We Can Nearly See the Finish

There has been so much progress since our last entry. With the bones all in place everything else seems to just slide into place. Because we are so pumped by the flow of the process right now we just can’t seem to take any time off. We are working morning to night every single day.

We managed to finish the siding on the bay with the help of a massive forklift that we had to rent in order to put our heating/cooling unit on the roof.

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That same morning we also had our HVAC guys out to help us get the massive heating and cooling unit onto the roof. It took a lot of careful planning and preparation, but in the end it went up seamlessly and without much effort.

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After all placing the unit onto the roof everything else went really quickly from that point forward. And in less than a week we had a full HVAC system throughout our house. We installed ducting throughout the full upper floor and the south section of the first floor. The north half of the first floor will have radiant floor heating. Because of all the additions onto the house it would be too much remodeling of the structure of the home in order to run it throughout, but we are confident that the north half will stay quite cool in the summer and will be plenty warm with radiant heat under tile. We are very grateful for Bob, Earl and Matt from RAMS Industries for being our quick, efficient, and very professional HVAC contractors.

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Even though we have been grateful for the added time and bodies we have been given because of covid, we have also been a bit sad that our plumber wasn’t able to come and assist as much as he originally planned. He finally made it back though and we are on our way to a completely finished sewer line and water line. Only one shower and sink need to be hooked up in the crawl space and then the sewer lines will be complete. It’s interesting how much ground water is in there now that we plugged up the end of the sewer lines. We were freaked out a bit that Chris put the floor drains as high as one of the slabs in our basement, but once we siphoned the water back into the drains they sunk back down to where they belong.

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Derek has been working his buns off to run the cold water lines so that we don’t have to continue to have a port-a-potty on site. It’s so strange how something like having a running toilet and a sink to wash your hands can make a building start to feel like a home….finally.

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The last few weeks we have been working really hard to get everything cleaned up. Right after we bought the house my Grandma Stinger passed away and a lot of her things ended up being stored in our basements. They were brought in and hastily stored on top of the things left by the previous owners, and also some of the things that had been here since this building was a convent. Shortly after that Derek’s father passed away and so his things came to be stored on top of all the other things.

One really cool find was a footlocker full of books from the nuns that were full of recorded sermons, suggested teachings, and leather bound books that listed all the sisters that had passed away. These memorial books so beautifully detail all the wonderful things each sister had accomplished and why everyone loved her. Sadly most of the books were water damaged and not salvageable, but we were able to save a few. We will see if the church would like them back or if they are ok with us keeping them or giving them to some of our Catholic friends that might love to read them.

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Keep checking back with us. We will be posting much more often, with much more progress. Nothing is standing in our way now.