I Got a New Job it Pays $75,000 a year

July 11, 2023

We've been working very hard to get The Room in order. Our goal for this stage of the project was to have everything ready for Cesar's team to come in and finish the ceiling some time in late August. This will be a picture heavy post as there isn't much narrative here, just steady movement.

Here's the visual reminder that the street facing "window" was actually two glass windows stacked on one another nailed to a vertical structure with 3 panes of glass sandwiched inside of it. Terrible for privacy, energy efficiency, and any amount of pride in one's home.

I have very few picture of this process b/c it took the two of us two days, multiple battery powered saws, pry bars, hammers, and some interpersonal friction to get this sum-bitch out of the wall. A million bent nails and spider eggs. Preposterous.

Once we had our opening we could properly frame in the new wall and also frame in the two voids for the new clerestory windows. We opted for architectural windows that mirrored the roof line and sat high enough on the wall that we could entertain socially, have plenty of light, but not be fully exposed to any passer by.

With the street wall in shape, we were able to begin installing the subfloor and insulation that we had ordered earlier in the Spring. This was an alternating job where we cleaned out the bays (the space between wall studs) and then incrementally put in rows of subfloor and sections of insulation. This was a delight of steady progress after the windows and some of the most rewarding work so far on the house. Every work session ended with it looking more and more like a finished, livable space.

We used the 3 original storage bays at the back of the room to store all the insulation and subflooring. so we now had to clear those out to finish both processes.

These were sturdy 1960s wood installations. They took quite a bit of sweat equity, but after the romper room nonsense of the windows, we were at least happy to be interacting with construction that was built in a logical manner, so could be disassembled with similar logic.

Somewhere during this run of days we had Power HRG come back in and measure all the voids to get working on custom windows. In preparation, we framed in the former closet from the breezeway to use as a giant picture window.

Walt struggled in the earliest stages of all this work; we had to keep him and his sister in the main house or at least in the breezeway to keep them from the tar-floor and all the dangerous materials in the air and scattered around. Once we had part of the subfloor in, we brought them beds and had them hang out with us as we worked.

With the storage bays down we could finish both flooring and insulation.

One of the more controversial topics between Brie and me was drywall. To save on double delivery charges we ordered all the drywall for the walls and ceiling at once and it lived in the breezeway for about a month.

I was interested in having Cesar's team handle the walls when they did the ceiling, but Brie was adamant that she get to drywall at least part of this space. To her credit, after the crazy windows and all the other demo we had done, putting up some drywall wasn't all that bad, though she experienced a steep learning curve with cutting outlet openings. I was smug about that. Few regrets.

We're in a bit of a holding pattern now. We can't drywall within 4ft of any of the windows until they're in, so that's paused. We just received a shipment of new insulation for the ceiling and the workshop. We scheduled window installation for July 28th. And there are a few more items we're going to have to resolve before all is said and done.

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Let's check in on animals.

Rocket once again visited us, this time the morning after 4th of July.

Here are picture of Walt trying to comprehend/befriend a turtle and a frog.

Here's the rat snake we didn't let him befriend.

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Brie has been working in her office more since finishing her shelves (she's just around the corner to the left) so the dogs are adjusting to morning naps in her new space. Sometimes she'll take a call while in the workshop. Here's Walt helping her out.