Progress continues...

Quick weekend, since we didn't make it up to the island until late Saturday morning. Scott, Brad and Chris came up for the day and spent Saturday night. Big thanks to Scott for finishing the leveling of the septic field and helping with some drywall mudding. Chris helped out with some insulation and I finished drywalling the inside of the 2 remaining skylight bays.

The best news (other than never having to touch any more "ichy-ass" insulation) is that the HVAC efficiency will be greatly improved now that the vaulted ceiling is wrapped-up tight with 12 inches of R-30 insulation. The A/C now blows nice and cold and can cool down the cottage very quickly.

Here are a few photos of the finished product. Unfortunately, these photos don't really "do justice" to the amount of work and hassle involved.

Facing front - vaulted ceiling insulation and skylight bays drywalled

 

 Facing back - vaulted ceiling insulation and skylight bays drywalled

Next step is to tape more corners and continue mudding. Yes, this will continue for the next few months. I am loosely planning on hanging the tongue-n-groove pine siding on the vaulted ceiling sometime maybe in October. Just found out today that this wood is on sale for 50% off for the next 10 days.

Looking forward to a long Labor Day Weekend with the family. This is the 200 anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie and the island will be packed with festivities. More to come!

Skylights, more insulation and mud

I was able to squeeze in about 25 hours of solo work on the cottage this weekend. Brad came up for Friday night. We went downtown for a few hours for some gin & tonics. I spent the rest of the time working away and I missed all the Homecoming stuff going on all weekend.

Major accomplishments include:

• Finished insulation wrapping of the cold air return
• Drywalled around two of the skylights
• 33% of the vaulted ceiling insulation
• Drywalled mudded ~20 corners and ceilings
• Roughed in a recessed shelf hole in the master bathroom

I had to wrestle with multiple angles and a tight working area to figure out how to drywall the inner cavity of the skylights. Here is a photo of the finished result. Now I just need to repeat this three more times.

Skylight #1 drywalled boxed and insulated

After I figured out how to cut the angles, I jammed-out one more skylight. This photo below  represents 50% completion on the skylights and 33% on the vaulted ceiling insulation.

Front skylights #1 and #2 drywall boxed and insulated

 

Of all the work needed for the cottage project, the top two worst jobs are #1 using a shovel (dirt, gravel, whatever) and #2 working in the attic space (hot, and no room to get at what you need to work on). So, sometime early Saturday evening, I finished (yes finished) the insulation wrapping of the cold air return. No words or pictures will really represent what a pain-in-the-ass this job turned out to be. I can't wait to finish the vaulted ceiling insulation and never have to look at this again. Anyway, here is a photo...

 

Cold air return insulation wrapped, nice and tight

Drywall mud continues...
I spent several hours hacking-away at the endless mountain of drywall mudding that is needed. I probably finished about 20 corners, two closets and most of Anna's room.

Next weekend will be the last work push until taking a break for a long Labor Day Weekend with the family...

Kelly Miller Circus

Just got back from a few actual vacation days on the island, spending some time with the family and going to the famous annual Kelly Miller Circus. This is really a great show and experience. This circus is celebrating 75 years of road production. We were able to catch the 4 pm show on Monday. Here is a great shot of the elephants...

Under the big top - old school

Before, between and after all of the shows, the circus crew lets you ride the elephants, ponies and camels. All the girls rode the elephant. Lil Neil was terrified and would not go near them. So we will have to try again next year.

Anna, Bon and Nama riding the elephant

 

Check-out this awesome photo below, taken by Bon, probably 15 feet away. Just an amazing beautiful animal. In the morning before the shows start, the crew has to set-up all the tents and stuff.

 

One of the six Bengal tigers - great close-up shot

Bon, Nama and the kids decided to go to Put-In-Bay for the day on Tuesday. They let me have some time to work on the cottage. 

 

Nama, Anna, Sophie and Neil at Put-In-Bay

 



I managed to put up drywall tape in about 20 corners and the first coat of mud on the ceiling in Neil's room. What you see below, needs to be repeated in the other three bedrooms, 4 remaining closets, 2 bathrooms and the main living/dining area... And that is just the first coat of mud! holy frijole!

We all went out for dinner at Docker's on Tuesday night to watch the boats dock and enjoy the scenery and great food.

Me and my boy

I won't be going up again until the weekend of August 16th to continue working on drywall, and insulation. My high-level goal (as of today) is to have ALL insulation work done by end of August. Drywall will continue on into the Fall and hopefully we can get moving on the wood ceiling in the main room by end-of-season... fingers crossed.

Solo weekend - nice weather

I was able to take a vacation day on Friday and then get to the island later Thursday night. The weather was unseasonably cool for late July. Very nice for island work.

Friday night, the Arnold's took me out to dinner and I caught the sunset at Portside Marina.

Sunset at Portside Marina

 

Later on, I ran into my cousin John and family who were docked at Seaway Marina for the night. I met them Saturday morning for breakfast on the boat.

 

Back at it...

 

Spending hour and hours working alone and listening to classic rock, although I have heard the same songs for 25 years, I am discovering new lyrics that I never knew. Funny

 

Here is the rough cut-out for the recessed bar shelving to come. This will probably be like 3 shelves finished in either natural wood stain or painted white. Not sure yet.

 



Bar shelf nook - rough cut-out

Hanging drywall around the panel using left-over scraps. Every step of the way looking more and more finshed.

 

Drywall around the panel

In the utility room, I was able to finish the drywall, including the ceiling (and insulation), do the corners, and apply the first coat of mud.

I wanted to get this room the farthest along as far as drywall is concerned because I have it filled now with tools and stuff. I can't keep moving everything out of the way every time you want to work on/in this room. The biggest challenge with this room is that I am officially out of full sheets of drywall and I do not want to buy any more and lug them on the ferry. I do have a ton of large scrap pieces that I am using to finish up. So... this room will have many, many more seams than preferred. But joint compaound is cheap and you know what they say, "do your best and mud the rest".

Utility room drywall hung and first coat of mud

 

For the rest of the cottage, I was able to mud all walls (including closets) seams and screw holes with the first coat. Next time (when I get at least a day) I plan to do all of the ceiling seams and corners.

 



Lil Neil's room - wall mud first coat done

The insulation saga continues and will for the next few weeks at least. My goal is to be insulation complete by the Labor Day weekend, hopefully sooner. What you see in the photo below is my proof-of-concept for the vaulted ceiling. I wasn't sure the best product or proper size. These are 24 inch wide, 4 ft long batts with the kraft paper facing. Just staple them to the rafters and you are good-to-go.

Vaulted ceiling insulation started

 

All-in-all, a very productive weekend. I also, removed many of the smaller scraps of cut drywall to make more room for everything else and generally cleared out unusable crap!

 

Bonnie is headed-up on Friday for her new annual "Girls Weekend". I will be bringing the kids and Nama up on Sunday for the Circus next week and a few vacation days.

 

Hopefully, I can get some work done on the cottage as well. Have to wait and see...



Insulation "Fest" 2013

Big island weekend. It was officially Island Fest on Kelleys and the whole downtown was set-up with all kinds of food and vendors, etc. Saturday night included an awesome fireworks display that was really a great show, very cool.

After not going up to the island in nearly a month, I had a lot of stuff to do in a short window. Not to mention it was brutally hot and humid.

I had to stop at Menard's on the way to load up with over-priced insulation. The picture below does not really do this justice, because although is looks like a normal load, the Menard's guy had to use a fork lift to get this stuff in the truck. This is 4 packages of 11 - 4 ft batts all bundled together on top.

Insulation load #1 - boring

The Arnold's Food Truck made its debut for Island Fest Weekend. They served up all kinds of tasty Asian specialities all weekend long. If the Food Truck is rockin', please come a knockin'!

Good Eats Food Truck - Chris and Kiki Arnold

 

Saturday night, the Caddyshack featured Almost Famous from the westside of Cleveland. They packed the house, kicked some serious ass and had the crowd acting up in typical July fashion. Brad showed up to party on Saturday and we closed out the Caddyshack.

 



"Almost Famous" - live at the Caddy Shack

Probably the worst job so far with the cottage, is installing attic insulation. The material is so itchy, cumbersome, and it's consistently over 100 deg. But by far, beyond the heat and itch, the worst thing about it, is that you CAN'T get at the area you need to work on. Whatever technique you try to use to out think the insulation, nothing works, and you just deal with it sucking bad.

1st and foremost, I had to wrap the supply duct work because running the a/c in super hot/humid conditions causes the duct work to sweat and drip. I ran the a/c for hours on end starting on Friday evening and was surprised by the amount of dripping condensation on Saturday morning. Thankfully, I wrapped 75% on Friday night. The trick is, I had to turn off the a/c, towel off the wet duct work, and finish the wrap job as fast as possible while battleling the impending heat and humidity.

Finally, I wasn't able to capture a photo, I layed down over 500 sqft of R-30 insulation on top of the drywall ceilings in all of the 4 bedrooms.

Supply duct work wrapped with insulation

 

Below are some photos of the main bath room. Notice the sun tunnel installed in the ceiling. This is a great solution to bring in natural light in a small room with no windows. Thanks to Albert Hobar for mudding up this room and others when their family stayed at the cottage last week.



Main bath room sun tunnel and mud 

Sunday, completely burned out from insulation, I started drywalling the utility room.

The tankless water heater and pex manifold drywalled

Planning to do a ton of work next weekend. More to come...

Leach field leveled

The cottage still needs a ton of work done with the lot itself. One outstanding issue was that we had too much dirt (~approx 12 inches) piled on the top of the septic leach field. The problem with this is:

1. The septic field is based on an evaporation style leaching system and too much dirt may prevent this from working properly
2. The dirt supply (like most homeowners on our part of the island) is very limited, so any dirt that could be re-purposed is ideal

George, Chris and Tim were able to get it done on Sunday, July 14th.

Leach field, scraped and leveled... flat as a pancake!

Big thanks to George for using his Bobcat to move this dirt and do the grading. Another shout-out to Chris and Tim for coordinating and making it happen on a very hot Sunday in July. Very much appreciated!

You can't spell "KID ROCK" without "KI"

Although we have spent another weekend away from the beloved island, I had an extended 4th of July weekend that started with seeing KID ROCK at Blossom on Tuesday, July 2nd.

Me and Bon at Blossom ready for the show

The K-I-D takes the stage

Bon got this great close-up photo

In my opinion, no one says is better, to quote the K-I-D...

"In an old lawn chair,

And my family near,

Nowhere to go,

No place I'd rather be..."

 

- KID ROCK

 

Cottage updates...

 

Unfortunately, I have no updates to share. We have not been to the island in weeks. The weather has been real funny this season as it has rained some everyday for almost three weeks. I heard from the neighbors that our yard is a huge mud pit.

 

Next steps will be to get rolling on the insulation!