Thank you for your time in creating and maintaining the OwnerBuilderBook website and database. It is a great source of knowledge and helpful ideas. Not to mention the support of numerous others doing the same owner-builder process. Bill W., Monkton, MD

Kristen's Forum Posts: 19
Journal Entries: 3
Interview Answers: 59
Average Forum Rating: 3.73


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Progress!

Posted to The-Cortes-Adventure by Kristen in Snowflake, AZ on 6/13/2009

Since I'm soooo glad to be on electrical right now, I just wanted to update and say that we now have the front porch done (which is more like a portico since it has 8 cans, one pendant, and two lights on columns), the entry, the living room, the office, the laundry room, the pantry, the utility closet, the coat closet, both halls, all the bedrooms, all the bathrooms, all the closets, and the garage (interior and exterior). We still have the kitchen, dining and family rooms to do. My best guess puts us being finished pulling our electrical wire in a few more days. And then on to the next round! Woo hoo!

Photos

June Update

Posted to The-Cortes-Adventure by Kristen in Snowflake, AZ on 6/9/2009

The shutdown that my husband was on finished on May 7th, so we've been able to work more on our house lately. My son and I have continued to paint. My DH worked on the fixes we needed done and now we have started pulling our electrical wire! Yay! I'm so glad to be on something else. :-) So far we've pulled the wire ourselves since our electrician did a fabulous schematic for us that also included what wire to use where. We paid extra for him to do that and you can see it in the picture in the previous post. In eight hours we've done two bedrooms, two walk-in closets, the laundry room, one bathroom, the utility closet, and one hall. Tomorrow we should get quite a bit more of the electrical done.

We have about two hours left of caulking ;-) and we have one of our Solatubes in. It went in the laundry room and I can tell that I'm really going to like it!

I'll update again later this month.

May Update

Posted to The-Cortes-Adventure by Kristen in Snowflake, AZ on 5/1/2009

A while back I was keeping a construction journal on this site, but had to take it off for awhile. Here is where you can read what has been going on with our build before this post. 

more-adventures.blogspot.com

And here is where you can see the pictures:

photobucket.com

Today we have four months over for this year. This is what is going on with our build.

We have all of the siding done except for the little that will go on the arches when we do the front porch. The front and radius room are all finished. I think we still have a little bit of caulking left. ;-) Now I really understand why people use vinyl siding. NO CAULKING INVOLVED!! Caulking takes forever when you have limited time and you haven't subbed out the siding. And now I understand why it costs more to have non-vinyl siding installed. If I had it to do over again... yep, I'd still use the siding we purchased. :-) I really like it. But I'd be sure tempted to hire an installer just for the caulking. I'm sure they'd be so much faster since they do it for a living.

I FINALLY decided on paint colors. We're using SW Trusty Tan for the main exterior and Glidden's Obsidian Glass for the trim, and we are using the colors in Behr paint. My son and I started painting, but still have a lot to go. We've had to roll and brush, since we don't have temporary power to the property yet, and my husband's generator is a beast and too heavy for us to move in and out of where it's locked up.

We did get our schematic done and our electrician really tried to help us by color coding what we need to do. Here is how our schematic looks.




Since we are doing our build with cash as we have it, my DH is working like a crazy man now, and nothing is happening on our build at the moment by him. He is working on a power plant shutdown and working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. Can you tell that he really wants this house done and to be living in it?

When he has a break between this job and the next one, that is when we will do our little fixes we need to do before we pull our electrical wire and hopefully get our wire pulled (if he has enough time between jobs). We might have our electrician help us at $45/hour, since time will be critical, and he will be able to tell us what to do better than us doing it all ourselves. After the next job, we should have the money to sub out the insulation. And then it will take a little while before we have the money to sub out the drywall. In the meantime, before we have all of the money for the drywall, we can be working on our porch (the concrete, framing the arches, siding them, and then the dreaded caulking of them!).

That's it for now. When we have the wire pulled, I'll post a few pictures so you'll know. When the insulation is done I'll do the same thing. And also when we have our front porch done.

One last thing. Last time I wrote (in my other journal) that I hoped that we'd at least have some of our drywall sheets hung before the end of the year. But since we are most likely going to sub it out and it will be a chunk of change to do so, I don't know that we'll have that all earned - and have it all put up before December 31st, but we'll see.