Homeless

We found out on Friday that our landlord found another tenant for our apartment, so we spent most of the weekend and Monday packing and moving everything to the house. Our parents helped out, and we got some electrical work done and installed two new windows in the attic. We'll be living out of a suitcase for the next couple weeks while the house is made habitable. All of the blue board is hung, and the plasterers will be putting skim coat up starting tomorrow morning. Hopefully we'll be able to start installing kitchen cabinets this coming weekend. We'll be staying with friends for the next couple of weeks.

Insulation is finished

We decided to have all of the exterior walls and the roof insulated with spray foam. Here's a picture of the kitchen with all of the electrical and plumbing work complete.











Two stoners came and sprayed the whole house with foam. It sprays onto the wall and expands to over 100x its original size. After it expands, one of the guys cuts away everything that expanded past the studs.




















Here's Greg pretending he had something to do with the installation.

Another inspection

We passed our building inspection.

We passed

We passed our electrical inspection! This weekend we worked on getting the house ready for the framing inspection.

Lowe's vs. Home Depot

Convenience - Home Depot wins because it is about 5 minutes from our apartment and 15 from our house. Lowe's is 30+ minutes away.

Kitchen design- We had layouts done by both, and the kitchen designers were both friendly. Lowe's had a better price on cabinets and the designer knew more about kitchen design. Lowe's designers work on commission and Home Depot is hourly. We ended up going with a local kitchen store that carried Wellborn Forest cabinets, they are about the same price as the Shenandoah or American Woodmark, but the people we purchased them from came out to the house to measure and we got a good deal on granite (we picked it out by looking at a slab, not a 4" sample). So I would award a point to Lowe's for price and knowledge.

Deals- We have run across some good deals at both. Last week we picked up some pendant lights at Lowe's that were normally $30 for $5. Our back door was a deal from Home Depot $100. Tie.

Helpful staff- Home Depot definitely loses on this one. When we go to Lowe's there is someone who offers to help us within a couple minutes and if we need to go look for someone there are actually people around. Home Depot, good luck getting help.

Windows

Greg is removing the last old window (besides the ones in attic) it was a bitter sweet moment, but I love our new windows.

















The windows in the front of the house have the nice permanent grills. We chose Windsor windows with black aluminum clad exterior and primed white interior. They came with the PVC sill and trim that will never rot. Windsor was recommended to us by the Boston Building Material Coop, they said the were like Marvin without the advertising.













We could really use a window in the center of the second floor.