Momplex

It has been torture waiting for plywood day! We put the upstairs floor joists up, and I thought the very next day I'd be getting a sun tan on a roof top deck. Not so much the case ... we built stairs, backfilled, insulated ... just to name a few projects that had to get done as I tried not to glance up at those open floor joists ... and finally it's plywood day. (I'll be blogging about all the other projects we've been up to as well in the next coming bit). Hooray for plywood day!

After a couple of weeks of building kitchen cabinets and finishing them, I can't tell you how excited and eager I was for this day to come ...  Kitchen cabinet installation day!!!

Yep, this blank space is going to be a kitchen after today!

We are going to do the wall cabinets first.

First, we mark the height of the bottom of the wall cabinets.  Standard height is 54".

But we can't just mark 54" and pull a string line,

Well, here's a first. I'm going to show you how a carpenter makes a skirt. And yes, it's a pretty skirt.

We are rockin' today at the Momplex.

Remember when we built these guys?

And then we stacked foam blocks around them?

 

And then poured concrete in the foam blocks around the boxes?

And then hung windows on the outsides of the boxes?

Well, today's the day that we are going to start finishing out the inside of the windows!

My friend Kate made me a believer.

When it came time to install a countertop for the Momplex Vanilla kitchen, we did go have a solid surface countertop priced out.  

The cost of the solid surface countertop was MORE than the entire kitchen!!!  And it would take 8 weeks and we'd have to pay for a full travel day each time someone drove to the site to measure, fit and install the countertop (yes, we are to blame there for living in the sticks in Alaska).

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Everything is going smooth.  Very smooth.  Too smooth really. And then we hear an odd sound. Not a loud one. More like a stretching sound. Like the kids are playing tug-o-war and suddenly they both yell, "I win!" at the same time.Like a sound you aren't supposed to hear. But you heard it. And you know something is very wrong.I run around the outside of the Momplex, and I see, the ICF blocks have just barely started to separate on the side, and concrete is just start

Planned OutageBefore we get to this post, there will be a planned site outage tonight at 10PM CST, lasting approximately 1 hour.  During this time, the site will not be available due to scheduled maintenance.  If you are in the middle of a project, please print out or make sure you can access the plan through a cached version (search for the plan with Google and select "cached version") prior to the planned downtime.Wall Framing!We are finally building walls! Framing is

Our decking project is still on hold ... and it's still a weather thingy. But its not rain this time. It's just too dang hot to be working in the direct sun on a deck! So we took shelter inside the super inslulated Momplex, where the basement keeps everything nice and cool, and started on our first interior woodworking project! While we totally agree with you that the very first room we'll be tackling is a bathroom (thank goodness the Momplex is about a mile from our home so not havin

Do you ever wonder what happens between your dryer and the vent outside? We are in the utility installing phase of the Momplex. We are starting with who has the biggest pipes and working our way down to the smallest. First up, we installed 6" diameter piping for the ventilation system. To get the ceiling insulated to hold heat, we've already installed bathroom and kitchen vents as well. Next up is the dryer vent. And of course, since this is the Momplex, we gotta do everything twic