We are happy to write at this time that Abigail has completed her 18 week course of chemotherapy and interim scans have been encouraging. She will be getting more scans soon to determine what further steps are necessary.
Despite this life changing experience, we never stopped working on the farm entirely. Though Abigail was unable to visit the farm, she still made many of the design decisions. She worked closely with me via facetime and Pinterest pictures when I was able to go work on the farm house.
Since we have so much to catch our readers up on, we decided that we will post the progress of the last six months in two separate posts.
Foyer, stairway, and halls
The first order of business was to restore the original railing and spindles.We especially love the custom curves of the railing as it transitions between the first and second floor. After sanding the railing we could see how nice the wood was so we decided to stain the railing and paint the spindles.
Once the very time consuming and painstaking painting of the spindles was completed, we primed the steps and moved on to our custom built window seat. Soon we will be sitting on our bench seat that overlooks our pond, drinking coffee and enjoying the wildlife. More importantly, this will undoubtedly be the favorite lookout point for our puppies to bark at all of the animals intruding in their yard. We are having a custom pillow made to fit the seat. Even though this may wind up being a favorite spot for us, the seat also allowed us to hide an A/C duct and provided us with extra storage space inside the bench seat.
The next challenge was trying to match the original door moldings that were installed with four separate pieces of trim. We couldn't find a good match so... we made it from scratch to match just like they did 200 years ago (minus the power tools).
Finally... time for paint. We chose a bold accent color since the majority of wall space is our white box molding and trim. The color was picked to accent our stair runner. We couldn't be happier with the outcome.
Before installing the runner, we painted the sides of the stairs using a white cleanable floor paint. We used the same paint on the bench seat.
Insulation, Sheathing, Doors and Windows... done!
Our last blog featured the completion of only the front side of the house. We have since completed the entire exterior in the same manner which entailed removing the old clapboard siding, repairing rotted beams, running electric, spray foam insulation, sheathing the walls, and installing all windows and doors. We will let the pictures do most of the talking. Special thanks to our friends who helped us with this huge undertaking.
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| Notice the original roof line. It had an extremely shallow pitch and eventually failed. A new modern roof was framed right over top of the original. When we demoed inside, the original roof was still there along with the tin panels! |
At some point, an oil furnace was installed along with a concrete block chimney. Since our heating system does not need a chimney we decided to remove the concrete block chimney since it is not period appropriate. It would have taken days to remove it block by block and the top of the chimney was 30' high! So we took a different approach, 90 feet of chain, our farm truck, my dad, and ten minutes!
Here is the video of my dad and I taking down the chimney in 90 seconds!!!
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| Spray Foam Insulation |
Once the spray foam was complete we installed about 100 boards of zip sheathing and taped every seam to create an air tight envelope.
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| Just me leaf blowing the roof.. |
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| I was out getting supplies when the inspector came. I'm guessing he was impressed since he wrote a note on our approval sticker! |
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| It took three guys to get the big window in |
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| We used spray foam to seal all of the windows from the interior before installing the casings |
Once the exterior was air tight we had a "blower door test" performed as part of our energy rebate program to prove the increased energy efficiency of the the home. They close all of the doors and windows and install a large fan in an exterior doorway. The fan is then turned on and a computer measures the amount of "air leakage". The harder it is for the fan to recoup the air that it is sucking out of the house the "tighter" the house is deemed, thus more efficient. We passed with flying colors. In fact, he seemed surprised and said that our house was tighter than most much smaller homes. Looks like all of our building science research paid off and will save us tons of money in energy costs.
Heat in January! (better late than never)
We are fortunate that we had a mild November and December so I only had to burn wood in our wood stoves a few times before the heat was complete. Like everything we have done, our heating system is complex, technologically advanced and extremely energy efficient. We still have not decided if we will be installing geothermal, solar, or an air to air heat pump but either way, the secondary system will be propane. This was one of the few projects we chose to consult with an expert. Luckily, we were introduced to Bart Anderson of BASC, Inc. out of Ringwood, NJ (Office# 973-831-0040). Bart is a scientist of energy efficiency and alternative energy technology. Bart was kind enough to agree to work in a consulting role rather than quoting the entire job. He helped me design the system, answered any questions and even helped install the more complex components. He also came for the initial start up and programming of the unit. We will continue to use his consulting service on all of our future energy needs.
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| 98% efficient inline direct vent boiler (propane) |
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| Making the mounting boards using Bart's trademark hunter green |
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| Jack hammered through the foundation to route the intake and exhaust. |
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| One of my very first mechanical plans! Bart eventually sent me a professional drawing. |
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| Top two shut offs are for a future domestic hot water heat exchanger which will supplement our GE heat pump water heater so that we will have unlimited hot water if needed. The bottom two shut offs are for future alternative energy (geothermal, solar, etc.) |
Once the boiler and heat loop was completed, it was time to install the radiant floor heat manifolds to manage all ten zones of our heat. We had run all of the radiant heat pipes almost a year prior and they were in a bit of a disarray to say the least!
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| On the cold days we used our wood furnaces to keep the house comfortable |
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| Trench for propane line |
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| Intake and Exhaust for direct vent |
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| Finally, Propane tank delivery! It will eventually be hidden by a vertical herb garden |
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| One of our ten heating zone thermostats. They not only use the ambient room temperature but also the temperature of the floor itself. |
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| Bart programming and doing final checks before we fired it up for the first time |
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| Filling and bleeding the loops for the first time |
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| Adding five gallons of Propylene Glycol which dramatically reduces the freezing point of the water in case of a system failure on an extremely cold day. |
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| Insulating all of the domestic water pipes |
As we said earlier, geothermal and or solar is most likely in our future but until then, our heat is working great without them. Now we will focus on air conditioning.
Next Update Coming Soon: Completed Dinning Room, Kitchen, Guest Bath and Flower / Vegetable Garden.
