We have a new roof

 This past Monday we had the roofers come in. They really went at it and they brought few guys to help. I assume they really wanted to get this done on Monday because the week is suppose to get cold and wet.

 We decided to install skylight tubes to provide natural light. These tubes provide quite a bit of natural light and will save us on electricity. We have only one for now but there will be more.

 We also had the roofers remove the chimney as per our agreement. This is a welcome relief since it had a bit of a tilt and pieces of concrete missing from the chimney.

The roof looks great and we're happy with the results. This gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that at least we know no more water is leaking (I hope). This is water damage in some areas but its all going to work out.

The rest of this week is going to be focusing on cleaning up the walls and prepping it for spray foam. We have also been looking at what is the best way to do the board and batten. Hans has been looking on the Internet and various styles and he is 95% sure he wants pine boards. The question is how does he want it finished with trim and style of batten. Price and feasibility is in question.

I think one of our most interesting parts will be trying to have things line up right. No houses are perfectly straight even if its a new house. This house is over a hundred years old, and I think they used a beer bottle for leveling and did not own a measuring tape. This will take some finessing to make it appear straight.

This is a first for both Hans and I, but I am sure we will have fun with this. I have been looking up tips so I don't have to do things twice or three times.

The house looks upside down now but I cant wait till its done. I think our neighbours maybe almost as excited as us. I have had people thanking me and excited the place is getting remodeled. I guess they did not like our yellow siding.

WT

Removing the siding

   This week the weather has not be cooperating as good as we hoped but it could be worse.

   We started to remove the siding on the house wondering what goodies lie behind. There was lathe and plaster on the exterior walls and was not exactly pretty. At one point their was a mouse that ran across the top, behind the siding which creeped me out. I am not big on rodents and bugs.  As we proceeded, things became more interesting. There was hundreds of hornets nests all over the inner walls and we were lucky to started this in the fall.

We had decided from the beginning that we would most likely spray foam the exterior walls. The question was going to spray between the stud cavities or just on the outer walls. We decided that we were going to put 2x2 strapping with on top of the 1x4 strapping and spray foam the outer wall. This would give us approx 2.25 inches of insulation. That gives us a R value of about 13.

This week were are just prepping while next week is where things will be even more interesting. We also have the roofers coming in.

Time is running out on us until the snow flies.

WT

Welcome to our project

are a mess with beautiful canary yellow siding - Will's favourite colour.

We plan on taking the house from 18th century and make it green. We eventually would like to take this of the grid. Great things will be accomplished here. This is our first time doing something of this magnitude and hope that its just the begining.

It starts with the energy audit.

We had someone come in and give us an energy audit for our house. This is the first step into hopefully receiving money back from the government. We were hoping that the province was going to renew their program but who knows if and when that would happen. So we are only be receiving federal funding for now.

So they came in and evaluated the house and did a quick run through with all that we can improve. the only surprise we had was that the house did better then expected. Our expectations were very very low. We still did very poorly on the audit, but we can only get better from here.

We have a lot things to accomplish and we just found out that they give less than a year to get it done. We have until the end of March and time is ticking.

And so it all begins!

WT