This blogging process has been a struggle for me. I tell myself every morning that I will blog that evening and then I either forget, or I’m just not up to it. Also, the photo uploading for WordPress is an absolute nightmare, so I do avoid the process a bit. But, that means that this update will be a doozy! There has been so much progress the last few months.
We have passed multiple inspections. We passed our 4-way combination allowing us to hook up the permanent power, hook up the gas for the water heaters, and use the plumbing systems. We were also allowed to start putting in the insulation.
The music studio got most of the attention when it came to insulation. We wanted to reduce the amount of sound transfer through the house and also keep the sound within the studio sounding as it should for recording. On the ceiling of the studio alone we installed 2 inches of rigid foam insulation then left about a 3-4 inch space and then installed 6 inches of rock wool. Now when you go into the studio it sounds like you are under water and you have this feeling like you really need to pop your ears. Its actually quite eerie. I always think of Archer going “HMAH” every time he has tinnitus.
Studio ceiling rigid foam 
studio insulation 
Studio insulation
After the insulation was installed it had to be inspected. That also passed so we have since started putting up the drywall. We have started on the second floor installing the ceilings first and then once we made it down to the boys’ bedrooms we started hanging the walls. The rooms went very quickly. They are nice and easy boxes that went up really fast. The hallway however was much trickier. It has a ton of little corners and bends that take a lot of meticulous cutting. It was especially tough getting the ceiling hung in the landing of the front stairs. We don’t have a scaffold small enough to fit in the landing so we had to tear out Ryu’s closet so that Derek could get up a ladder and someone could stand in the closet to hand it over to him. We had one small casualty when we forgot the impact drill was on the ladder and went to move it. We were able to tape it together and keep it going though.
We also came behind all the drywall in the rooms and installed some lighting. The days are getting much shorter and we will need the lights to keep us going in the evenings. We are working nearly 12 hour days every day of the week, so since the sun is setting around 6:00 and will be around 5:00 after the first of the month the lights will be invaluable. we decided to install LED lighting everywhere. It will save a TON of money in the long run and we actually found fixtures that were really nice and really inexpensive as well. They install like a dream and the kids are obsessed with having their own dimmers in their rooms.
We still have a long way to go just hanging the drywall, but the progress we have made already was only one week of work. We are really happy with the speed of the process. Taping and mudding/texturing will go fairly quickly as well. We aren’t looking to get completely smooth walls, we will be adding a skip trowel texture so that will go rather quickly especially because we purchased a large sander that hooks right up to the vacuums. That aside we will be using 60 boxes of mud on 400+ sheets of drywall when the process is done.
Another thing that really ticked a box on our list was getting rid of the horrible smoke stack that was protruding from the west side of the house. When we bought the place it was the only thing I noticed pulling up which really means something on a house this size. It was a massive triple walled stack that wasn’t well thought out. It suck out so far that you couldn’t even see the cute bay that sat behind it.
We are so excited to start getting the finishes up finally. We were hoping to get the place at least semi-livable before Thanksgiving. Even though the electrician was behind and set us back almost 6 weeks, we think we still might make it. We will, for sure, be in the house in time for Christmas. It’s always crazy to me how quickly finishes go in compared to how long all the prep work takes in a renovation. There is just so much trouble shooting you have to do ahead of the finishes that a lot of your days are spent thinking and not doing. We are really looking forward to not doing anything more on this place and finally sitting back to relax and enjoy the well earned rewards of our hard work.