12/05/09

A lot of people say it's is the small things that make a house a home, well thankfully our house is in that stage where we are doing small things to finish out 1606 North Gilmor. Great news considering the dedication and handover to the family is in two weeks. The habitat staff installed kitchen cabinets during last week so that we could focus on finishing some little details: grouting the last tile sections, hanging medicine cabinets in the bathrooms, painting, and so forth. It is really coming together now. Check out some photos.

Here is a view of one of the bathrooms, complete with tile, trim and even a toilet and sink.

Here is a view of the first floor stairs, complete with paint, and stained wood banisters and covers.

For the peice de resistance, a view of the kitchen with tile, cabinets, and countertops. Sweet!

11/21/09 Workday

The weeks keep rolling by and the dedication date of December 19th keeps getting closer and closer. Good thing the house is almost ready. In the last two weekends we finally managed to get all the tiling done. This included finishing the diagonal tile in the kitchen, powder room, and basement landing, as well as the two upstairs bathrooms and the foyer walkin area. All in all I estimate around 320 square feet of tile that was laid down. It looks great now that the pain of tiling it all is over =). We grouted some of the tile that was laid the week before, and got a lot of other little jobs done too. Hand rails were hung, linen closets were finished and painted, and we cleaned and poly uthathaned the exposed brick wall in the foyer area. It's starting to look real good. We even have a few outlets installed so we don't need a generator anymore. By next week the plumbing and lights will be done too by professionals.

Here's a pic of the kitchen floor being grouted in the back area, and just finishing the front. Below that is an image of a bedroom with finished window sills.

Our 11/07/09 Workday

How much do we love tiling? Well, at the start of this workday, we all loved it. The tile we put down last Saturday was fixed to the floor, and it looked gorgeous. So we were all pumped to get started on finishing the areas that weren't done yet on the kitchen floor. Not too many Northrop people showed up this time, in part because of the short notice of our new every-weekend schedule, but thankfully Matt, Alex, and Tina showed up since they had been there the week before and were now also tiling experts. =) Sandtown threw a bunch of University of Maryland folk in our backyard in order to give our house some sod, and to finish the deck stairs and fence while the rest of us tiled our little butts off. The kitchen floor area is now finished, and the "foyer" connecting the kitchen, powder room, and basement landing is underway. We also got some more work done on the closet shelves and window sills. We will be back next weekend for more tiling, so I hope we get more tiling experts, if not we should have a bunch by the end of the workday.


Below are a few pictures. The first is the kitchen floor at the beginning of the day, while the second is at the end, after lots of tile cutting and placing. The last pic is of the beautiful backyard.

10/31 Workday

Another successful Saturday on our house. We had lots of volunteers both from Northrop and from LaTisha and her family. The main goal of our workday was to get started laying tile down onto the kitchen floor. I know this would be a daunting task and managed to get Mike and Craig to help me Friday finish laying the cement backerboard in the kitchen and figure out where the keystone tile would go. The keystone tile sets the pattern for the whole floor and should make the pattern be balanced across the floor, i.e. if only a third of a tile is needed one the left wall, a third of a tile should be at the right wall as well. We decided to lay a diagonal pattern for the kitchen floor which made finding the keystone a little harder. But once Saturday was underway, we just started mortaring tiles next to the keystone tile and moved out from it. Having the keystone tile in the center of the floor allowed several tile layers to work in their own directions and avoided having too many people in one spot. A bunch of people preped the tile by slapping mortar on the tile back, while still others worked on cleaning the tile and spacing between the tiles. The kitchen was a very busy place, but we successfully laid about 130 tile, or 130 square feet. It is going to look great when it is all finished. The rest of the volunteer team on Saturday worked on getting window sills made as well as handling lots of other smaller tasks. Here is a picture of the kitchen pattern laid out. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the tile mortared down, but I'll get one next Saturday.

-Rob

Oct 17th and Oct 24th

Another two weeks of working on the house have gone by, and the house is really taking shape. Paint appeared on the walls when we finished on the 17th, and caulking all the trim and doors and various other places continued on the 24th. It is amazing how many things need a dab of caulk to finish their look. Can't see all the nails and holes we made in the trim doors and the like.

But our focus on the 24th was to get started on the kitchen floor. Through some luck and graces of an actual interior designer, we obtained a bunch of ceramic tile. So we are tiling the kitchen, powder room and upstairs bathrooms with the tile. The only problem with that is the fact that laying tile takes a lot more time and effort than most other surfaces. So on the 24th we began laying cement backerboard on the kitchen subfloor. The backerboard acts as a stabilizer to keep the tile floor from flexing as you walk across it. This prevents tiles from cracking and the grout from being pushed out too.

Here are two pics. One is of the a few of us installing the backerboard, and the other is one of the upperstairs bedrooms looking sharp with paint and everything.

Major Update - 8/8/09 through 10/03/09

So our blog has not been updated in a while, and it is my fault. As summer was coming to a close I ran to the beach, to the mountains, and out to sea to enjoy the last days of my twenties and of the closing summer, leaving Kurt and the crew to work on the house without me. A lot got accomplished but no one had a camera to capture all the progress.

When I last wrote, the roof was ready for tarring. Thankfully, Habitat has a professional on hire to complete this task since it is a messy and very stinky job. Professionals also used a chemical striping agent to remove the pink paint off the front of the house to expose the quality brick underneath.

We were also very focused on the framing of interior walls when I last posted, and that effort continued nicely through the summer. A team build activity took place on 8/13 where during a standard work-day a bunch of Norhtrop folk from the same group came to work on the house and learn how they can better work together as a team. What a great way to get out of the normal day-day of the rat race! Here are some of the folk raising a bathroom wall upstairs, as well as the working crew for the team build.

After the workday on Aug 23rd, framing was done, and the Habitat folk hired drywall professionals to come in and drywall the whole house. HVAC people also came in to install everything but the furnace, and plumbers and electricians also added their talents to include the plumbing and electrical frameworks.

September 19th was a rough day for volunteers, and is one of my least favorite tasks of restoring a house - installing insulation. It is a nasty job requiring full garb and face masks to keep the fiber glass insulation from scratching you up. I'm secretly a little glad that I missed it, but don't tell anyone. =)

Here Mike poses for his picture. Nice job Mike on stapling the insulation to the ceiling joists, and for duct taping over the seem between your gloves and your shirt. After this workday and some help from some U of Maryland volunteers during the week, the insulation was complete.

With so much work accomplished, and the process moving forward so nicely, Kurt and I decided to throw a little party. All the Habitat staff we work with were invited as were all Northrop volunteers. But most importantly the family that will inherit the house came as well. Latisha or Tisha for short and her four kids came for the short workday and the picnic. We did a bunch of trim work on the house as well as installed a bunch of doors before the picnic - which consisted of burgers and hot dogs. My suspicion about these picnics turned out to be true too - that condiments make the picnic. We had three different kinds of cheese for the burgers, grilled onion, tomatoe, pickles, avacado, lettuce, ketchup, mustard, and relish plus grapes, chips, cookies, and brownies. All these choices plus some descent sunny weather made the picnic great. A bunch of alumni volunteers from this house and past ones showed up to meet the family and enjoy the day. It was great.

Check out everyone who showed up: Tisha, the future home owner is wearing the light blue shirt in the front row surrounded by some of her family and friends. I also want to give a shout out to Danny and Bo - two Habitat guys who are critical to us getting the house built to code - seen waiting for their burgers to be cooked. Did I mention we had turkey, beef, and veggie burgers? LOL that makes for a lot of burget / hot dog and condiment combinations. My dad also made an appearance at habitat since my family was in town to celebrate my 30th birthday. Seen next to me while Kurt mans the grill - man that food looks good.

And as some final photos of this large post - here is the house as we left it on October 3rd.

Photo 1 is taken from the kitchen looking towards the front of the house, while photo 2 is from within the master bedroom on the third floor.

7/25/09 Workday

Another fantastic day for working on the house. It was a bright sunny day, perhaps too bright and sunny for working on the roof, as sun burn and dehydration were rampant for those of us up there. The rest of the crew worked on framing the third floor and finished up second floor framing. All the framing wood first though had to be hauled into the house which took all of us half an hour.
The roof was partially completed the day before by another work crew, so we had to just finish up the front of the house which took a while due to merging the old wood, with arches and elaborate wood carvings which serve as attack venting, with the raised new plywood. After all the plywood was nailed down into the rafters, roofing paper is nailed down in overlapping rows to make a water seal. Roofing professionals will now come in and tar the roof.

The first picture is of the ton of framing we got done on the third floor, while the second is the mostly completed roof with its roofing paper laid out and nailed down. The last picture is of the crew on the deck, looking sharp, looking real sharp.