We picked up the new puppy on Friday. Rodale should put out a “Chew This, Not That” book, it may only be 1 page paperback though. Click here or on photo at right for more photos.

It rained all day Sunday so I decided to work on improving my 3D modeling skills. Haven’t decided on using TurboCAD 3D or SketchUp for our redesign. SketchUp is easier, however, the outputs are a little cartoony. I did some basic textures. Tricky. Maybe I should use SketchUp for the concept plans and TurboCAD for the actual design? If anyone knows anyone that has experience with both, I’d be interested in discussing the pros and cons. I “designed” our temporary bathroom in 3D last month to learn SketchUp. Had I used 3D when we built it we could have saved alot of time, money and hassle; you can really see how things fit together and avoid problems in the 3D environment.

2nd Attempt 3D Modeling – Basement as of 1/24/2010

1st Attempt, Our Temp Bathroom (back in December)

This is for the curious who dance around the “how much is this costing you” question.  Thanks to online banking it’s really easy and depressing to answer.  I’ve been keeping a running spreadsheet on the house project expenses and to date we’ve spent $30,577.

More than half of this was at our local hardware store, Lowe’s and Home Depot.  Actually, the local hardware store sent us a handwritten thank you card for our business in 2009 and that they are “looking forward to helping us” in 2010.  Great.

We added a Total Project Cost bar to the right hand side, I’ll try to up date it periodically.  We’ll have a party when we’ve spent more than we paid for the place.

The large platform erection from the basement to the 1st floor, which was the base for the 8-10 foot-ish shoring posts was removed last night!!! Matt brought over two 16 foot posts that run from the basement floor to the 2nd floor beam. It took all of 30 minutes to put the new posts in and tear down the old platform. Probably a boring update but I am really excited about this change up.

The Evolution of the Platform Shoring, Click for Larger

The new “temporary” sink is finally done!  We decided it was best to not be dependent on the “other side” for any of our domestic needs.  Our sink for dishes, etc has been a slop sink on the other side.  Requires walking entirely around the house at night… to wash a fork.  No fun when it is 11 degrees.

There are two windows on the backside of the house that connect into the addition we are living in.  They were covered over with drywall.  We cut one of those out, framed it, used the extra tongue/groove plank we have, $40 stainless steel sink from contractor surplus store… scrap counter top, some pex, drain pipe, caulk and minwax, done.

Atleast we can honestly say, ‘when we were young, we had to schlep the dishes around the house in the cold snow and rain to wash them.’

Photos, Click for Larger:

You can now stand in the basement and look up three floors to the roof! We’re officially down to the stone and beams.

The floor came up easy. We started at 7 on Friday, by 9 we had everything off the 2nd floor and hoisted down to the basement. By lunch time we were done and stacking the salvageable plank and burning the scrap.

Billy wore fall protection again, no accidents! Tim was here on Friday and took some photos with the wide angle lens!

We stacked the plank in our growing “reclaimed” wood pile. Come spring I would like to take the nails out and run it through a planner and table saw the edges.

All of our tools are scattered all over the basement. The plan is to organize them back into their buckets and take what we don’t need to storage. When we’re all cleaned up we can get work on getting some scaffold setup so we can resume stone work.

The dog arrives in less than two weeks. Billy is here everyday this week working on clearing out along the stream!

Video of the 2nd Floor Removal

Photos, Click for Larger:

Billy & Lisa’s Mom came out on Wednesday to help remove the stairs leading from the 2nd floor to the attic.  The two staircases below (basement – 1st, 1st to 2nd) were removed by Dave & Lisa.  It would be a long fall down so we insisted Billy wear fall protection.  Billy is returning next Friday, we are going to remove the 2nd floor, floor and that should finally complete our demolition.

After the stairs were removed, we started taking down all of the plank and scaffolding that was not apart of the shoring.  Matt is going to replace the existing shoring platform with 2, 16 foot shoring posts.  That will free up alot of working space.

We had one last vacation we failed to mention… we’re back from Cancun.  It was a good trip, weather was good, resort was nice, food/drinks good.  We left before the snow hit the northeast and returned Christmas Eve.

Work on the house resumed on Saturday/Sunday.  We removed the stairs from the 1st to 2nd floor.  We’ll knock out the 2nd floor to the attic stairs next this week and weekend.  Good to be back!

Click above for Vacation Photos… if you’re interested!

We’ve been traveling for work so few photos during last two weeks! It’s probably not a good idea to publish on a website about your house when it will be empty for a week… so we conveniently failed to mention our travel plans.

We did managed to squeeze in a small Christmas tree, between the heater and the toaster oven. A terrific location if you want to die in a house fire. We also strung up some lights on the (ugly) bush tree thing outside. David’s parents gave us a nice live wreath to hang on the front door.

We also finished putting in some up lighting on the left side of the front house.

With Christmas & New Years falling on a Friday we should have two nice weekends to work on the house coming up!!!

David got Lisa (reserved/deposited on/paid for) a puppy for Christmas. It will be 4 weeks old on New Years Day, we hafta go down and pick one out of the litter. It is a Vizsla (female), click here for Wikipedia.

Thanks to J.Ward for his assistance!

It doesn’t shed… 40-45 pounds when full grown. A compromise between David’s dog allergies and Lisa’s wanting a Lab… since Sid doggers lives at her parents.

We’re back from Orlando!  Weather there wasn’t, much better.  Had we been there for vacation it would have been a bummer, but work purposes this trip. Came home to snow!

Tim took about 60 photos while he was here for Thanksgiving.  I’ve uploaded some to our FlickR account.  There are some shots of the root cellar – we’ve not taken any photographs of it before.  He was also able to get some photos of the upstairs work with the wide angle lens.  Next time we’ll clean up more so we can post more pictures.  I didn’t realize we have so many Kutztown Beverage Red Cream Soda bottles and Coors Light Bottles sitting around!

Photo Slideshow:

Dave’s brother was in town for Thanksgiving, he started cleaning out the “cluster” trees along the creek (if anyone knows what kinda tree they are, please comment). The thorn bushes got him pretty good! The weird trees cleaned up nicely!

We had a large burn pile on Saturday, managed to burn everything from the previous weekend and new stuff from Tim and Saturday’s work.

Lisa worked on the interior wall on Sunday, Dave did more brush clearing outside – weather was nice, shorts & t-shirt.

I looked at compact tractors on Saturday, considering a Kubota, hafta decide on model and attachments, probably brush hog/tiller, mower deck and front loader, don’t have much need for a back hoe at the moment. Bought a new chainsaw on black Friday.

Photos, Click for Larger:

While trying out a new blade for the weed-whacker on Friday afternoon, we discovered a dead raccoon along the stream. David buried it Saturday morning.

It was 60+ degrees this weekend so we took advantage of the unusually warm temperatures and resumed clearing out thorn bushes and vines along the stream. The first section is probably the worst we’ll encounter. The stream splits and forms an island, on the island lived 17 (counted) thorn/prickly bushes all tangled into each other. Most of these had fallen into the stream and formed a dam of sorts, which causing the stream to flood the banks and island when it rains.

There is quite a bit of toe erosion and undercutting in the one section. I began stacking rocks along the bank to address the issue for now.

Billy worked on Sunday to help finish clearing out that section. Matt and Todd stopped out for a few hours, we yanked some thorn bushes with the truck and strap. Tim is coming for Thanksgiving – if the weather is good, we’ll continue working on it.

Before & After Photo, Click for Larger

This past weekend we began removing the old clay mortar and plaster that we chipped off 3.5 of the 4 upstairs walls.  David rigged up a zip line to send buckets down 1 by 1.  In total we removed about 80 buckets, weighing between 50 and 75 pounds.  Brian and Lisa’s Mom came by on Sunday to help us expedite this activity.

We can use our front door again! We had to remove the scaffold section that was holding up the walk-way so the oil tank could be removed.

It’s hard to climb ladders with bus-pan of dirty dishes after a few cocktails and wine at night… so we ate at restaurants for an entire week.

I removed some stones, cleaned out the rotted wood that was jammed under the door frame, hunted (literally) for new stones in our backyard to fit… worked those in and left enough of a gap to slide planking in and back almost 18 inches. Walk way restored… and no scaffold below!

Apgar Oil came out last week and removed our old oil tank! It was a real pain in the ass to get out of the basement… required removing some of the header above our bilco (gordon) door… but they got it out.

A new tank needs to be brought into the basement before the 1st floor is installed… or the basement door needs to be adjusted. Hmm. Debating the hassle of moving most of our utilities to either a summer kitchen or root cellar. Needs more thought.

After almost two weekends all off the leaves are off the trees, raked and burned. The yard looks nice again. David mowed and cleaned up along the stream on Saturday.

Sunday we "officially" started the stonework phase of the project…. i.e., removing the old mortar from the interior stone walls and eventually repointing them. We’ve been dabbling in small areas while we come to an agreement on the color of the mortar for pointing.

We started on the 2nd floor, south gable. It took both Lisa & I 3 hours, including beer run to chip off the surface mortar and plaster from floor to top of the gable. This was probably the dirtiest task we’ve undertaken. We were shocked at how much clay/dirt/limeplaster came off the walls… gotta be at least 2000 lbs… estimating by how much fills 1, 5 gallon bucket, weighed, and how many buckets it will take to remove it.

We think the stones look great! We were concerned that the interior stone laying might not look all that nice because they were not laid to be on display.

The chimney was a mess, about 6 feet of it is filled with old bird nest and dead bird grime. The attic window sill is going to need some work, stone laying, etc.

We went to the White Palm, as usual on Friday night. Lunch at Esterly’s Saturday… breakfast at Chatty’s & lunch at Herman’s on Sunday… David’s Mom brought us out cupcakes, we had dinner at Lisa’s parents Sunday night.

Photo Update, Click Image for Larger

Leaf Be Gone

Plaster Removed

Before & After, 2nd Floor

Before & After, Gable

Before & After, Gable

Foggy Sunrsie on Monday

We received three fridge magnets so far! This is a follow up to this original request for fridge magnets.

Colonel Spencer Inn in Campton, New Hampshire (sorta). Lisa’s Aunt Mary Jo/Uncle Scott sent us a magnet of their (dead?) dog cosmo. However, they are Inn Keepers at their Bed & Breakfast in NH. It was built in 1764, also old. We stayed there this summer for a long weekend, it was nice. If you tell them you found the B&B on this blog, you might get 50% off a purchase of a coffee mug and a tour of the basement, normally only offered in October because it’s really scary down there.

Schaafsma Heating & Cooling in Grand Rapids, Michigan! A fitting magnet because Schaafsma is REALLY OLD for an HVAC company – founded in 1905! Despite their age they are on the cutting edge when it comes to home comfort!

ThriftyFuel of Allentown! Need discount oil delivery? They ever deliver out here to the sticks. Check out their website and order online!

Dumpster Delivery Day

We’re told fridge magnets are coming…

I’ve been trying to post mobile photos during the week from my iPhone. I am using the ShakeItPhoto App… gives them an obnoxious Polaroid look, fitting for on-the-go-photos!

The stone mason has penciled us in for December for inside work. That means we have alot of prep to take care of then in November! We also have a bunch of misc. trash items we’ve been collecting for “the next dumpster”.  It’s here.

Billy is here today to remove the attic floor / 2nd level ceiling. I am praying that he doesnt fall through the beams… I’ve offered to carry up plank for him to stand on, while he pry’s out the boards, but he insists that if god wants him, god will take him.  Great.

Fun weekend. We spent Friday night at the White Palm Tavern. Worked around the house on Saturday. Lisa’s Dad and girlfriend came over for dinner. We cleaned up the platform on the farmhouse side – swapped out the shop lights with colored spot lights and had cocktails and hor devours “over there” before returning to the green room for the entree.

The stream was really flowing after 4 days of rain.  We determined the large tree on the otherside of the property is a sycamore tree!

Sunday, Matt and T/A came over for the afternoon. T/A + Lisa worked on the dirt filled fireplace. Matt & I chipped at the stone in the basement. David’s Mom stopped out. We walked to the other side of the property (currently planted with soy beans) – dogs had fun. Had pork tenderloin for dinner. Craig made a surprise visit later!

Red/Orange/Yellow Lighting for Cocktails and hor Devours

4 Days of Rain, the Stream was Flowing!