Framing Time! - Day 6

Things are really starting to get exciting. The crew is starting to use all of the huge sections of engineered lumber for the framing of the 1st floor ceiling/2nd floor and it's amazing how fast they're working.

The front is still getting dug up pretty good for the front porch footings.That could end up getting pretty muddy. They're going to have to work like crazy on Wednesday to get as much done as possible because it looks like we're going to get some rain and colder weather on Thursday.

You can see where they've put the large support beams used to raise the first floor's ceiling by 6 inches, so in the future we'll essentially have 9 foot ceilings.

I haven't been inside the house since last week, so I may wait a couple more days before going back in to check out the interior work. The race to beat the rain is on! Oh, and not like a ton of people outside of my immediate family are going to see this, but anyone wondering who our builders are- check out this website: Stryant Construction

Hello November - Day 5

November is off to a hot start, despite the freezing temperatures. By the end of Day 5, the crew finished its demolition of the second floor and began to work on fortifying the supports in the basement.

They also began putting in the footings for the new front porch. That requires a lot of digging with the mini-backhoe and we've already ripped up the irrigation lines. 

The workers also managed to find our main water line to the house and it was slightly damaged. That may be a good thing, because it was the original galvanized steel line and needs to be replaced.          I mean, it's only 80 years old, what can it hurt to upgrade? 

Another encouraging sign is that the carpenters started framing up the pantry and stairwell area, so the framing of the second floor and first floor ceiling can't be too far behind.

 It's all VERY exciting. It's truly amazing to see how quickly real pros can work.

A Halloween Treat - Day 4

Well, we've come to the end of our first week. It's Halloween night and for all intents and purposes, the demolition is complete.

The entire roof and all of the rafters are now gone. These pictures were taken just as they were removing the final support joists. Just the triangle-shaped brick sides are what remains of the second floor.

The workers covered the exposed carcass of our home to protect it from the impending elements. A brief rain shower followed by winds and temperatures near freezing. Not bad for the first week of November.

The great part is that the gang will begin to do some preliminary framing next week and our builder even said that the framing might be finished by mid-month. I'll cross my fingers. 

Kristin has had a tough time seeing the demo in person. I showed her photos of the gutted abode and it nearly made her sick. I have to admit that I get a little tummy-tumbling going on when I take long looks at the house. But, it's pretty much all building back up from now on.

Day 3 - Open Wide!

All I can say is, Wow. Talk about your visual overloads. It's traumatic enough to see the roof of your home being ripped off, but our neighbors were having a couple of huge trees taken out at the same time and we were getting some trees taken out or trimmed back as well.

My neighbor gratefully (or not) sent me a couple of these pictures mid-day so I could see the chaos going on while we were at work. Holy Cow.

Our humble abode exposed to all of the elements.. and with an early fall "Arctic Blast" coming this weekend.

And this was just the beginning. I had no idea what was in store for me once I got a chance to see the carnage in person. It was a massacre just in time for Halloween. Coincidence? I think NOT!

It was even more jarring to see first-hand. My visceral reaction was to nearly vomit into my mouth, but I had to contain it. It's one thing to KNOW what will be happening to your house in order to make the changes we want, but it's totally another thing to actually see it occurring. It's literally that "making the sausage" moment, and it's a bit unnerving.

One of the really cool things was to be able to see the giant sections of Poplar tree that had been removed from our neighbors' yard. The pieces were temporarily stored in my backyard until they're hauled away on Friday.

7 foot sections of a 150' tall tree, each weighing hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds. Pretty impressive when you stand next to one, and I'm not a small person.

Friday-Halloween should be equally amazing as the tree crew finishes up and the builders finishing removing the roof. The framing materials have been delivered, so that should begin as well. Talk about timing. Let's just pray for more dry weather!

Day 2 - Gutted Down to Bare Bones

There's not a whole lot to update other than new pictures from Day 2. The crew continued to demo and gut the house.

Right now there are a couple original walls at the front of the house that remain practically untouched.

The ceiling is now gone in about 99% of the house, so you walk in and look up directly into the attic through the cross-support beams. Pretty unreal.

On Day 3 the tree guys are coming to take down a couple tree in my neighbor's yard and the crew will take out and trim back a couple trees in my yard in the process. Should be fun. I'll get those photos as well.

Enjoy!

And We're Off! - Day One

If we thought that things had gotten "real" when the storage POD was filled up and taken away, then things have reached "surreal" status. We finally reached the starting blocks and the gun just fired... and now we're off! Our builder told us Monday that the permit had come in and the roll-off dumpster and our temporary power pole were put in the yard.

Tuesday, October 28th, we did our final walk-through with our GC to make sure we're on the same page about what stays and goes.

  He told me that by the end of the day, we wouldn't recognize the inside of the house because of the demolition that they planned to get done. Boy, was he was right! I dropped by the house around 5:30 p.m. as the crew was wrapping up and it was amazing how much demo can be achieved in a short amount of time. The crew had taken down all of the trim and pulled off all of the plaster, dry wall and ceiling for the entire back half of the house.

 It is getting easier to see how much more room that we'll have with the open concept kitchen, casual dining and living area. We're looking at a space that's nearly 20 feet wide and 40 feet long.

 They'd also removed all of the cabinets and appliances in the kitchen. Amazingly, they've already filled the entire dumpster with trash.

 Once that's all cleared out, the crew will have to go downstairs and start shoring up our steel support beams and adding in a couple new ones, since we're changing the location of our staircases, moving them to the center of the house. Now THAT should be amazing to witness.

  Heck, this is just Day One, so stay tuned.

Cheers, 

Flip

Now, it's Getting Real

Up to this point, a lot of our preparation for the big renovation had been somewhat nebulous and surreal. We'd been looking for something a bit more tangible to make it truly hit home. Even signing the documents at the loan closing still felt a little distant and detached. That feeling has officially ended. We finally moved out of the house that had been "home" for the last ten years, where we raised a 9 year old daughter and two wonderful dogs. When the storage POD showed up in our driveway, things got REAL.

On Columbus Day, we had two sets of movers show up. One to load up with stuff we were going to need in our rental house for the next 7-9 months. The other crew was tasked with packing the rest of our stuff to put it into storage. For anyone who has reached a fourth or even fifth decade of life, you learn quickly just how much crap you've accumulated over all of that time.

It's embarrassing actually, because WHY do we keep all of that garbage? The amount of stuff that we have versus what we truly need is absolutely staggering. I joked at least a couple of times during our move, that we could probably lose half of our stuff in a fire or a flood and we would be just fine. We just hang on to stuff for the sake of sentimentality, and not having to make the hard decision of either donating it or tossing it in the trash. We need to take inventory and employ the "if I haven't used it in the past year, then it goes" mentality. That would probably cull half to a third of our junk. It's crazy to see how much room we actually have in the house without all of our furniture and stuff in it. Of course, that's the point, isn't it? We're trying to give ourselves a lot more room without adding too much other stuff to fill that space. Obviously, with a couple of new rooms we'll have to get some new items, but at this point, we've got plenty to fill the voids. That may fall on deaf ears, though. :-)  We just got some great news from our builder, saying that we are just days away from getting our building permit, so now the real fun can begin. We'll actually get so see some progress on the physical form of the house. I'll be sure to have all the juicy details and pictures when that officially begins.