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And so with our windows in place and our insulation removed, it was time to press on. Next on the list - Framing! We had decided to frame around the entire perimeter of the room to increase the wall thickness so we could increase the insulation - so as to have a nice toasty bedroom! In addition, we needed to frame in the closets and part of the future master bathroom and the entryway! And so we picked a wall and got to work!
 
Wall beforehand

 
Checking for plumb! Looks good!

 
 
Nailing it in place! Nail guns are awesome...

 
And a few nails and wall sections later! Making some progress!

 
May not look like much, but it'll increase our walls' R-values by 15 when we're finished!
 
Making our way around the room.

 
And a little more...

 
And the final wall!

 
Now that we had the perimeter done, it was time to focus on the closets and interior walls.
 
Here is Vanessa's ridiculously enormous future closet. At almost 8 feet long and 3 feet deep, she will hopefully finally have enough room for her clothing!

 
 
Our first doorway! This is the future door to the future master bathroom.

 
 
Looking at the bedroom's entrance from inside the bedroom looking out. On the left side is part of the future master bathroom - The same doorway from the previous image. Eventually some of those walls inside the future bathroom are going to need some "Adjustments" - read, tear down.

 
And this is the wall that will separate the future office from the future bedroom. There's a whole lot of future action going on in here!

 
And this is the grand entryway to the bedroom. On the left is the entrance to our future master bathroom, and on the right is my little future closet. And behind that is a closet for the office.

 
 
And so with all that framing out of the way, it was time to start planning out the electrical for the bedroom. But before we started wiring it up, we decided to get the power to the house switched over to our new panel. Stay tuned... I'm not sure what, but something exciting is coming up next!!!

Okee dokee... It's been a little while. Hopefully we'll be back to a more normal updating schedule now that things have settled down a bit. We moved into the house in September and had cut back on our house-work quite a bit since then. Things are picking back up again so it's time to get back to work! So without further delay, to the marshmallow kingdom we go!
 
So we actually did this work this past summer when it was in the 90's in Seattle, which is not normal at all... And most unpleasant for this particular work. We donned our special marshmallow suits to prepare for the journey!


 
After getting all suited up, time to jump on in! One of the main goals of the future bedroom is to upgrade the insulation effeciency. Currently, the walls varried in their R values from R-5 to R-15 depending on which part of the room they were in. The ceilings are R-19. Our plan is to double the wall thickness and add an additional layer of R-15 for a total of R-30 in the walls and add a 2" rigid foam insulation to the ceiling to get an R-34 value there. That's still not even to code for new construction here in Seattle, but the ceiling is already pretty low and we can't add any insulation on top of what's there so all we can do is add down. The 2" foam is the most bang for the buck as far as R value per inch of insulation...
 
Here's the before. Everything all nice and tidy and kraft paper backed...

 
So onwards we go. We first removed all the old insulation, which was a mixture of kraft-backed fiberglass and some older stuff that I don't know what it was, but couldn't have provided much insulating value...
 
Some of that older stuff wasn't in the best condition.

 
Cotton candy-land!

 
We removed all the kraft paper first. We'll then take out the insulation itself ond reuse it in interior walls, but we needed to remove it to get to the current electrical and put in our future electrical!
 

 
We then unrolled the insulation right out of the walls and into large garbage bags for later use. After an uncomfortable not-too-long, we had the walls bare!
 

 

 
Stay tuned... Up next we start framing! Woohoo!

So we're pretty much window experts now! With 2 window removals and installs under our belts we're fellin' pretty good! We happened to have an excellent friend in town. Sir Gabe! We acquired his and our current rommate/friend don's help with the removal/install of our final window.
 
Who could say no to help from those 2!?!?!

 
She's a doozy! That window in the back is actualy 6 feet wide and 4 feet tall.

 
We thought it might be a bit much for just 2 people. Especially since it's about 8 feet up on the outside. And great company is great!
 
So just like usual, cutting away the old window.

 
And there's our strong sexy helpers making sure nothing comes crashing down!

 
Vanessa and I worked on the sill.

 
While Gabe and Don worked on framing the rough opening.

 
Once they framed the rough opening, we applied sheathing and attached the sill. Smiles for EVERYONE!

 
Then it was install time. Put the new guy in his hole and sealed him on up!

 
A couple roofing nails later, and we're good to GO!

 
Awww... Good times! Thanks VERY MUCH to Gabe and Don for their help with this guy. Couldn't have done it without you!

 
The end product!

 
Stay tuned for a trip to the marshmallow kingdom! Coming up next!!!

Moving right along here... On to the second bedroom window. This one went a little bit smoother with one window under our belts.
 
Here's what we're working with... A wide and short non-opening single pane window:

 
First we had to move our support wall into place. This held the roof up while we removed a large section of wall.

 
Once we had our support wall shimmed and screwed in place the cutting begins! We used our trusty sawzall to cut around the perimeter of the window. I did not do nearly as nice of a job on this side. The cut marks were all wavy and crooked.

 
Woah! What happened here!

 
With a wave of my magic hand, a little touch-up, and we're back in business!

 
It was getting late so we decided to call it a day. We didn't want to leave a giant hole into the house wide open, so we fastened a quick little wall. Worked like a charm!

 
We got the new wall and window framing all shimmed into place and nice and level.

 
This wall is right at ground level, so we didn't have to deal with being all up on ladders. Made things a bit easier to handle.
 
Here's Vanessa the lil' teapot, hammering away! Lookin' sassy! She's a hammering machine!

 
And concentrating hard on "NOT" hitting the window frame while nailing it in place. Great job! No damage done!

 
Look at that beauty!

 
Here she is from the outside. All flashed up. Still need to add siding, but again, we're concentrating on the interior for the moment. It's nice to have some opening windows in there!

 
Stay tuned for even MORE window madness coming soon!

Okay! It's been a while since we mentioned the raised bed in the front yard. Let's see where we last left off...
 
Sometime around mid-June:

 
These zucchini and cucumber plants didn't look like they were going to do to well. Right after we planted them their leaves all turned white and dried out. We cut off the damaged leaves, and tried watering them more carefully (not from above). Slowly as they got adjusted to their new homes they really started flourishing.
 
It took them about a month to really get settled in.

Here they are on July 20th, along with some new friends (Jalapenos on the left)

 
Not all that much different...

BUT. Here they are only 10 days later! (With some new broccoli friends (right side)

 
They really loved that week of 90º weather we had a little while back. They just shot off!
 
And here's our first baby cucumber!

 
And here they are 11 days after that.

 
There are loads of baby cucumbers getting bigger!

 
We harvested our first one just 2 days ago and he is a tasty burger!
 
This little zucchini has grown from this big to almost a foot long in only 3 days! And now there are loads more little guys growing.

 
Everything is going QUITE well! Except for one small thing... There is of course one down side... And it too involves a cat. Your friendly neighborhood feral cat has grown quite accustomed to using our garden as a litter box. Pretty much every day we have to go find the day's turds and remove them...
 
Hooray! Turds!

 
And waddaya know! More turds!

 
So we started putting things in the garden to take up any empty space. Leave no space to lay some sweet poop logs... Well that sort of works. Cat no longer poops in the garden. Instead just poops on the ground...
 
Yay! More turds!

 
So we pretty much have to clean up turds every day from our yard. Fun times. But at least the cucumbers and zucchini have gotten big enough that there's no more room in the garden for pooping!
 
For those of you who may be having trouble visualizing what's going on here...
 
Cat is crapping in our garden!

 
Alrighty!
 
Stay tuned for more window-installing fun coming up!