page 8

in the summer of '03 the szuplats purchased property on 12 vacation lane.

found here will be details of putting a structure up

written mostly by erica and photographed a lot by ben, however like most things in life there are exceptions....

for instance ben wrote that last useless sentence.

 

jan 22,23

ben multi-tasks by painting the window frame for the west side peak and watching the game (BRUINS!! of course)

ben has designed a window comprised of three cobalt blue circles that jim will be crafting. this week we also made a visit to home depot to discuss what sort of light fixtures we want for the house so that we could meet with the electrician. we liked some of what we saw, made some decisions and purchases and hope to meet with the electrician soon.

 

jan 24

everyone continues to work on the shingies. clayton officially finished up the east side today while erica was put to shame by the speedy jen fay on the south side. the staging is set for what we hope to be the last leg of shingling on the south side. clayton went forth on the west side and ben also constructed a post at the base of the stairs going to the basement. i liked the floating look but ben had been advised that we needed some support there.

the temps warmed for a scant few days midweek but did not disappoint this weekend and have returned to freezing.

 

 

here are the new pictures with some captions by ben..... i predict that next weekend the 1st and 2nd of february will mark the last outside days for the season, as i hope that the shingling will be completed and our attentions will turn to largly indoor activities......

clayton finishes the east side!!! not for the height meak.... those are two ladders with boards supended between that shimmy around at about three stories up... clayton doesn't seem to mind too much. he even left work early one day this past week for this "enjoyment"

 

left.....clayton and pete (jen was helping pete but is not pictured) both in the home stretches of the shingling of the west and south peaks!!!!

right..... same angle but from farter back by the power lines south of the house

these pictures do not really show how wickedly cold its been... 2 degrees with a wind chill of minus something... enough said..i recomend wearing two of everything

 

 

january 29th

our (hopefully) last weekend of shingling is approaching quickly. erica and i met on tuesday morning with bob the electrician who is going to start wiring up the house next week. we pointed out all the places we think we will want lights and outlets and phones and the tv ect.... yet i worry that we wont really know the places we want these things until we move our stuff in.

 

on another note i think this picture of steve from two years ago says where many new englanders hearts (if they still have one after this winter) will be.....

simply... go pats

 

on january 31st 2004

clayton reveals

the last shingle!!!!!!!!!

feb. 5 erica back reporting... live? hmm. first we must thank our patriots for winning another superbowl! it was a great game BUT, when the patriots cure cancer, i'll be joining the million and a half people out in the cold on city hall plaza. until then...

speaking of the cold, falmouthites have been rejoicing, moms with babies in strollers are whizzing by, mittens are flying off hither and there- it hit 40 degrees this week! i have a few bones to pick with the damned groundhog in PA however. phil there really needs to get his act together. or at least coordinate with the other animal down in GA. from now on i am sticking with the spring forecast from the south, where they actually believe in warm weather.

now that i got that all out of my system we can talk house stuff. hmmm. one trip to falmouth lumber to return extra roofing shingles and a roll of lead. two trips to home depot to look for more lights that we couldn't purchase last time due to them being out of stock (holy bad grammar!) and to purchase tracking which we didn't realise our hanging blue glass lights needed. one trip to the mill store in west yarmouth to look at unfinished woodstuffs, such as shelving cubes, shelving etc.

Electric company: our electrician did all the rough electrical work in less than three days. we are ready for the rough electrical inspection!!! (photos tomorrow)

my father (stach, above) has been working diligently on the plumbing. here he can be seen using the amazingly fast flexible plastic pipe for water lines in the downstairs bath. in massachusetts the copper lobbyists must have a lot of pull; this is the only state that you have to get an extra-special-with-sugar-on-top variance to use this plastic piping. all the heating lines are in (copper) and only a few more drains (PVC) need to be hooked up together. we hope to have the rough plumbing inspection this coming week as well!

after that we will be ready for the framing inspection. "pray for us sinners!" we hope to pass! we have contacted our insulation and drywall guy (one in the same) and he will hopefully be by this weekend to check out our situation. he will be in next as soon as we pass the framing inspection. we also met with the kindly man from Amerigas this morning. he was able to tell us that the location we prospected out for our underground propane tank will be fine. We got a ballpark estimate on the cost of the tanks which, if we purchase, they will install for "free." if we want them underground we have to buy them - as opposed to leasing. we will be using a tankless/on-demand hot water propane burner for all of our baseboard, kitchen stove and hot water needs. propane will also fuel the freestanding stove we hope to purchase:

today, my father and i went and picked up our free kitchen stove. someone who was renovating in north falmouth was throwing out a perfectly decent stove and we snatched it up. it's only a few years old, has some new parts (the burner grill things on top) and has the conversion kit still attached (from natural gas to propane.) beige is not our first choice but at least it matches the $100 dollar fridge! (lol) in a few years i am sure we will upgrade. for now it's recycling, oh and did i mention- free:)

we also still await the big thaw as we now need to dig not only the septic tank hole and leaching field and a trench from the water on the street to the house but also the electric/phone/cable trench, and the propane tank hole and trench.

last weekend ben also opened up the ceiling in the dormer on the back side of the house. it had a flat 8ft ceiling but now it has a mini cathedral ceiling. he is quite handy with the 2 x 4's and did a fabulous job! he also built a little shelf along one wall at ceiling height. :)

feb 9 (erica at the keyboard here) that little silver thing is a housing, which is what you would hang your lights in/from (there's the poor writing sneaking up again!) from which you would hang a light fixture. (not sure that's better... :\) the electric inspection occured on fridaythe 6th. our electrcian was told everything was ok, he has to move a smoke alarm a little bit but everything else is great. the electrician will be back on wednesday to put the panel in. yippeee- hooray! but wait- Not so fast there missy.. the inspector did not sign our permit?! turns out that we forgot all about the fact that we only had plywood on the back porch entrance. without doors, our house is not technically weather tight so the inspector can't officially sign off... there will be some sort of update hopefully some time soon but until then even we aren't sure what happens next... you don't get cliffhangers like that on trading spaces.

here's a photo of ben walking on the ledge above the porch in the cathedral ceiling half of the house. those three black round "boxes" above him are also electrical! there are lots of little questinos we deal wtih every day but things are going smooth overall. you'll have to wait for the special collector's not seen on tv special edition if you want all the dishy gossip.

here's the ceiling in the back dormer. can you make it out? if you squint real hard a ship will appear. this was the flat ceiling but ben opened it up to mini-cathedral. luckily we have a little extra baseboard going in that room so the heat loss should be no problem. there's a shelf and the greyish plank won't stay there.

frank (l) and stach (r) take a coffee break (courtesy of peg's catering!) stach really finished the rough plumbing this weekend. i was a little ahead of myself when i stated previously that certain parts were finished. in any case, a pressure test was done today and we hope to get the rough plumbing inspection tomorrow. we hope they don't care about the back doors.

MEANWHILE at pete and jen's house flooring was installed this weekend. ben (l) clayton (middle) and peter (r) can be seen here installing flooring in pete and jen's closet on saturday. they finished the first floor in two days and provided us with some worthwhile knowledge regarding floor installation. we know we will be needing that in what we hope to be the near future. it was also pete's birthday and he's the big larry bird! (that's 33 for the rest of you)

feb 10 today we passed the rough plumbing inspection! the town also finally came to test the water line that cavossa brought up the street. (frozen hose at end of line holding up this process)

"valentimes" day!

here are the beautious shed doors jim built and installed for us! (they still need some painting) jim also said he can install some temporary porch sliding glass doors for us while our special ones are built. he said this could be done by tuesday, which will enable us to get the electric inspection signed off and roll us on to the framing inspection. in preps for the framing inspection we plugged up all plumbing and electric drill holes in the 2 x4's with the highly toxic Kwik Foam.

i normally am not one for wearing my heart on my sleeve but as you can see i am puttin aside my disdain for sappiness this year and havin a little fun!

raise your nail guns in the air for my sweet man! he has given me things in life that i didn't even know i wanted (& not just guacamole!) i truly love him to pieces!!!

we also did some other odds and ends at the house. i threw some more nails in strapping, ben built access to the attic space, and we added in a few more supports for sheetrocking. stach, among other odd jobs, ran vents for the bathroom fans and dryer vent.

why, there he is now, installing the vent caps on the outside of the house! the sheetrock and insulation guy came by and checked out the site. we were glad to see him, although we still hope for a thaw and stach and ben believe we may in fact have our septic crew, water line guys, and sheetrocking persons all converging on the site the same week... we can only hope!

feb.17

plywood be gone!

jim installed these temporary sliding glass doors for us on monday the 16th so that we would hopefully get the electrical inspector to sign our permit! it worked! tomorrow stach calls the building inspector and we hopefully get the biggie framing inspection! we have our insulator lined up but he's kind of backing out of the sheetrocking end of it due to the cathedral ceiling. all i can say is we gave him a set of plans!!! stay tuned...

here's a shot of the toxic stuff that was used to plug up all the holes in the walls and flooring. this is for all of you who aren't much in the way of being a "reader". this stuff is supposedly going to halt raging fires dead in their tracks. yes, i'm scratching my head too....

feb19 we had our framing inspection yesterday morning. we did not pass but there are not too many or too serious infractions (although i did have to write a list!) these sorts of infraction include: the addition of some joist hangers and hurricane clips (not all that unrealistic considering that yesterday WMVY was reporting gale force winds) as well as some carriage bolts (tying together the deck and house) and some shoring up of the roof beams... the best part of the whole inspection was when the inpector stopped on the stairs and i held my breath as i waited in agony to see if he noticed a minor code violation. he did not. in case he's reading this, i wont say what exactly it is. again, you will have to wait for the tell-all book to find out. all in all the inspection lasted about five or ten minutes tops and the inspector said we did a good job and even thought it would be a "comfortable" place.

feb20 i decided to do some cleaning up on the fixtures that have been haunting dad's office.

BEFORE. this sink will go well with the old clawfoot tub i think.

DURING. hard to tell any difference in my fuzzy photo. dad took off the old faucet and drain. i have picked out a faucet that will have the spout in the center and two handles for the other holes. the spout will stick out a little farther than the old ones, which were right up against the basin. one or two drops off paint easily flecked off with a razor and the enamel is hardly damaged at all. it still needs a little more cleaning but since the enamel is thin in the center anyway i will probably just take a little ajax to it and remove the remaining lime and rust stains.

feb 21. Photo bonanza. today we fixed up the items on the honey-do list from the inspector. we hope he'll pass us on monday. i have been taking my glasses off at the site and some of the pictures are duly blurry. i have to say sorry and you can probably tell which one ben took!

stach cemented up the holes in the foundation surrounding the main beams in the basement. he also put the carriage bolts through the porch. there were lag bolts but apparently the inspector prefers the carriage ones going all the way through.

stach also hung up several joist hangers (left) with assistance from peggy. ben banged in a multitude of hurricane clips (right.)

ben has been really homesick for the attic and luckily got to go in again today. this shot is as he pounds in the last block to shore up some beams and fill in the double joist hangers.

i also got to use stach's fancy new chop saw today! it is a quality piece of machinery. i am cutting a piece of trim to go under the sliders outside so we could put up some hack shingles that will just be torn down when our real doors go in. we got to see one of our real doors today- en construcione- it is also high quality! smashing!

 

 

hop on to page IX and see the interior work

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

bens first attempt at inserting a counter.....provided by http://www.digits.com/