Month: August 2022

The hands-on work has been making some great progress, but I keep forgetting to take pictures…especially when my hands are covered in paint / primer. After looking at my last post, I realized that I should make the posts shorter and more frequent, so that will be my goal for a while.

• Priming, done
• Painting, just getting started
• Exterior insulation, nearly complete
• Solar diversion design, nearly complete
• Soffit and down spouts, house complete

What can’t be seen is the fact that we were hoping that we finished priming after the first coat, but after further examination, we really needed a second coat in most places. Back out to Sherwin Williams to purchase more primer and get back it. The second coat was put on with far more confidence as the skills with the sprayer were improved for both of us. Stephanie has really taken to it and has nearly completed the second coat single handedly with sanding in between the two coats.

Most ceilings have also now been painted, but that process is hard to document as it looks the same as priming…but it feels different when you are doing it, knowing that it’s the final step for that surface. We both can’t wait for the colors to start to appear, but realize that we should wait a bit as there is still some minor corrections needed and lots of interior work still yet to do, so we don’t want the final finished surface just yet.

The gutter and down spouts were installed just in time as the rain came and in one day we completely filled our 2300-gallon cistern. We hope to get the pump installed next week to get the water to our storage tanks and start feeding water to the house.

I’ll get some pictures and go over the solar energy diversion in detail in the future for those techie types out there.

Praise the Lord for our continued progress.

Wow, it’s been nearly a month since the last post. The project has transitioned from watching and documenting to hands on, getting thoroughly involved. Finding it much harder to document in the midst of working. Here are the updates:

• Roof is done
• Drywall, done
• Solar panel install, nearly done
• Exterior insulation, started
• HVAC, nearly done
• Garage staircase, done

Let’s run through the pictures we did get.

The photo above shows the roof minus the last piece on the West (left) side of the A-wing. This is all done, but I forgot to get the photos off of my drone, sorry.

I have a bunch of drywall photos for documentation purposes, but I’ll show just a bit of the sheet install and the finishing.

Next we were really excited from the dirt that was brought up around the house as things are now level enough to install the pads for the mini-split compressors (AC / Heat).

The C-wing compressor is now hooked up and operational, and wow does it get the place cooled down in a hurry. This unit is impressive.

The house compressor was missing a small part, so we weren’t able to get things fully operational, but we were just informed that the part is in and we should be up and rolling this week. Next question for me was, how are they going to be powered? On to the solar install update.

The utility room is fully functioning with batteries, inverters, but no solar power. I did climb on the roof and get the first row installed to keep the batteries going for construction, but solar panel mounting is NOT a solo task. After the first row was installed my brother-in-law’s came to help me install nearly all of the panels.

I added a total of six panels and this kept us going for a couple weeks. This past weekend we went from only 6 panels installed to having 42 out of the total 54 needed.

The solar install task completed on Saturday afternoon after resources (wire and plugs) were depleted, but we felt good about what we were able to accomplish. These panels have not yet been connected to our battery array, so no power yet. This will be completed next week.

I did list the garage stairs being completed, but that is a bit deceptive. I do need to rebuild them since some mistakes were made, but I will leave what I did in place for now as they are needed to access the garage loft and there are other priorities. The concept was to have the stairs be collapsible, but there was an alignment / measurement mistake made, so they are stationary for now.

Last update is the exterior insulation. This is what Rockwool looks like on the exterior of our house.

The vertical boards have long screws all the way through to the framing (6 inches) and act as both rain screen and insulation support. The horizontal boards are to support the mounting of the vertical siding.

This shows a better view of the window flashing and install of the insulation. We love this effect on the windows as they sit mid-wall, between the interior and exterior providing ~6 inches of sill on the inside and outside.

That does it for this time around. We praise the Lord for his rich blessing on our lives through this adventure and look forward to each step forward that we make. The finish line is coming ever nearer. We are racing the end of the summer to get things finished, but continue to work hard and trust God’s timing.