Playing catch-up

I have fashioned a very tenuous truce with the Shop. I am not happy with it, but it has given me the opportunity to pull together and edit a few more pictures.

Sadly, I am still not up-to-date.

As of today all of the addition, except for one narrow section, has been sided. The brick knee wall hasn't been installed yet, and the old part of the house needs to be resided to match the new, but once that's done I think it will all start to come together.

The cast iron bathtub for the hall bath was delivered today and so was the fireplace for the new family room. Skip says that Bill (the chief framer) is going to build the platform for the hearth tomorrow and then the fireplace can be installed.

We've got bids coming in for the kitchen and have decided on flooring. The thought of trying to choose lighting makes my head spin. Perhaps we will live by candlelight for awhile. :)

So here's how things looked one day about a month ago. This was a particularly busy day, with the main crew installing windows and the roofers, um -- roofing. Imagine all of the windows in and the siding on and that's where things stand today.


And here we are now. The two little windows are in the family room; right above that is Sara's room. You can see what the new siding looks like, although it still needs to be painted (Hardiplank -- love it!). I don't know why they haven't done that little strip that's facing forward. The birds appreciate it though: That little section where the Tyvek is pulled back is giving them access to the house. We haven't told Sara about this -- she would be devestated if she knew that birds were living in her room and we kicked them out!


And here's the expansion on the north side of the house. This bump-out will give us a much bigger kitchen (hooray!), a 1/2 bath, pantry & mud room down stairs and a master suite upstairs. Hard to see, thanks to the neighbor's tree.


And finally, a little reminder that Mom and Dad are never really very far away. This lone little bulb, planted by Mom I don't know how long ago, somehow managed to come up despite the digging, dragging, tracking, stacking, and demolition that dug it up and moved it several feet from its original home.

I love that.

And the verdict is...

Sara evidently likes her new room!

Skip's been here

Skip may have not-so-subtly reminded me that I've been remiss in my postings. So, in my effort at redemption, I'll start off with a post about what he's been up to this past week or so.

Think you know what he's working on?

Lovely, no?

This ought to be the give-away:

Ta-da!  A new portico!  I am quite fond of it.  He built just what we described.  He'll finish off the interior ceiling and the posts later this spring/summer (what, you don't like the treated lumber look?), but I think it looks pretty great already.

He's also been doing the far-less-glamorous but oh-so-important work of wiring around the windows for an alarm system.  Cause as you all know, I'm a bit of a wimp.

Thanks, Skip!  I'm serious:  With all the great stuff you've been doing around here for us, you could do quite nicely for yourself as the neighborhood handy man!

Whoa.

I am so terribly behind, it's pathetic.  I'm not sure what happened, but somehow in the time since my last post the builder guys have managed to fashion together something that looks quite a bit like a house.

I KNOW!

Pictures, you say?  Yes, yes.  Pictures are nice, but perhaps a bit over-rated.

No?  Not over-rated?  Well, maybe not.  But they do tend to bog down your download, right?

No again?  You have high-speed?

Huh.

But there's nothing worse than having to sit through picture after picture after picture, like you don't have better things to do with your time because after all!  You are a Very!  Busy!   Person!

No?  NO??  Geez, what do you do all day?  Sit around and read blogs or something?

OK, well -- whatever.  I'm fighting with Photoshop and currently the Shop is winning.  So no pictures.

Yet.