Huge house update and inside tour

[jchammonds]

It has been a little while since I last updated about the house. It is going excruciatingly slowly (imo ;D), but things are happening.

The front looks like this now:

Comments

[borntoteach]

It is looking great! When can I make my reservation to stay over? ;)

[jchammonds]

When it gets finished. So, about ten years! :P Come on over, you'd be welcome any time.

[queenofsarcasm]

I love pocket doors!

[jchammonds]

We do, too! And sometimes they just make sense, like a door that you're going to leave open most of the time or the door into a small office. We couldn't figure out where to put the door to the office b/c Scott wants his desk in the middle and not against a wall, so everywhere we hypothetically placed the door, it was going to swing in and hit an imaginary piece of furniture. We decided to go with a pocket door = problem solved!

[mayflowermama]

Looks like a lot of progress! The house looks huge!

[jchammonds]

It is, but it is SO slow! ;)

It is a big house (about 4,000 sq ft), but it's not crazy big. It's really close to the size it was before, just configured a bit differently. Local people have been referring to it as the "hotel" or "that mansion across the creek." I really don't feel it's as big as that. When we bought it, I was trying to tell people at work where it was and one lady said, "Oh, you mean the Big House!" :) We like big rooms and big storage areas/closets, rather than a bunch of smaller, differentiated rooms. I'd rather have one big living room than have a formal living space and a family room. We like our closets to be like rooms you can walk into. I like for there to be a place for EVERYTHING!

[mayflowermama]

4,000 sq feet is huge, especially when none of it is basement! I am always a bigger is better person. Love large spaces as long as you can comfortably afford to heat and cool them! That's the killer here in New England...the bigger the house, the more your money gets sucked up in oil to heat it!

[jchammonds]

We heated with a combo of propane and electricity before and the one winter we were there was a mild winter and the heating was very expensive. The cooling was negligible (never had a bill over $200 AND the contractor's crew that was remodeling in the summer set the thermostat at 67). That is why we're doing all the things towards energy efficiency: 1) 4" foam wrap on the outside. This adds something like R11, plus covers the areas that usually do not get covered: the 2"x 6" studs. Usually, insulation only goes between those boards and wood has an R value of about 1 per inch, so your R value for those 2x6's is less than 6. Regardless of what R value you put between them, you still have that ~2" space every 16" (that's how far apart our studs are) with an R value of ~6 to average in with whatever you're putting between them. (This was my brainchild. Most everything else are Scott's ideas. :D) 2) Spray foam insulation throughout the entire house. Spray foam provides a much tighter air seal than traditional fiberglass

[estrange]

Love it!