Photopalooza!

You can't fight mother nature.

Like most of the eastern half of the country we enjoyed a tasty snowfall last week. Lovely, to be sure -- but not exactly conducive to building our house.   I had pretty much resigned myself to a net gain of no progress for the week (I find this helps minimize disappointment), but was pleasantly surprised yesterday to find some work done on the inside that I didn't expect.

First, the old, unstable, sagging floor joists from the second floor bath were removed and replaced. Some of you may recall that the old bathroom floor's joists had been cut to accommodate plumbing (!) and then were supporting not only a cast iron tub but porcelain mosaic floor tile set in concrete. The result? The floor sloped about two inches. Add to this the fact that it shared a common wall with one of the bedrooms and, well...





...this is the result. Because they also need to elevate the shared wall, the crew is slowly jacking up the new joists to make everything level.  So now we have a nice new crack in the stairwell and, as you can see, the bedroom door isn't exactly "square" anymore. Evidently there was a whole lot of settling going on! 

On other fronts, I have snow in my house.





One can only hope that this won't be the case next January.

That second picture shows where the closet was in Sara's (and my brother's, and my) old bedroom.  It had suffered some pretty bad water damage. OK, really bad water damage: all the plaster had fallen off and it reeked of mold.  I put a child door latch on it and a bookcase in front of it to keep Sara out of there.  And I discovered yesterday that this wasn't the only place in the room with water damage.  Behold, the stud supporting the southeast corner of the roof:





I'm (obviously) no expert, but I wonder if that is just water damage.  Thoughts?

Onward and upward!  Here are some shots I took from the second floor, showing the old exterior walls (the first picture), then the expansions -- our room/master bath first, then Sara's room. The girl is going to have space! We may not see her for weeks.







And one more change of note, the studs are now up that separate the south wall of the kitchen from the hall that will lead downstairs. Skip is planning on coming back out next week to drop that section where the hall will be (to make it level with the new family room floor.  Don't try to visualize it, it will only confuse you).  Perhaps once he finds out how freaking cold it is he will change his mind.



Just a couple more random shots, illustrating just how very classy we really are... the neighbors simply have to love us.





And finally, a shot of our back yard from the second floor. It's not much right now, but it's our little kingdom. One of these days it will be filled with flower beds and vegetable gardens and neighborhood kids playing in the sun.

One of these days...

Just a quick one --

It's so cold outside that I've not had time to do more than a couple of really quick shots.  Will try to get into the new part of the house (isn't it awesome that I can say that??) sometime next week for more.

But here's where we're at now, complete with a "ceiling" over the kitchen/mudroom!

This is the view from the south side of the house, looking at the family room addition.  Where you see the blue wall is where our fireplace will be; the small windows on either side will sit above the built-ins that will surround the fireplace.

And this is just a look at the back of the addition (or most of it, about 1/4 of the family room is obscured by the ever-present dumpster).  We've got three big windows facing the back yard in the family room.  The two doors lead to the mud room (one will eventually connect to the garage...  eventually.)

We've had steady snow all day today though little accumulation.  Next week is supposed to continue to be very cold; I'm not sure what that means for getting the crew over here.  I guess we'll just have to cross our fingers!  It will be so nice when everything is enclosed & weather isn't such an issue.

Stay warm everybody!

Did you know...

...that when it's 10 below outside, the crew doesn't work?

Really, the nerve...

Not SO rotten!

Yes, it is still cold. And grey. And wet, if you consider snowflakes "wet" (they will be eventually).

BUT!

When I came home today, and saw -- brace yourselves! -- WALLS?!?!?!?

How could I resist?

Walls!  Here you can see (well, I can see) the family room [in the foreground], part of the kitchen [the nook, where that big opening will have a window], and the door leading to the mud room [or more accurately, the space for a door leading to the mud room].

Here's the mud room/pantry/loo/my desk area.  Where you see that small space for a window is going to be the 1/2 bath; the blue wall right next to that is the pantry.  That corner that juts out in the front will be my desk area.  The mud room will be just inside the door.

Here's a view of the breakfast nook, as you're looking from the family room.  Don't we have a lovely view of our neighbor's fence?  I will have to do some creative landscaping there...  And a bird feeder for sure.

Finally, this little section shows how the kitchen will bump out another three feet or so.  Right now it doesn't feel like we've gained any room -- but once the old walls come down, it's going to be huge!

I'm rotten, aren't I?

So, no photos. My apologies. It has been cold and wet and grey. And did I mention the cold and the wet and the grey?

The bad news is the temps are falling as I type. Into the teens. BRRRRR.

The good news is that despite my aversion to the cold (and the wet and the grey), the crew keeps showing up every day. Yesterday they started framing the floor of the kitchen & mud room!

I should take pictures, no?

I should. And I would, if only it weren't so cold (and wet and... well, you know).

A teaser

Right now, you can stand in the kitchen & see not only the basement floor but also the bathroom ceiling.

Awesome, right?

I'm going to head over today with the camera... more to come!

Taking a look back

This house of ours holds a lot of memories.  Seeing it now, in it's mid-demolition, torn-up state (like a Pheonix, I keep reminding myself) it's hard to imagine it's past life.  But I'll try anyway.

Our neighbors to the north and south sit fairly close to us, but we do have a nice deep yard.  The front yard slopes up from the sidewalk about 4 or 5 feet and was always good for rolling down in the summer or sledding down in the winter.  When I was a kid there were two big maple trees flanking either side of the front walk -- not particularly good for climbing but lovely nonetheless.  I remember when Dad took those trees down (and the ER visit that followed).

The back yard was always a lot busier:  vegetable gardens, flower gardens, barbeques, soft ball, tree climbing, countless auto repairs, refinishing old treasures from the attic, trying to dig my way to China -- I could go on & on.  As I look at it right now, from my sister's dining room, I see pulled-out railroad ties that were once used to construct our patio, fallen limbs, an earth mover, debris of all varieties, a dumpster, and lots & lots of mud.  Mom's old white pine, the one she brought back from Maine when she was a kid and moved to this house when she got married, still stands in the back corner, oddly-shaped from storm damage more than 20 years ago but holding it's place of honor regardless.  None of us has the heart to take that tree out, so I suppose it will stand there until another, stronger storm comes along and does it for us.

The peonies are awaiting their return next spring, right now tucked in under quite a stack of firewood.  I always loved the day the peonies bloomed, because I knew the end of school was around the corner.  Now I love them because of their heavy, frilly blossoms & familiar, comforting scent.  Another reminder of Mom, too.

Dad's vegetable gardens are lost in the track marks left by the parade of machines we've seen over the last few weeks.  I think we're going to try something new (raised beds and "square foot gardening") but just the sight of sprouting seeds and ripening tomatoes will be enough to keep Dad's memory alive for me.  Sara is so excited about this, too -- she asks me every night to tell her the story about the garden, and wants to plant every tomato she sees in my seed catalogues.

We have big dreams for this yard of ours, most of them new twists on old themes.  We'd like a new patio, this time with a pergola, and of course a nice big garden.  We'd like a play set for Sara and her friends in the neighborhood and feeders to lure back the birds that Mom spent so many years feeding herself.  We look forward to barbeques and blooming peonies and another 30 years with that old white pine.

Everything old is new again.