You Want to See the Holes in Our Walls?

I find myself luring neighbors over to our house to show them the state of our house. I don't know why I feel so compelled.



Our front entry is all torn up -- the front closet used to be towards the right. Towards the back, to the left of the shop vac, you can see our bedroom door. This used to be the door to our closet (now gone).



On our main floor, there are all these holes in our walls. This is where the contractor is putting in the supports that are coming up from the basement to help support the additional weight of the upper floor.



One of the beams happens to be going right where our bathroom cabinet used to be. You can see it already in place behind the plastic.

The contractor was kind enough to find an old mirror in our basement and hang it in our bathroom for us to use during this interim period. He says he'll help us find a cabinet to go to the right where we'll be able to keep our stuff. It's sweet how much he's doing to try to make this awkward period as pleasant for us as possible (he's gone above and beyond normal contract work to make life pleasant for us, cleaning the toilet and bathroom floor when things got dusty in there, wiping down all the things on our kitchen counters, picking up and boxing all the kids' toys when he had to be in their room, etc.

He confesses to a bit of OCD, but I think for us, it's working to our advantage...



The current state of the upstairs. Not much has happened here -- he's working hard to get our main floor in order so that our lives can return to normal on that floor. He's getting the supports in the walls, after which he'll get the city to come and inspect. Then he'll get his drywall guy in and we'll be past the roughest part of things.

Honestly, it hasn't been all that hard, though.

My Life in Plastic

I was surprised to come home on Thursday evening to find that the contractors had been busily moving all our stuff around and encasing it in plastic.

They have gotten to the point when they need to be working on the ground floor. They'll be cutting into the walls (in a move he describes as "surgical") for the supports that they'll be putting in to support that additional weight the new upstairs will put on the building.



Our upstairs is getting stripped away completely.



Sofa all plasticked up.

This might be a good time to find other places to be staying...

Cement!

Today the cement truck showed up today, much to the delight of the little boys in our household.



The boys were armed with potato guns (at a buck per gun and a buck for a 5lb bag of potatoes, you've got yourself an afternoon of fun). The cement hose snaked into our basement.



The contractor was kind enough to let us know when the cement was ready enough to take some handprints.



Both my natural sons as well as their best friend, Elijah (my "third son") got in some permanent mementoes of the day. The cats, Joey and Gus were impressed as well.

There goes the dry wall!

Our upstairs now looks dramatically different without the drywall.



View from the playroom -- there's still drywall on these near walls.



All those old beams...



That hole in the floor is where our stairs are -- the railings are down now.

That's the (impressive) effort for Friday... today the inspector checked out the holes in our basement and gave them the approval to pour concrete next week... yeah! Moving right along...

Finally: The Plans

Here are the plans!

I was going to scan them, but they're kind of big, so you'll have to make do with copy shots.

The green marks are to make sure that they're not mistaken for the final plans, there were some modifications.

Below, the front of the house, as you've seen it, with the new second story:



The back of the house with new deluxe back porch:



This is the new main level. It's very similar to our current one, except that the stair to the upstairs have been moved to near the front entrance (on the left). You walk in and can then go upstairs or walk into the living room.

The boys will each get a bedroom (the two rooms at the bottom). The one who lucks out into getting our old bedroom, on the left, will also get a secret passageway leading from the back of his closet to the back of the front closet.



The new upper floor. You walk up the stairs and enter the new shared family space. On the left is a small room marked as storage that we might put the computer into. A new little laundry area will be just off the main area. Walk through a door and you'll enter parentland: bedroom, walk-in closet and master bathroom. Yeah!



The new profile of our house, as seen from the street:



The side of the house:



And this is currently what our upstairs looks like -- things will be coming down next week!

The holes in our basement

So the holes in our basement seem like totally uninteresting parts of our remodel (an essential, but basically boring step), but I had a special request from a friend. So Mike? This one's for you!

Here's Joey (he makes a good size reference, maybe not such a hot mouser) sitting in one of the holes. This is one of the original support posts holding up the house. It has since been removed and now our house is being supported by the spindly looking temporary supports.



Spindly looking temporary supports holding up the new beam. You can see the square holes where the new supports (okay, they're called "footings") will go, with new cement.



Here's what a hole looks like. When they have all the holes dug out, they'll ask the city to inspect things before they can pour the concrete. I think this is supposed to happen this week.



Tad says he keeps on stepping back in the basement and almost falling into a hole.

This utility chimney, which was used to vent the furnace (which is now gone) and the hot water heater was taken down today.




So now the hot water heater is standing all alone and the final footing hole is ready to go.

Here's a shot up the hole where the utility chimney used to be. From the basement, you can look through our main floor, through our finished attic and up through the hole in our roof.



And they've closed up the hole where the chimney used to be in the kitchen. That plywood is where some wall used to be. Incidentally, that wall had the light switch on it. Now I can't figure out how to turn off the kitchen lights! Hopefully that will come back...

Maybe we can put in a dumb waiter where the chimney used to be. We can teach the kids to cook breakfast for us and send it upstairs....

So moving right along!

Utility Chimney is almost gone!

Here's the back of the house now -- it looks so sad without our old back porch, rickety as it was!



Above is the rot on the house created because they poured concrete steps right up against the side of the house. Just a little unexpected surprise (can you say "change order?") that we've discovered. Happily, though, the contractor says that things are going really well, so it's not that bad (though tell that to the guy who had to jack hammer the steps away in 90 degree weather last week!).



Downstairs. Here's our old hot water heater, which will be replaced by a side-venting one. The utility chimney will come away, so this whole area will open up for us.



Here's our kitchen. The plastic is covering up where the utility chimney used to be. Our contractor says he'll frame this in for us when all is done.

A full kitchen remodel is not in the picture for us -- we're really at the limit of our budget as it is (though the contractor is really wanting to do something for us.... maybe a later date!).

To keep dust to a minimum in our living spaces, there's now some zippered vinyl leading to the upstairs (we have to be sure to keep our inquisitive cats on THIS side of the vinyl -- Joey's filthy right now).

And here's the big hole in our upstairs. The utility chimney came down from the top down.

The former playroom, less a little carpeting (and the Nagel).

So things seem to be going along! The contractor is very happy with the progress so far. He is very eager to get to the fun part (for him), which is when he gets to cut the roof off and build fresh -- I can't imagine cleaning up old stuff is all that exciting. He thinks that he'll get to that phase in less than two weeks.

Man, I'm glad I finally started this blog... things are happening every single day!

This is what we're doing

So we live in a bungalow with a finished attic. This is fine, but the upper floor space isn't terribly usable -- the head room's not sufficient even for me, unless I'm walking right down the middle of the space.

So rather than just the low-headroom-attic, we're shooting for an actual, true second story. Check out the artist's rendition! Pretty cool, eh?

I promise to eventually scan in the floor plans... 

The Remodel: Before Photos

This To Do List had me and Tad running around the last few weeks...

Here's our existing stairs. In the remodel, it will be moved near the front entrance.



Upstairs. This is actually only slightly messier than it usually is. Note that it's kind of long and narrow and tall people can only walk down the middle five feet or so. The space on the edges, especially near the stairs, is pretty much wasted/storage space. We could only really use the space in and around the dormer. We used to have a futon sofa up here with a tv -- this was the family area.



Towards the end: my craft area. Messy! I've been clearing stuff out...

Through the open door, the playroom:

Note the Nagel in the background. Yes, we all have remnants of the '80s in our lives (admit it: you've got a Flashdance album hanging around in a box somewhere)

So, in the remodel, all of this is going away! They'll cut out a middle rectangle of the roof and put in a true second story.

!!!

We'll get a new master bedroom suite (bedroom, bathroom, walk-in closet), laundry room and family room upstairs.

Yeah!

The boys will each have one of the two bedrooms downstairs, so they'l be happy too.

House Remodel!

For the last few months, we've been preparing for our house remodel. It's taken so long to get to here that it can hardly seem possible that we've overcome all the obstacles: party sewer lines, shared water mains, choosing an architect, figuring out financing. Figuring out financing AGAIN.

So many things!

Day one actually happened two weeks ago. I'd meant to post on this blog all our progress periodically, but, well, life gets in the way!

The story so far:

The contractor has cut out square holes in the concrete in the basement and dug down in preparation for the footings that will need to be put in in order to strenghten our supports, to hold up our bigger upper story. The back deck has been torn down and the unexpected concrete steps that emerged from under it has been jackhammered away. The contractor cut into some plumbing in the basement (of course, it's impossible to tell what's under there until you cut it away) that causes our kitchen sink to drain into a hole in the basement, rendering our kitchen sink and dishwasher unusable til it's resolved.

Sigh.

I will be grateful when it's done! It should be fine tomorrow...

Above is our current upstairs with holes cut in so the contractor could reach the utility chimney, which is coming down (we're switching to a side-venting furnace).

Tad and I have been working hard the last few weeks to move all the stuff out of the upstairs and our closets so that the contractor can get in and do what he needs to do...

Phew!

More to come.