I'M BAAAACK....!

I apologize to those of you who have been clamoring for more. It seems that I have been neglecting my blog. But, there hasn't been much excitement on the home front.

The plumber and electrician have been doing the "rough-in" phase of their work and should be finishing up this week. The electrician was far enough along that we were able to get his work inspected by the county on Friday. While here, the inspector also signed off on the framing as well as the HVAC.

BRAD ARNETT-ELECTRICIAN

Pothast-Loxley out of Versailles will be doing the insulation and the plan is for them to blow the walls starting Wednesday. He had one of his guys out about a week ago to do some preliminary work such as caulking along the bottom plate, installing baffles, and foaming between the window frames and rough openings.

BRIAN WITH POTHAST-LOXLEY

I have been spending quite a bit of time at the house and have been enjoying just puttering around out there. Since I don't earn a living at it, I just take my time and work at a slow pace. Over the past week, I finished up putting a "catwalk" in the attic. Once they blow about 15 inches of insulation in the attic, getting around up there becomes a real challenge. If I ever have to revise or add some wiring or perhaps inspect the roof from the attic, the cat walk will be a real asset. Without the catwalk, one ends up wading through the insulation whilst trying to figure out where the trusses are in order to avoid crashing through the ceiling. Brad the electrician complimented me on my foresight. I'm sure he has slogged around in attics of many homes, ankle deep in cellulose. It's not obvious in the picture below but the catwalk is raised about 15 inches above the bottom cord of the truss to get it above the insulation.

"CATWALK" IN ATTIC

 Late this past week I put Barb to work insulating the garage. This is the only aspect of the insulation we handled ourselves. I decided we would just use fiberglass batt insulation for these walls rather than having Pothast-Loxley blow them. Installing fiberglass insulation is light duty work and pretty straightforward as long as you measure and cut carefully. I think Barb did a real nice job! Probably saved a few hundred dollars doing this ourselves and it only took about a days worth of work.

GARAGE INSULATION

Over the past couple of days I have been running the low voltrage wiring which doesn't require a great deal of skill. Unlike the electrical wiring, building codes generally don't apply. This is something I handled on our last home as well. Low voltage wiring includes co-ax for TV, Cat6 data for networking (e.g. internet), wires for ceiling speakers and wires for the security system and smoke detectors. I have a closet in the utility room and all of the wiring will be run back to this central location. This closet will house any hardware such as a router, receiver and amplifier for audio, security panel, switches, etc. As I listen to streaming audio almost exclusively rather than a radio, I may place one of my "retired" computers in this closet for that purpose.

The picture below represents a small portion of the wires we will eventually end up running into this location. All of the wires are labeled so that there will be no confusion about what goes where. Looks almost like spaghetti at this stage.

WIRES LEADING TO THE "CENTRAL COMMAND" CLOSET

We are on schedule to start hanging drywall around the 19th or 20th. That's when it really starts looking like a house. Between now and then, I will need to finish the low voltage wiring and a few other odds and ends. Some of the low voltage wiring will be left in the walls for future use rather than bringing it through the walls and installing wall plates now. Consequently, I will be making a chart so that I know the location of all these hidden wires if/when I decide to use them.