This has been the most stressful, but rewarding phase yet. It’s about to start getting REAL! I have to give a shout-out to my super talented husband who managed to get all of the electrical wiring in the right place & tested, the spray foam in (despite a few challenges) and then completely cleaned up and ready for walls in a relatively short amount of time. If anyone is wondering what we’re doing in our ‘spare’ time – this is it….night and day aside from our normal work hours. The kids have been troopers and are really starting to get into it too as it’s getting to the point they can pitch in and help more.

Getting this thing water tight and all the last little rivets, caulking and cracks filled took a long.long.long time. Once we finally got everything in, set and sealed, it passed the water test! We then had to finalize the placement of all the electrical wiring. Trying to decide the exact spot that you want an outlet when you don’t even have walls in yet to work with is a challenge. I learned that I am very visual and my spacial orientation is lacking when it comes to envisioning where this all will end up. Talk about stress! Making sure you have every wire in the right spot and set before you’re about to foam it all in with NO undo button will definitely make you break a sweat. We had some intense days of making sure this thing was 100% ready for the spray foam.

Speaking of the foam…..now that it’s behind us, I’m sure it is awesome and will be a great asset to our comfort in the future. Up to this point, it has been nothing but a pain in the a$$. As you know, this stuff grows as it cures, and when you only have 1.5″ space and no wiggle room, the expanding qualities are nothing short of awful. Thankful that we have excellent safety gear on hand, and after many many many hours of ‘trimming’ it back down, we are about 99% DONE with the insulation phase!

The final step of this phase is salvaging the old aluminum wall panels. Man these things were rough. We have washed each of the panels several times, sanded them down and coated them with the best primer we could get our hands on. They look amazing compared to where they came from! We’ll hopefully be wrapping the walls up this week!!

Next steps: lights and switches installed, walls painted, A/C & generator installed & then we’ll get to lay the flooring!!!