Megan visited today — mother of Jadin’s friend Molly. She loves what we’ve done with the house. Thank you, Megan. She is officially only our second visitor.
Above, Habitat hauled away the last of the items we are donating from Emerald Hill. This is what remains — a collection of single-pane aluminum windows, the old fireplace mantel, and one of the original red-and-white-painted front doors. We’ve done well. We’ve done good.
Electrical. The electrical walk continues, locating switches and outlets in the house. It’s day 3 of the electrical rough-in. Steve from Capstone Electric, Ron from Ranserve, and Steven focused today on the family room, kitchen, pantry, office, mudroom, garage, exterior lights.
Steven has homework — a run to Ikea over the weekend to purchase samples of the LED puck lights that will be used in display niches in the entry hall, and linear LED light strips with motion sensors that will be used inside closets. Steve the electrician needs one of each to figure out how to wire them up properly — “because no LED light fixture is wired the same as another.”
Almost two hours. With 10 minutes left over for Steven and Ron to talk about the flooring and building of stairs. Ron thinks he has it figured out. More detail to come.
Plumbing. Albert and the team from Custom Plumbing continue to install red, white and blue PEX tubing for water lines, while also pressure testing the gas lines.
Painter. Ron has the painters working in the house for the first time, caulking all the holes and sealing open joints in the exterior framing and siding, preparing the house for expanding foam insulation that would escape through any punctures in what will become a “sealed envelope.”
Habitat donations. Steven contacted Habitat at Ron’s request to ask for a fourth pickup — we have more stuff pulled out of the house for Habitat to recycle.
Draw 2. Larry at South Star reports the wire transfer payment by the Leons to Ranserve executed today. Kathleen at Ranserve is cheering.
Yesterday, the brick exterior wall at the back of the kitchen was cut open for the new, larger window over the kitchen sink — and the original sliding glass door was still in place.
Today, the framing crew cut open the wall to add the new window to Steven’s office, and then mounted the new office and kitchen windows into place.
Here’s the new window in the office, from inside the office. More light!
And the sliding glass door has been removed. The brick wall here will be extended to the right, toward the garage. A new 36-inch wide exterior door will slot into the corner with the garage.
Here is the sliding glass door, removed, ready for donation to Habitat.
Habitat for Humanity has nearly emptied the garage of items we are donating.
And they took away the HVAC condensors.
With the third Restore/Habitat receipt hanging on Ron’s project-tracking whiteboard in the garage control room.
Kris and crew load the Habitat truck with some of the donations we are making as Habitat executes the second of three planned pickups.
Here’s a photo tour of the house as of today.
Back from NYC and “day job” earning money to pay for this remodel, tackling the to-do list:
HVAC observation. Emerald Hill at approximately 3200 sq ft heated will have half the HVAC "tonnage" as the Leon's existing 4200 sq ft heated -- 4 tons dual speed at Emerald Hill vs. 8 tons multispeed at Sea Eagle View. Emerald Hill is getting new insulation -- foam in the attic, blown-in in the walls, new exterior sheathing, new siding, new dual-pane insulated windows, and more, but will that suffice when Sea Eagle has foam everywhere? This math is worrisome ...
Kyle messages: "Bigger system will give you the extra capacity to cool the house more quickly if you wanted it cooler than 75 degrees when it is more than 100 outside and also will give you extra capacity if you have a lot of guests.
"The smaller system will run more often and remove humidity better and generally speaking be more efficient."
Photos by Mark Rehberg, president of Ranserve.
The Restore crew and truck from Habitat for Humanity arrives to pick up the donations we are making.
