We're cooking with gas...

Today Kevin, the propane guy, installed the "black iron" propane system for our cooking stove, our tankless hot water heater and our (maybe) propane backup heater. We'll be ready for winter with passive solar, our Tempwood wood stove, our electric space heaters and now propane. Here's the propane regulator for our system mounted below the hot water heater on the back of the house:We continued to work on putting up the tin ceiling... here's the office (lacking one more 10" strip)... that's the pull-down stairway to our guest loft... "so no one will over stay their welcome." We have to put the mattress up through the remaining "un-ceilinged" trusses tomorrow or it won't fit up the stairs... it's like building a house around a mattress:Here's the utility room (also lacking a 10" strip):And... here are our three boys ready for bed:

Boone in his house:Mosby in his beloved basket yawning:...and Baxter checking his eyelids for holes:Hopefully Aaron can give me ONE MORE DAY before he leaves for Louisiana so we can finish the ceiling tomorrow.

More tin is up... Aaron is a sheet metal cutting genius!

Aaron and I continued to put up the tin ceiling today. We almost finished the kitchen, the master bedroom and the office so it was a productive day. Aaron was amazing with his measuring/cutting. He hit two home runs in a row with his cutting two panels that go down the hall and rap around the kitchen and the office. He did a GREAT job... I really appreciate his hard work, his attention to detail and his good old boy common sense... this old fat college boy just follows his lead.
Here's the kitchen with only a small corner to finish (not counting the final stapling which will secure the panels that are hanging down and flatten out the rest of the ceiling):This is a picture of the master bedroom... just one more skinny panel (8") and the final stapling):Here's a shot of the living room from the office which we will finish tomorrow:

More of the tin ceiling UP!

Today Aaron and I continued putting up the tin ceiling... we finished the living room and almost finished the kitchen. We ran into a problem that we needed to think about over night so we moved into the master bedroom and made good headway there. We finally have figured out most of the tricks related to my hair-brained idea of using "upside down metal roofing" as a ceiling. Tomorrow we expect to finish the master bedroom ceiling, the utility room ceiling, the bathroom ceiling and possibly the office. Thankfully, Aaron's trip to Louisana has been put off for several days so he'll be able to help me finish up the ceiling and maybe help me hang some more sheetrock.
Here's Baxter having supper in the living room beneath the new ceiling (we still need to do some more stapling but the hard part is finished):This is the kitchen ceiling (we have one more 10" X 18' panel to install to complete this room plus the extra stapling mentioned above):This is the sheetrock jack in the master bedroom (with two panels hung). Having the sheetrock jack and the staple gun has made the ceiling installation 10X easier:

The tin ceiling

Aaron and I got a late start because we had to rent a sheetrock jack (shown below) and we had to track down his step-father-in-law who was kind enough to lend us a compressor and a staple gun (with staples) to attach the 3' X 18' sheets of tin roofing to the ceiling. We're still struggling with the aftermath of my block mason's bowed west wall (almost every piece of tin had to be trimmed because the wall wasn't straight)... shoulda fired that lazy, good for nothing bum early on... would have saved me lots of grief and maybe I could have avoided contracting plantar fasciitis... oops... I forgot... the block mason was ME.
Nevermind!
Nevertheless we finally got rolling and started learning the tricks to putting it up with the jack. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to "turn and burn" (that's an old Navy saying), however, I don't think we'll finish (in fact, I KNOW we won't finish) and Aaron leaves for Louisiana on Wednesday. I hope I can find someone else as good as Aaron to help me for a few days to get the job done so I can insulate. Here is the ceiling going up (and a picture of the sheetrock jack that lifts the tin panels up to the ceiling joists for stapling):And another view:So far everyone who has seen the tin ceiling up (Aaron and Howell King) has confessed that they were initially apprehensive about the idea but now that they've seen it, they like it... me too!

Like it or not... hanging "rock"

Aaron helped me again today. We had planned to rent a sheetrock jack (it's a gadget that lifts the panel - usually sheetrock but in our case the roof tin - up to the ceiling joists so it can be attached hands free. Unfortunately, both rental places in Winchester were closed and we'll have to wait until Monday to rent the jack. Trying to make lemons into lemonade we hung sheetrock on the walls all day. I needed the sheetrock hung anyway so the roofing tin could be butted to it. I'm hoping that Monday and Tuesday Aaron and I can get the ceiling up using the jack because on Wednesday he leaves for two weeks in Louisiana for a roofing job. Here are me and Baxter at the end of the day standing in the master bathroom door.This is Baxter in the living room heading for his bed (this is the west wall of the living room... all it lacks is a 1' X 4' piece of sheetrock over in the "reflective" left corner):All of the exterior walls in the house are covered in the foil insulation (like around the kitchen window)... AAC blocks at R-16 + foil at about R-15 = approx R-30+. We can't hang the lower sheetrock panel in the kitchen until the water pipes are tested tomorrow in the main plumbing wall:The office... same here... we can't hang the lower panel until the tub is installed as we need access to hook it up and set it:Howell King is coming tomorrow afternoon to hook up my water system inside the house (we've had water to the house for months but I just finished gluing the pipes together last week for the inside house system). This morning Howell was here for a little while and got our electricity hooked up so we can run all of our appliances - including the 220 dryer - before the final electrical inspection.

Getting ready to sheetrock & put up the tin ceiling

Aaron couldn't come today because of a prior commitment so I started making the preparations to put up the ceiling tomorrow (with his help). I bought an attachment for my drill that snips/cuts the metal roofing that I'm using for our ceiling. Hopefully it will work as well as they promised at the metal roofing company. Today since I was alone, I needed to find something that I could easily do by myself so I began "hanging" the foil/foam/foil insulation on the AAC block wall. I finished putting it up in the master bedroom, the master closet and the utility room. The more I thought about it the more it made sense to go ahead and hang the sheetrock as we put up the ceiling. Having the sheetrock up will give us a definite and final edge to butt the metal ceiling to and since the propane guy can't come until next Thursday I can't close up the ceiling until then anyway... so I thought why not?... we'll hang sheet rock as we move from room to room with the ceiling. Here is the east master bedroom wall with the foil/foam/foil hung. The space between each foil panel is for "Liquid Nails"... 3" sheetrock screws and Liquid Nails should cause the sheetrock to be there FOREVER.Yesterday I finished up the rough-in plumbing in preparation for Howell King returning on Saturday to solder the copper incoming water line to my CPVC inhouse system for the pressure test.Living on the far eastern edge of the central time zone causes it to get pretty dark by 5 PM after the "fall back" time change. Nevertheless you can still see how beautiful Tennessee is in the fall even late in the afternoon. This picture was taken from the front of our property looking east down St. Mary's Lane to Sherwood Road (our road is freshly paved and striped).And for your amusement here's a gratituious shot of Mose-Bose (Mosby... "nobody knows where Mose-Bose goes... where do your suppose?")... he's a VERY peculiar little dog but we love him.My dear friend Roger Gertz wrote me today and told me I'd be SHOCKED at the #2 listing if I googled "sir john templeton library." I did and I was.

We passed the electrical rough-in inspection!

As the blue sticker attests... we passed our rough-in electrical inspection this afternoon. I do have to run one more circuit for the ignition on the tankless hot water heater but that will only take about 10 minutes. The good part is that we can start putting up the tin ceiling tomorrow. In the meantime I've got to run some "black iron" (pipe) for the propane cook stove in the kitchen. I have to do it myself because the propane guy can't get here until November 13th and that will delay the ceiling installation unless I do it myself. Here is a picture of the sticker that says we passed.
While I was waiting on the inspector to arrive, I decided to suck it up and glue the CPVC pipes together... it had to be done and I have been putting it off for no good reason. Nevertheless I got about 85% of the pipes glued when I ran out of several fittings (I'll pick them up tomorrow when I buy the black iron).
Finally GLUED:
I also finished gluing on the styrofoam trim around the windows getting them ready for the stucco (I will remove the 2' X 4' under the window soon). I still have to trim out the the front door and add styrofoam trim for the stucco but I'll do that in a day or two.