Drywall and Rodents and Bears, Oh My!

Well I’m happy to report that we passed rough inspection and wasted no time rolling right into the next phase of the house, insulation and drywall! Per our usual, we went WAY overkill on the insulation. We started with the spray-in kind (Kris will love that I don’t know the names of any of the products we used, but since he’s not always right here when I’m blogging, my simplified descriptions will have to suffice)! The roof and all the exterior walls were filled with spray in insulation to seal up the house nice and tight. After that, the blown-in kind of insulation. This was put on top of all the spray foam areas. Next we had the fluffy pink batts that everyone thinks of when they imagine insulation. You know, the stuff with the pink panther on the package? Last but not least, we used Rock Wool (ok, so I got 1 out of 4) which is a basalt rock based insulation that is not only super fire resistant, but it deadens sound too. It was quite a bizarre feeling to talk in the house and have absolutely no echo, just dead sound. That of course changed once drywall went up, but we will definitely have a quiet house!

Next up was the drywall. This was an incredibly rough phase, starting with delivery. The truck came, and they needed to drive it to the back side of the house, or they’d charge us more to bring the drywall up the stairs. Well, that was the tightest fit I have ever seen! They had to drive between the trailer and the house. I’m pretty sure I could’ve high-fived the driver from the kitchen window of the trailer. It was WAY too close for comfort! Not only that, but we just had 2 boards stacked around our water hose to the trailer, to protect it from the super heavy truck driving on it. Luckily the boards held up and I still had water post drywall delivery! The crew started installing the drywall soon after. They made very short work of hanging it, but it was absolutely brutal for Kris and I. All our appliances, doors and flooring had to be moved at least once a day for the workers to get around it! Our front door alone is 300 pounds! Having to move it back and forth was back breaking. Once the taping and mudding began, it only got harder. We had to put down paper on the floors, plastic over the windows and cover every surface we didn’t want mud on. Somehow it still got everywhere! Our drywall crew was probably the messiest bunch of contractors we’ve seen so far. In spite of the mess though, the house looks amazing! This was our first chance to feel what the house would actually be like when it’s finished. Actual walls and ceilings! Never thought we’d see the day!

**I’m going to veer off from the house for a moment to remind you all that we are STILL living in a trailer, and we’ve had more than a few unexpected guests. Not the type of guests you’re likely thinking about…rats…mice and more! Most of the summer we battled mice getting into the frame of the trailer. We had mouse traps that weren’t really catching anything, so we tried water buckets with peanut butter next. Yes, I know, drowning mice seems awful, but after a week straight of no sleep, laying awake listening to them destroy the trailer insulation, I didn’t have much remorse. Then we had the pack rats. So gross!! We once again weren’t having luck with traps, so we made the choice to try the glue board. Let’s just say it worked, and we caught rats multiple nights in a row. Not the most effective route though. We’d still wake up in the middle of the night to hear the successful trapping of the rat and then Kris had the horrible job of going outside in the middle of the night with a flashlight to “take care of things.” After a rough few nights of sleep, we decided to try plan C…we bought the latest and greatest in rat catching technology: The Rat Zapper 2000! It is now our best friend! The rats fall for the trap when baited with rat poison or dry dog food. The mice tend to like the dog food best. Yes, we are now expert rat and mouse catchers! Not sure I’ll be putting that on my resume. We also had a lovely visit from a black bear one night while we were eating supper. That was exciting! It tipped over our trash cans, scared Hobbs as he was looking out the door when it came to visit, and then took off when Kris went out to see the damage…he also came about 10 feet from the bear who was hiding in the scrub oak. Yikes! I will NOT be running out late at night anymore without a flood light or a weapon…or both! Our latest visitors were elk. Like 150 of them! They apparently were migrating through and picked our hillside to rest. We enjoyed them for several days and nights! The nights were pretty cool as we could hear them singing and talking to each other. A very memorable experience! Much better than the rat experience! Ha! This concludes my “trailer life” update for today’s blog.

Now back to the house. With the drywall phase complete, we quickly moved to finish the garage, so we could get Kris’ tools moved out of storage where the critters were dining on them. We had the garage floor finished in a really nice epoxy-like coating which looks amazing, painted the walls and got the lights and the garage door opener installed. It’s pretty funny how much happiness one can get from a simple garage door opener! Now all we needed was a driveway into our nice garage! Well, ask and you shall receive! The driveway came next and was a very fast 1 day process once the concrete crews arrived. To cut cost on concrete delivery, we also prepped the back patio for it’s final round of concrete. This was another back-breaking job as we needed to build a retaining wall to extend our patio. Being SOOO experienced now from the foundation portion of our build, we opted to tackle this one ourselves. This required us to mix 8,000 pounds of concrete!! No that’s not a typo. It was the 2 of us and our little pumpkin orange mixer…and the incredible help of our neighbors, who drove us to Home Depot to pick up that 8,000 pounds of concrete mix! I can’t remember if we mixed concrete for 2 or 3 days, but I just remember that it was very unpleasant. We were definitely not sad to see the end of the concrete portion of the house. We were pretty pleased with ourselves for building the retaining wall support, footings, and framing though! Perhaps we could start a concrete foundation company after all of this? Hmmm….nope!

Now we move into fall. I cannot believe we are back to cold weather already, but after this past summer’s flash flood and the threat of winter snows looming, we needed to have water mitigation as soon as possible. Though Kris was planning on installing the gutters himself, we decided that we should probably stretch the budget a bit tighter and hire this portion, given how quickly winter was approaching. The gutter crew was great and made short work of installation. Sometimes it’s worth the extra money! Our biggest issue looming however, was the snow. With the gutters now in place, any large amount of snowfall would be a disaster! The avalanches we had last winter, would surely rip the gutters right off the house! After the nightmare roof installation process, Kris was not excited to get on the roof again. He would prefer to never even talk about the roof again! But, this was one job we didn’t trust to anyone else. The dreaded snow stop installation. For those of you that are unfamiliar with snow stops, they are pieces of metal that you mount horizontally on the roof to break up the snow as it melts. They stop the snow from falling off the roof in one big avalanche. We rented the man-lift one last time and Kris pulled the ol’ safety harness out again. Our niece offered to help on day 1 and she had a blast dangling out of the lift with Uncle Kris. I was more than happy to share that job with her! Day 2 was a long, hard day in the lift. Kris had to tackle some of the steepest, most difficult areas. We worked until it was too dark to see. Kris had a few tumbles that day and we came so close to finishing, but we couldn’t quite get it done. We only had the man-lift until 8am the next morning, so we dragged ourselves out of bed in the dark, so we could be up on the roof at sunrise! It was super cold up there. We worked as quickly as we could and finished in the nick of time! What a relief. We were officially ready for winter! I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud, because if you’ve been following our house build, you’ll know that Mother Nature has it out for us! One week later, we had a historic snowfall, bringing 3 FEET of the white stuff. Nothing like putting those snow stops to the test on their first run! I’m happy to report, they worked perfectly! No avalanches off OUR roof this winter!

It is now Thanksgiving weekend, and though we had hoped to be in our house long ago, we can see the finish line in the distance now, and it somehow gives us just a little bit more energy to race to the finish line! We are truly thankful for what we have been given, for the long fall that allowed us to make huge progress on the house, and for all the wonderful neighbors we have started to build friendships with in our little ranch community! We are also celebrating the miracle of the gas hook-up being completed the night before Thanksgiving! Only took 2 years! Ha! My next blog will be about finishing the interior of the house, where it will now be toasty warm. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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