Category: house (Page 3 of 8)

We’re thankful to the Lord to be able to continue on the house! Thanks again to those who are helping make this possible, and thanks to Robert for his help!

The plan always was to seal in the bedroom so we could run separate heat in there, with the idea of using fewer resources for when we are sleeping, rather than trying to keep the whole house warm just so the bedroom is. And so, we added the doors:

To the library:

To the closet:

And to the bathroom:

And then we put in the bedroom internal windows:

Then, it was more great room/kitchen siding, which are now finished!

Electricity Through the Wall

Up until recently, we’ve had an extension cord running from our camper going through two slightly opened windows wrapped around the wall frame between the two windows, and we’ve had towels tucked in the openings to keep out the weather. Well, we recently discovered cold air was coming in between the sliding and permanent glass in the middle of the two windows. We put some towels there also to try to get by, but only until I could figure a way to pass the electricity through the wall.

In looking online, the only similar male to female things I could find were for RVs and were very expensive. So, I set out to see if I could figure out something a lot less costly…

Here is the metal, external wall plate with holes drilled through using the smallest bit I have:

And then L brackets attached, which will hold the male receptacle ends:

Here are the male receptacles and some foam seals:

And in place on the metal wall plate:

I attached the wire, which was just a 3-wire extension cord I cut a piece from, to the back of the male receptacle:

And put the male receptacle back together:

And here is the male end of the passthrough:

I then cut a hole in the internal siding and cut out a square to fit the electrical bracket box that the female receptacle attaches to:

And here is the hole on the external OSB wall:

And the square cut out:

And then the male end and wires through the hole:

And then the whole male receptacle installed and calked:

And here are the wires coming through on the inside:

And through the bracket box:

I originally attached the two wire sets to the top and bottom of the female receptacle, but thankfully discovered that without having the current coming directly in the top one but only the bottom one, the top female outlet was still active! Well, that would have been something if I had plugged in another active cord into the top one while the bottom one was plugged in. Thanks to God for letting me find that beforehand. And so, apparently I only needed to wire in the one set of wires to one of the female receptacles to make both outlets active, and then I just taped up the not used wire, keeping it there in case it was ever needed:

And here is the female receptacle in place:

And the cover plate:

Then, I plugged in the extension cord to the outside:

Et voila! Power on the inside!

And now, we can close both those windows completely to help keep the place warmer.

Homemade Amish Hat Rack

With the great room siding done, I really wanted a place for the men to be able to hang their hats when visiting, and so I set out to make something quick but useful for the larger sized Amish hats we wear.

And here’s what I came up with. Had to angle the backings to be able to fit on the wall as I hadn’t measured the wall width beforehand, but it worked not too badly:

Again, we are grateful to the Lord for allowing the continued work on the house!

— David

After some of the great room siding had been done, we’ve been able to continue on the house, with the assistance of Robert.

Closet/Pantry/Bathroom Ceiling

Next job was the closet/pantry room/bathroom ceiling. Here are the cross blocks:

And Robert working up there:

And the ceiling done. We can hopefully even store some things up there now as well:

Enclosing the Bedroom

We decided to go ahead and try to make the bedroom its own sealed-in room so we could have separate heat in there at some point, and so we needed the siding around the bedroom windows to go up, in preparation for installing the windows:

More Foundation Beam Work

After adding spacers to the south beam to level it some, I didn’t like how the end of the beam was torquing still a little, with the pier being very slightly tipped that way, and so I thought I might try replacing the pier bracket with a wider one so I could set the beam a little bit back on the pier and add a side spacer to help keep the beam a little more vertical. And here is that process…

Here the beam is raised:

And here, loosening and removing the bracket:

This is the bracket removed:

And the new one in place:

Again, I used the floor jack to push back the bottom of the beam. I also temporarily removed the hurricane clips from the beam and floor joists to allow it to maybe pivot back a little easier:

And here the beam is set back down with the 2×4 side spacer in place. Hopefully that will help!

Birdhouse

And finally, one other nice touch for this update: young Elijah, one of the Stonger boys, built us a birdhouse, which we put up on the south side of the house! Thanks Elijah, and nice job!

As always, we are very thankful to the Lord for providing for continued progress on the house!

— David

To be able to make things a little more functional for living in the house, we’ve started to put up internal siding in the kitchen area. I really like the T-111 siding we used for the ceiling, with its kind of old-timey wood look, so we are going with that for the internal siding as well.

We have a helper for house projects now too, and here Robert is putting up some of the siding:

And here is the rest of it for the kitchen area:

Robert did a good job, and to me it looks nice!

Here’s a firewood rack we picked up too, to try to be a little more tidy with the firewood:

We are thankful to the Lord God for the provisions to continue on the house!

— David

Even though most of the piers of our house were built on top of boulder rock underneath the ground surface, apparently on at least a few of the piers, that sadly hasn’t been good enough. One day I was looking longways down the south beam and noticed a distinct sag — at least a couple of the piers had definitely dropped some. Not a bunch, but enough that I figured I had better do something about it. When I was doing the upper south siding, you could see the dip in the roof in that area too.

If you look closely, you can see the dip in the beam around piers two and three from the far end:

But how to go about leveling the beam?

Well, I researched plastic industrial spacers, but those ended up being fairly expensive. And then I thought I would just use 2×4 yellow pine spacers, since the beam 2x10s are made of yellow pine.

And then, how to lift a house. 🙂 After some quick research there, I found some quite inexpensive 20 ton bottle jacks; and after reading the reviews of people using them to level houses, I figured a couple of those would work well.

Once I received the jacks, it was time to proceed…

Here they are lifting the beam. The two work just great! It was really weird jacking up a house. 🙂 In the end, I found I could use just one jack, but I also figured it was good to have a backup, so the house wouldn’t come crashing down in case one jack gave way. I found too that plywood on top of the bottle jack held the best with the pressure from the bottle head:

Here you can see the space between the beam and the pier bracket:

Once raised, instead of trying to use 2×4 wood, I thought to use leftovers of our cedar siding fence slats, which I figured are going to be fairly durable and hopefully strong enough, being made of cedar; and they’re already 1/2 inch thick, which would work well for the various spaces I needed to fill:

Oddly, once lowered, the beam on that end wanted to torque outward, away from the house, in order to be set in the middle of the pier bracket. That I assume isn’t great, as it appears the pier is maybe dipping on one side. Hopefully it’s done. But I needed a way to push the beam back to a more vertical position, so I used a floor jack and 2×6 board:

And I needed something to hold it in its new place on the pier bracket, so I used cedar slats again and shims:

But, it all seemed to work for now; I pray things don’t move any more. And here is everything in place. The worst sag ended up being 1 inch, with others at 1/2 inch, and I ended up lifting piers one and four as well:

And a view down the beam again, this time more level:

Again, we pray things don’t get any worse; but we are thankful to the Lord for allowing this to be successful, for the safety and ideas He granted during this process, that the house hasn’t toppled over by now 🙂 , and for the continued progress on the house.

— David

It has been almost two years since I took the first pictures of work on the external siding of the upper west section of the house, and after the upper east side was completed, I was able to just the other week finish the upper south side of the cedar fence slat lap siding, and thus wrap up the external siding of the entire upper part of the house!

Here is the tar paper, which Sue helps me put up, and window frames in place:

And the rest of it done:

Whew! Now just to paint it with the wood protector I’ve been using on the other sides.

Thanks to the Lord for the provisions to continue on this, the strength to even perform the building duties, safety while working up there, and continued progress on the house!

— David