Barbara in Wilton, NH 20 entries to date 18 forum posts to date
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Posted to Working-Wilton by Barbara in Wilton, NH
on 5/12/2008 1:55:43 PM
Here is my latest project. The slate was alot of work, but we are very pleased with the way it came out.
The stove is a Heat N Glo Paloma - found it at 1/2 off it had been special ordred and customer couldn't use it where they thought they could. It's on a programmable thermostat so it will meet our bank requirements for heat. Nice this time of the year not to have to start a fire before work to take the chill off, this kicks on just a little before we get up and no chill.
Here is Les' latest project
When we were skiing in VT a few years ago we saw deck rails very similar to these and thought they were very cool. Later on while reading a Fine Home Building Magazine came across a plan to build these. Les has done some amazing work, we even had a little deck building/birthday party last weekend. No gifts, just lending a hand. It went really well and we got alot done, thanks everyone who pitched in.
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| Linen closet - next project for me to finish
Les did the framing and sheetrock |
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| Mudding painting, staining trim and tiling floor will be my jobs. |
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| Electrician to put down lights under shelves. |
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Posted to Working-Wilton by Barbara in Wilton, NH
on 3/27/2008 9:24:45 AM
Here are the master bedroom cork floor pictures. It went down pretty easy, of course building an octagon house, nothing is square so there was a lot of cutting. Minimal damage to the walls, nothing a little joint compound and paint won't fix!
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| Put enough trim on to get the bed and bureau back in. |
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| Little wall damage - no big deal - look at that cork floor!!! |
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| More trim bureau goes here. |
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| Still need trim |
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| nice job! |
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| We love our new cork floor - purchased at ifloor.com |
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| Heat grill is gravity fed air from wood stove downstairs. Heats the entire home! |
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Posted to Working-Wilton by Barbara in Wilton, NH
on 3/25/2008
Yeah! We officially have two completed and one very close to completed rooms. The walk-in closet in the master bedroom is completed, shelving and all. How nice to hang clothes up, close the door and have them out of the way and more importantly out of the dust of construction. Washer room is finished up too!
Master bedroom floor is in, we put down cork which is so soft and warm. Can't really decorate until all the dust producing work is done, but it looks so good, just need the base board trim to be put in and then it is done. At some point in the future we will close off the upper walls with glass or awning windows to keep the sound out, but for now it is done as far as we are concerned.
A few more spots to paint on the ceiling, then it will be on to the back hallway and the built in linen closet and flooring will complete that area too. That will only leave the kitchen, master bath and living room/office. Kitchen is ready for cabinets if we could just find the right ones at the right price. Living room/office needs paint. Master bath, well that another story, not even sheetrocked in there yet.
Here are the latest pictures, threw in a few of the tile that we got so cheap! The brown is for the kitchen back splash and the more colorful one will be the master bath shower and backsplash.
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| Look closet |
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| Clothes hanging up! |
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| room for more clothes |
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| Liked the multi-level setup |
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| Thrifty, shoe rack is actually an old rack that went over a toilet that was going to go to the trash, cut down the legs and viola shoe rack! |
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| Kitchen ready for cabinets |
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| Washer room done! |
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| Washer room with doors closed |
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| Finished bedroom door |
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| light for back hall - on a sensor motion to eliminate need for three switches, code calls for one at every entrance into a room, the room is tiny and all those switches would be really stupid. Now we walk to the doorway and lights just go on! |
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| Lights go off too! |
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| Tile for master bath |
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| tile for kitchen back splash - bottom one, not the top one |
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Posted to Working-Wilton by Barbara in Wilton, NH
on 3/10/2008 4:14:42 PM
Not that much to take pictures of right now. Got the tiling done in the master closet and laundry room, just have to grout and have Les put the baseboard trim on and we will officially have two rooms completed! Feels good to have something completely finished. We are so close on so many different areas, but just not quite there yet. Want to really keep pushing, spring is coming and we are going to want to be outside, not that there is a lack of work to do there either. Going to be fun putting in those 10ft wrap around decks, can't wait to just get outside.
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| That's alot of ceiling to paint! |
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| My cool new office light! |
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| My Aunt's wonderful paint job in the laundry room! |
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| Guess the opps silver turned out to be more like jail cell gray ;) |
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| My first ever tile job. |
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| Ready for grout |
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| 2nd ever tile - Laundry room ready for grout too! Just a tiling fool |
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| Gotta give Les some credit too - Good job on the shelves |
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| New Track lighting - Goes pretty good with the fan. So far we have managed to keep things pretty open up top. |
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Posted to Working-Wilton by Barbara in Wilton, NH
on 3/7/2008 10:09:03 AM
Boy, progress seems to have slowed to a crawl since we got in, not because we have slowed, okay maybe a little but not much. Its the sheetrock process that takes so darn long. Luckily we paid a friend and got a good deal to have him do all the exterior walls and the very high ceilings. We have decided that even though there is money left in the budget, we don't want to take anymore. We are comfortable with the mortgage amount where it is now, less would be better, but thats okay. So, that said we are doing everything ourselves now.
Sheetrock walls go up on the interior, tape, mud, sand, mud, sand, mud, sand, primer and then on to the next one and that doesn't account for corners!! Just very time consuming. The master bedroom is almost done, in the process of tiling the closet floor.
Almost all the walls are up except for the breakfast bar, we have been going in circles with cabinets trying to get a good deal, keep cost low, but really get what we want.
We have bought all the main floor flooring at a one day sale at ifloor.com - 75% off prices for one day plus three year no interest financing. Then, local tile shop went out of business, got four rooms, Kitchen floor and complete backsplash, master bath shower, backsplash and floor, back entry floor, downstairs tub surround, backsplash and floor and only spent $1,000. It was nice high end tile like $5.99 sq ft. reduced to .39 cents a square foot. Took 6 hours to put the order together, but well worth the time.
I will have to take some pictures this weekend and post.
Had a local person contact me today that saw us on this site and wanted to talk. Told them we would be happy to share our experiences, good and bad to date with them. I know I would have loved to find someone local when I was starting out, found this site too late.
Oh yeah, got a gas stove that will run on a thermostat to satisfy the bank for the living room 50% off at Fireplace Village, it was a custom customer order gone wrong - we just keep shopping and finding deals. Just have to be willing to take the time. Lowes and HD clearance stuff always warrants a close look, never know what someone else didn't want.
Okay, pictures to come on Monday.
mudding in NH - soon in more ways than one
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Posted to Working-Wilton by Barbara in Wilton, NH
on 12/17/2007 1:37:53 PM
Well, we did it, we got in just before the big storm this weekend. Our electrician got all the kitchen appliances online and the lights are switched. We got our house number 312. Can't believe I would be so happy to cook, do dishes, wash clothes, etc. We have all the amenities, running water HOT & cold. Big difference taking a long hot shower vs. the trailer where you have to turn it on, get wet, turn it off, soap up, turn it on to rinse and that's all the hot water there was time for. Actually at the end the hose kept freezing up so we didn't have water at all.
We have walls, doors, some temporary flooring and it feels great. I just realized that Christmas is next week and I have done nothing except for dig out the decoration on Sunday.
Here are some pictures of where we are at. Hoping to have some visitors for xmas, we are really liking the design and are anxious to see the kitchen with the cabinets in. Put up a few temp shelves in the mean time.
Boy, its been a long haul, but it is finally feeling like home and like it really will be all worth it in the end.
So those of you in the planning or just starting phases, hang in there, the feeling of accomplishment is incredible.
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| Here is the front yard in the late fall. |
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| Garage walls and ceiling were required for fire safety for temp co. |
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| Garage Wall |
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| All stairs must have child proof railings. |
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| We didn't have a wall so we put the light switches in the railing - pretty cool idea. |
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| Appliances arrive. |
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| Gotta love them beams |
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| Walls go up |
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| Garage doors go in - they even had the color to match the Anderson windows. |
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| First snow was gone in a couple of days. |
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| Sheetrock and doors go in |
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| Woodstove goes in. When this gets going, it actually makes the whole house a little too warm. The heat cals for our SIP P&B came in at 52,000BTU. Gotta love free heat (except for the hard labor invovled) |
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| We used up the extra scrap SIP panels to insulate some of the basement bays. That and lots of great stuff. |
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| Look at kitchen |
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| Floor is temporary, $13.50 a box for sticky tiles is well worth the cost to get our Temp CO and move it. |
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| Just a little holiday decorating. |
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| Okay, so a little more |
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| Thanks its, well maybe a tree : ) |
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| Thanks Mom, but now I can do my own laundry. |
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| Even happy to have boxes for nightstands. |
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| Les picked out the cool sconces. |
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Posted to Working-Wilton by Barbara in Wilton, NH
on 11/19/2007 2:27:45 PM
Well, our goal for getting a CO (Certificate of Occupany) was Thanksgiving. It has gone from a full CO, down to just getting a temp CO which will be good for 90 days and then can be extended for an additional 90 days. That will get us through the winter and the bank construction loan needs to convert to permanent by April anyway, so that should work out well.
We found this great place in Hooksett NH called Big Jim's for discount building materials, we got a vanity and one piece soapstone sink top for $300, I couldn't get just the vanity for under $320 at the big hardware stores. They have slightly dinged doors, we actually got 5 interior doors for $150.00, and none had dings, one even had a glass window in one side that I am going to do mosaic stained glass on. What a find for getting stuff cheap, got to go often. The vanity is in the pictures below.
We are both walking around like zombies, get up, work full-time (when I'm not out 1/2 or full days for GC stuff) go home, work on house until 9-10pm, eat quick sandwich, off to bed, get up and do it again. The weekends are worse, up at the crack of dawn and crawling up the hill to the camper by 9-10, I get happy that it is Monday so I can go to work and sit down!!! Even when you plan well and realize exactly what you are getting into, until you physically do it, you just don't realize how much time and energy it takes. We have not taken any time off since the foundation went in in at the beginning of July. Living in NH, we are working to avoid trying to survive the winter in the camper.
We heat the house while we are working with a little propane heater that puts out about 40,000 btu. The designers kept telling us how little it would take to heat a SIP Panel home, but again, seeing is believing. PSNH came out this morning and hooked up our permanent service, for a monopoly, they are very good to their customers, I explained out situation in the camper and they really went to bat for us and got us what we needed and guided us along the way to make sure we did the underground work correctly.
The building inspector has turned out to be the best and biggest resource for building information, I make a list of questions and go talk to him or call at least once a week and always has or finds the information that we need. He was the one that explained about getting a temp CO, we had no idea about that.
Anyway, everyone keeps asking for updates so I wanted to get the latest pictures up.
Big stuff coming in the next two weeks, garage doors from Raynor Door Authority, we were very impressed with their professionalism and pricing, they install tomorrow and had the exact color match to our anderson windows. Son's Chimney Service is installing our wood stove (Morso 3610), I had originally gone with the the 2040 which is more comtemporary, but the site evaluator said we should go bigger, the bigger was actually less $ so we went with it, now I'm wondering if it will be too much given the little propane heater we have been using, guess we can always downsize and sell the bigger one.
I will post again next week when there will be more noticeable changes and let you know if we actually manage to get in! Wish us luck, or better yet, come by and bring your tools : )
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| Siding is finally done. |
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| Framing on upper level almost done. |
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