Open House Set

We are only a few weeks away from moving in. A lot has gone on and been done but I don't have the time or energy to update. But so you know we have all but a few small things left to do.

You are all invited to come to our open house it is on March 26th from 4-6pm. You can see our house and the other 6 houses in our group. We are so excited to show off our house so come if you can if not call me and come visit any time after that. Also if you need our address or driving directions let me know in a comment and I will get it to you.
Note: be prepared to take off your shoes in the new houses.

Painting cont...

So we were so excited to get painting done... but we forgot about the garages and the doors. So low and behold we were prepping and painting again and will be for another week or so. Joe was so motivated to get things done that we got our garage prepped and painted on Saturday, then on Monday he set up and got the closet bi-fold doors painted and last night-Tuesday we got the other 11 doors painted. The painting is not the hard part it is sanding, cleaning them off and setting them up that takes the most time. We are hoping by this upcoming weekend we will have the last couple of garages painted. I can hardly wait to be able to move on to something else, even though I am trying to enjoy what we are doing in the moment.

Joe didn't wear a mask while painting the garage and ended up looking like this...

In the news...

On Saturday while working, a journalist come out to our subdivision to do a story for the Herald Journal about the project and program we are in. I was for sure not wanting to be in any picture but I also wasn't doing anything at the time. The story is mostly focused on the phase that is just finishing up this week, but the picture is someone in our phase. It is going to be a long post because for my sake I am posting the whole article but don't think you have to read it.

Kyler Sorensen cut the baseboards at his home that is under construction in Nibley. (Eli Lucero/Herald Journal)

Do-it-yourself housing By Matthew K. Jensen NIBLEY — One neighborhood is about to receive its first residents and those who will call the cul-de-sac home didn’t find their houses through a real estate agent; they built each one from the ground up. The Neighborhood Nonprofit Housing Corporation (NNHC) celebrates the completion of its 150th Mutual Self-Help Home on Thursday, opening up seven brand-new houses in Nibley for the public to see the program up close. NNHC executive director Kim Datwyler says the agency is the first in the state to make the bench mark. “This is affordable housing the way it should be done, and the way people want it,” she said. “Most people think, ‘Low-income housing? I don’t want anything to do with that.’ But these are lovely homes.” Datwyler says each residence has between 1,500 and 1,600 square feet of living space, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a two-car garage and front-yard landscaping. NNHC helps people who make 80 percent or less of the area’s median income achieve home ownership by providing grant money from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural and Community Development program. Datwyler says the special funding is loaned to people who build the homes themselves. “It’s not a hand out, it’s a hand up,” she said, reciting a phrase coined by a past participant. “The other thing we see is the change it has on the family. The kids will take me on a tour of their house and they are so proud. They’ll say, ‘Look what my parents did, look what my mom did. They built this house for me.’” Qualified applicants are pooled into groups which build several homes in one area simultaneously — each builder helping neighbors construct their homes alongside his or her own. Participants must complete at least 65 percent of the labor required to build their residence. Code work, including electrical wiring and plumbing, is done by licensed professionals. “It’s definitely not for the faint of heart — you have to work your butt off,” said Jessica Muir, who, along with her husband, Kevin, built one of the Nibley homes. “It’s a part time job basically.” Muir said she and her husband have worked 35 hours a week for nine months to complete the seven homes. Jessica said she enjoyed framing the houses and Kevin liked doing finish work. “This is a very, very good opportunity,” she added. “We’re going to have a home and there’s no other way we would have been able to afford a home without this program.” Datwyler says finished homes appraise for much more than the cost to construct them and that homeowners are not restricted from selling their property. “We really believe we want to make a quality product,” she said. “I wouldn’t build something I wouldn’t want to live in.” All homes are Energy Star rated to keep utility costs down. Datwyler says mortgage payments range between $530 and $580 each month. Potential home owners go through a great deal of first-time home buyer counseling, loan counseling and a post-purchase training about the importance of staying out of debt to keep their home safe, Datwyler explained. “Out of the 150 homes, we’ve had zero foreclosures,” she said. The Muir couple say the construction process has shown them a lot about each other and that they have grown closer for it. They, along with six other families, move into their brand new home Friday. What: Neighborhood Nonprofit Housing Corporation Open House When: Thursday, Feb. 5, from 4 to 6 p.m. Where: Shadow Crest Subdivision: 2600 S. 1000 West in Nibley On the Web: nnhc.net ——— E-mail: mjensen@hjnews.com

Published:

Monday, February 2, 2009 8:32 AM CST
Herald Journal, Logan UT

Painting

The inside of the house is painted!!! Thursday we finished chalking and preparing to paint. Our good friends even came to help paint but we weren't quit ready and they help get us ready. Joe spent last Friday afternoon and evening spraying the primer coat on. Because I didn't find a babysitter for Maleah I made him a very nice dinner for him because he didn't want to do it on Friday.
Saturday morning they fixed a couple of spots that had dripped and started the next coat. Joe had a lot of help while I was babysitting. Then when I got there we finished up that coat. Then let it dry over lunch and in the afternoon we were able to get the final coat on. It is a lot of work to spray and backroll, but it turned out great except for a few spots we will have to fix later.



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Us as Marshmallow people.

Looking more complete

We have gotten a lot done in the last week on our house. It is so exciting to see the progress. This last week we did finish work in our house. It went by quickly and everything looks really great. Here is one side of our master closet (Joe's side). Joe was funny when I was designing and laying out the closet the only thing he wanted was his own rod to hang clothes on. I didn't know that he didn't like to share with me, but I apparently always push his stuff to the back. He doesn't like it. So we have our own sides of the closet.


This picture is a little blurry but it is of our pantry closet. I wanted to do something fancy for can storage but it was too crazy so I just went simple with shelves. Also notice the nice trim around the closet door.


Siding on! It was a long wait get the siding started, but once the crew got started on our house it was done is just 3 days. They crew was also able to fix the waves and level it out which is a huge relief. We are so happy about the way the color turned out. The color is silver gray. And all the other gray houses around us look purple especially when the sun it out, but ours doesn't look purple even with the purple tones in our rock. They almost have the gutters put on and we will soon get the shutters to make it just an other step closer to being done.
I love the sunsets we can see over the Wellsville Mountains. The sky have been very pretty and our view is great.

Leads up to...

Finish work. We are about 1/3 done with the finish work in our house. Finish work includes: hanging inside doors, regular and closet, putting in window seals, casing around all the doors, putting in closet organizers, baseboards, and puttying and caulking all of those things. This then gets it ready for painting. I will post pictures when we have it all done.

The one picture on this post is to show how creative our group can be. Inside the house when we are working there are multiple things going on. It gets very loud and hard to hear and work. The major noise maker is the air composer. It turns on and we can't hear anything and even when it is put in the garage it is still loud. So this is what they come up with. It works great.

House Wrap

This would have been a great post for Christmas, wrapping a house like wrapping a present. This is a long time coming. We wrapped the house with this plastic stuff, that protects it from moisture. We do this right before the siding company is ready to side our house. Our house is the last one to get wrapped so it is nice to almost get done. But as you can see from the pictures below we are not done with it because that side wall has some wavy issues that we have to have fixed. The siding company is going to do that so it won't put us more behind. It is just a very slow process and we can't wait to have the siding put up.

Dry Wall done

The dry wall is hung, the wall is taped and mudded, the celling is textured. That all leads up to what is next....

Master Bedroom

Bathroom

Living Room

it looks almost livable inside. It was been awhile since I have posted about our house because we have been working on other houses. This has been done for a couple of weeks but I am just a little behind.

Insulation and drywall

It has been so exciting this last week. Our insulation was put in and the dry wall is being hung. As a group we also started a new chapter in working on the house and is always referred to as finish work. It doesn't mean we are super close to finishing but a lot closer than before. It so far is a good turn of pace. Sorry about the quality of the photos I took then when it was dark and we only have a few lights in there.

This is the living room. This insulation is really neat- it is blown in with water and adhesive and the actual insulation is recycled little pieces of newspaper. It is great energy efficient insulation.

Back of the garage, door on the right is the furnace/water heater, and the left door goes into our utility room and kitchen.
Main hallway with the drywall up. The door straight ahead is the main bathroom.

One of the bedrooms, looking into the closet.

Major inspection...

Progress and been going very quickly even though it is not progress we are doing but progress contractors have been making. In the last two weeks things that have be done are, the plumbing, the electrical, the insulation in the outside walls and dry wall on the celling. It also seems to get done quickly and without input really from us. We were just so happy to have it get done and be that much closer.
Things we have done on the houses are just a lot of little things that had to be done before the next stages. A few of them are:
- had to put in a few small walls in the bathroom next to the tubs
- add boards around the windows if the gap was wider than the wafer board (on Thursday I spent most of the evening finding the table saw and cutting the strips)
- getting backing done for dry wall
- painting the trim around the outside doors
- fixing a hole that was accidentally shingled over on our roof, that then had to be corrected when the plumbers come in(thanks Dad and Garth)
-sealing and masking the air duct work (it helps with the energy star rating that our home should get when it is done)
-adding a few things here and there, that got overlooked before
- and a lot of clean up.
I think that is everything but I could have missed something. It is great to be moving on to an other section of building. We will be starting finish work on the first couple of houses and it will all be inside, yeah for heat when it is getting so cold.

Rock conclusion

So this is the conclusion on the chapter of rock on the house. It has seemed to last forever and it has. Taking this long was not planed but with cold weather, and it getting dark at 5 it was hard to get a lot done. So it is up and the grout is in and it feels so nice to be done with it.

Doors

This week we had Doors put in. The first one that went in was our garage door and no we didn't have to install it. Second set was all our outside doors. I didn't help with this but it is hard to do it seems. A funny thing about our group and doors is that several of us all choose the same style of door, we must have similar taste.
The weather has been rough so we haven't been working out side as much these last two weeks. We did get a lot of the house prepared for installation and dry wall though. I have been working on a lot of backing which is putting pieces of wood on top of walls in between rafters so that when the dry wall is put in they have something to nail to, or a back support (backing). I didn't take any pictures because I think it is boring and it is hard to tell that anything has been done. Also we finally have our furnace installed. They were suppose to put it in weeks ago but got to it this Friday. We won't have it turned on just yet but as soon as the electrical and plumbing are done it can be turned on, heat inside on cold days, it will be so nice.

Ready for Rock

The last couple of weeks since the roofs have been finished it was time to move on to put on the rock fronts on the houses. When I refer to the rock it is a man made thin concrete that looks like real rock. It doesn't hold anything up like rock use to but it looks really nice and it is easier to work with than real rock and it gives a lot of choices. It takes a lot of prep work before a single rock is placed up. I was a slacker with pictures so I only have a picture of the scratch coating after it was all done. Last Saturday we got all of the houses scratch coated and started to put the rock up. It was been difficult and they learning carve steep, but now we have done it for about a week it is getting easier. The weather has also been prefect and I wish we could have about two more weeks of the warm weather.

We have also had some issues getting our rock. The company we were ordering from had a website to look at rock samples. We found a color they had on a house but it wasn't listed any other place. We ordered it and then when it didn't show up, the company said they didn't know what picture we were talking about and had changed it on their website. It was a little bit fishy and weird so we had to choose something different. We now have the second order but I was a little worried about it for the last two week. Our house is one of the easier houses so it is not the priority to get done right away so waiting was not a problem.

Other things that have happened on the house is the rest of our cement was put into place. That includes, back porch, side porch out of garage, front porch, driveway and then on a second day the sidewalk to the front porch and the approach to the drive way.

I just had to put our name in the cement. I put 2008 Little if you were wondering.

BabySitting

Part of Building our house for me is babysitting. Not only do I babysit half the time but Maleah also has to have a babysitter. This has not been an easy thing for me to do. I love to watch kids but it can be very challenging at times too. Every other day I watch two little girls age 7 and 3 and of coarse Maleah. Then on the other days their mom watches Maleah. On the days that are good weather we go to a park and play. It takes up a lot of time and they have fun. This week was Halloween and there is a Pumpkin walk in North Logan, and that is what we did for fun. There are displays of craved pumpkins and painted pumpkins. It is fun and elaborate what people come up with. At the very end they have cute cut outs that they kids put their faces in. Here are the two girls that I watch. Maleah hated it and I couldn't get a picture worth posting.

Shingles

The house is completely shingled. Thanks to Jermey and Kelly that come tons of extra hours this week because we would still be working on Saturday on it without them. They got so much done that on Thursday I only could help put the ridge cap on top because that was the only thing left to put on. Everyone worked so hard and it a relief to have it done before it gets any colder.

Windows

On Tuesday we got to put our windows in our house. It is a fun step closer and not as hard as I thought it would be. For us it is not been hard because the window opening have framed in correctly. Because I want to I want to put up the steps in brief detail.

Step1: Make sure the window and the opening are the right size. Also check the opening to make sure it is cut out completely.

Step 2: Is is chalk around the opening to help seal the window when it is in. Joe tried on the second window and it was all over the place so I fired him from doing an other window and was promoted to screwing in around the window which is step 4.

Step 3: Put put the window in place, as seen below as Joe and I lift up and put it in.

Step 4: is making sure the window is in sqaurely and screw it in, and that is it.

Simple enough even though you can really mess it up.

We are really happy to have our windows in our house. It is another step closer don't you think.

Leaky Roof

Last Saturday, our big working day, was completely horrible with RAIN all day. We did how ever get to work inside houses all day. It was nice to have roofs done and get the inside ready for electrical and plumbing on other houses. Our house got the sheeting on the roof and I can tell you at that point it was a very leaky roof. It was sad to have to get a few things covered because it was so hard to avoid the rain coming through the roof. Good to say though that it will be soon be covered with shingles. Also the few roofs that we do have shingled we know so far are not leaking, so good job to us. The following pictures were not taken on Saturday, but Monday which was a good day working.

Trusses

We have been waiting for almost two weeks for the trusses to be put up on the last two houses. The company had the trusses ready to go on the house that wasn't yet framed so we all thought it was going to get done faster. It wasn't but we had a lot of other things to keep us busy with. On Wednesday when I went out to pick up the girls this is the site I saw.
I was so happy that I just wanted to jump up and down. My house is very close to having a roof. It is great to see how fast they put the trusses up on our house and the other last house.
Pile of trusses last week waiting to go up. It was sad to see no progress for a week but exciting to now have them up.

Walk through walls

Last Saturday, we celebrated having all the houses framed with a BBQ. During the BBQ the two girls that I watch every-other day wanted to go to their room(we were BBQing at their house) in their soon to be new house. Several of us said that they should walk through the walls now because they won't be able to do that for much longer. It was very funny at the time and very true. Sorry my story didn't really explain it well but it was a cute time.

So on the topic of walking through walls I got a few pictures of the inside of our framed house, when we can still walk through walls. This is one bedroom close and the master suit father away.
From the previous post this is where the tubs should be. This is looking into the walls that we had to wait to put up because of not having the tubs earlier.
This is our kitchen/dinning/family room area with our back door. All the wood has now been picked up.

We've been FRAMED

So from the last post you know we started to frame our house. Progress went slow until Saturday and we got almost all the walls up and the wafer board on the outside walls. It was great to see that it is the shape of the house now. Framing is really neat because when you get a wall done you can see a lot of progress. In just a couple of hours I help build and put up four walls with Teri. We were just getting them done.

Joe and Kaylyn standing in our garage.

We did have two big hold-ups and it was tub #1 and #2. These are great shower tub combos that we are getting but there are a few draw backs. The tubs were suppose to be delivered on Friday so we could put them in the bathroom before the walls were put up. The issue is that the tubs are just about 2 inches bigger than all but the front and back door ways. So if you don't put them in then you have to take out walls to put them in later. Well they weren't delivered until Monday. On Saturday we just had to not put up several of the walls and leave out some studs so we could put them in on Monday. On Monday evening, we were able to get them in to the right spots and finish up all the framing and bracing that needed to be done. The house looks so good and is so awesome to see all the progress made in just a week.