were just going to insulate the exterior walls. After talking to some friends we decided to also insulate the interior walls for a sound barrier to. Which is why we knew we were going to run out and had ordered more. Talk about feeling despair again. Really? Here we are with 30 bags of insualtion, a machine for 24 hours and we can't even finish what we started? So, so frustrating! We don't have to have felt on the ceiling we can do sheetrock but...... we don't have any and Home Depot/Lowes doesn't sale the bigger pieces we like and it's more expensive. The place we usually buy it from was closing and there was no way we'd make it there in time. The frustration was real that night. We decided to walk away and start again in the morning. 

Saturday June 29th

Although we had wanted to start with our attic and work down we decided to do what we could with what we had. So we started with the walls. It was so easy! Kory poked a hole into the felt, stuck our pvc pipe he screwed to the end of the  hose and filled the bays. 

The machine was super simple to run, just had a on and off button.

The only issue we had was that the pvc pipe we were using was building up stattic electricity and kept shocking Kory. At first it started just a little bit, but it gradually got stronger. When it shocked him I could see the sparks and it would hurt. It was crazy! We kept stopping for him to add a gound to the pipe to absorb the electricity. Nothing was working. We finally took the super thick cardboard tube that the felt had been wrapped around and used it in its place. No more shocks. 

In 3.5 hours we had every wall upstairs insulated and they are full! We are getting that R-30 we wanted. As I had mentioned earlier at the begining we weren't planning on doing the interior walls and so we forgot to add more insulation into our calculations. We ended up using all 30 bags upstairs in the walls. The insulation cost us $976.82. So far it's cost us $1375 and we know we are getting what we want!  When we got back from Cedar we had a package on our door. It was that 3rd roll of felt! Oh well..... Kory had to go talk to 2 clients about an upcoming cabinet job and so we called it a day. It is so awesome to see the progess we made this weekend. We went ahead and turned the AC on for a few hours that night. It felt so good! We turned it off in the morning and then turned it back on after church on Sunday. We've got it set at 76 and it feels so good inside! I can't wait till we can leave it on.