Closing In...

Well school is off and running, I'm not sure if I'm excited about it yet, but it's crazy  that I'll be a college graduate a year from now.


Anyways, here are the latest pictures.  Putting the shingles on the roof had to be postponed because it was a little rainy earlier this week, and now it's too cold.  It's going to be warmer this weekend, so they're aiming to get the roof on then.  In the mean time, they have been working on the ceiling upstairs.


Here are a few of the pictures now that back room is completely on and covered by the roof.  It's seriously amazing how big the rooms seem now.  Plus, the archway between the dining room and back room is open now, making the house seem even larger.

As I said, the room looks HUGE!!  This will be the family room.

The room from the other side.  This will eventually be the kitchen.

This is the view from the living room (front room) through the dining room and into the family room.  The archways are both giant.  The house is looks like it is going to flow really well.

The archway again.  You can see the whole archway from this angle.  Now you know what I mean about the house being very open.

The view from the back room to the front room.  Once the back windows are put in, you'll be able to see from backyard to front.

Not a whole lot of pictures this time.  I guess as the roof goes on this weekend, there will be more pictures.  If possible, I want to keep most of the posts in the future this length, just so they're more manageable for myself and for you the reader.

Wide Angle Photos Round #2

Today is my last day of winter break, so I figured I had better get the rest of the photos up.


With the snow last week, there were a few days the workers couldn't work.  Meaning that we haven't gotten a whole lot further since the last time I updated you.  Today they are supposed to put the roof on, but rain is in the forecast.  I'll keep you posted, as always, on that.


I think this set of pictures may have actually been taken before the first set.  That's completely my fault (and by that I mean it's the computer's fault for uploading them in a backwards order).  Here are the second set of photos from Brian though:

The front of the house

I love this picture.  It lets you see a really great overview of the whole first floor.

The master bedroom looking out towards the street.  It's kind of the storage room for anything that isn't being used right at that moment.  I guess because it is out of the way.  Last time I was over there, there were two skylights in there, ready to be placed in the bathroom and alcove upstairs.

You may or may not have noticed in a lot of these pictures that there are piles of old wood flooring.  Since there wasn't enough of the original hardwood White Oak upstairs, we decided to pull all the original Red Oak flooring from the first floor and put it upstairs.  The master will still have the original Red Oak floors, but everything else on the first floor will have new distressed Hickory (I think) floors.

The new basement before the floor was poured.

Getting ready to pour the new basement floor.

The happy home owners!

The stairway and some of the second floor.

The view of my room, the hallway, the bathroom, and what will be the alcove as seen from the top of the staircase.

The view from above

Well I believe that is all for now, hopefully there will be more photos to come soon!

Wide Angle Photos Round #1

As I mentioned in my last post, Brian went to the house a few days (weeks?) ago and took some wide angle shots.  Not only are they awesome and art-sy but they also lend a better perspective often times.  I may or may not have mentioned this is the last post, but I have two separate groups of photos from him so here goes round #1.


Since these pictures are a little older, I figured I should update you on the house as well.  For those of you not in St. Louis, I'll just let you know that it is now officially winter here.  Meaning that you need more than a light jacket and we have had snow now.  And by snow I mean about two inches...but that might be overly generous.  Since there was snow and some other precipitation earlier in the week, things slowed down a little bit, but are still moving along.  To my knowledge, the major things that happened this week were the roof being put on and the basement being poured.  Both major steps to continuing the project.

It's a little dark, but that's the backyard and back of the house as seen from the dirt pile

Shadows from the dirt pile

The tresses from the roof.  I think there have been similar pictures posted already.

Lots of old siding and debris.

The new part of the roof is just barely peeking out from this view.

Like I said, cooler, art-sy shots.  The tresses are really big...obviously since the crane had to come move them!

Getting into the more noticeable wide angle shots.  This probably gives a better idea of how high the ceilings are going to be in that back room.

The entrance from the garage.

I promise the dirt pile really is huge!  On the far right side you can kind of see the walk out from the basement.

This used to be the doorway between the den and backroom.  Soon it won't exist at all.

Lots and lots of tresses.  And the square part in the back is where my room will be.

The stairs from the basement leading up.  They are SO wide now!

Having fun playing in all the dust.

Since the rooms upstairs will have full 8 foot ceilings, the peak of the roof will be taller now. That board all along the top is where the new roof will be.  And because the roof will be taller, the chimney has to be raised so it clears the height of the house more.

Okay, well that is round one of Brian's photos.  Hopefully the next round will be up soon.  I start school again on Tuesday which means the time I get to spend posting on here will probably be cut back.  Though truthfully, it will be hard to cut back on it too much when progress is being made at such a quick pace.

So Many Pictures, So Little Time

Tonight I thought to myself "gosh I haven't posted on the blog since New Years". I really thought this was going to be my first post of the year.  While it hasn't been quite that long, it has been almost a week since my last post.  Remember how crazy it was that they were able to tear the roof off so quickly?  Well it's only gone faster since then.  I have three sets of pictures that need to be posted.  The first set is similar to the pictures that are normally on here.  The second two were taken by Brian using his wide-angle lens.  I am going to post them all separately, as there are quite a few per set.  This post will contain the more typical pictures.

It didn't take long before there were walls upstairs

A little bit of old, a little bit of new

The back of the house one day after the roof was torn off

The view of the back room and the new upstairs wall as seen from the garage entrance hall

So the first few pictures were from Thursday (January 5) the following pictures are from Friday (January 6).

We knew that the tresses would be put into place on Friday, but kind of assumed it would be an all day event.  That was definitely not the case.  The crane had come, done its work, and left by about 9:30 that morning.

Well hello Brian! This gives a little perspective for the vaulted ceiling.  I think it's 9 foot something at the ends of the room and a little over 12' at the highest point

Quite a few tresses here, and they were all put into place in a little over an hour.  Now that's efficient work!

It's kind of hard to see because of the tree, but you can actually start to picture rooflines now

The next picture is my new favorite of the house.  I think I've mentioned before, and I know I'll mention again that we have the greatest workers ever.  They have only taken one day off since New Years Day.  Plus, last friday when the tresses were put into place, they were there at probably 8 am (if not earlier) and didn't leave until after 6pm.  And beyond the major hours they're putting in, they are super helpful with anything we need or want to know.

Since the workers were there so late, we got this awesome picture of the house at night.  Even now, work has progressed so fast that this picture wouldn't be as cool.

I believe this was at the beginning of this week, probably January 10.  This is the old part of the basement where they had to redo the pipes.  For those of you who have been to the house before, the pipes coming out of the wall are where the washer and dryer used to be and the wall in the background is the storage shelves.

And FINALLY the new basement concrete got poured!!!

This is the old part of the basement.  This wall used to be filled with old farm antiques that Grandpa used to love to ask us the uses for.  See the two brick sections? Originally those were windows and soon will be again.

It's funny, that pile of dirt doesn't seem so big when you're standing on the second floor of the house

Dad checking out the ROOF! All of the wood for the roof was put on this week, and thanks to the placement of my window, it's pretty easy to check out the roof.

I feel like having a roof of sorts makes the house look so much more complete already.  This picture is taken from the backside of the garage.

This is what the giant ladder leaning against the side of the house (that allowed the workers to get on the roof) looks like from the bottom.  Just a little steep.

These are all the "normal" pictures as of now.  I just realized that for the first time I think I'm not including any indoor pictures.  Hopefully I can get some of those in the next few days.  Now that there is a roof, you can start to picture room sizes a little bit better.  I have a day off work tomorrow, so hopefully I'll also be able to get Brian's pictures uploaded.  Let me just tell you now, they are really cool!

Blowing the Roof Off

Ok so the title may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we really don't have a roof anymore.  On January 3, they tore off the roof on the second story.  As you may or may not remember, the two bedrooms upstairs are being extended out the back of the house, to make the rooms larger and so that the ceiling will be full height. It will also allow more space in the bathroom.


Here are some new pictures of the house sans roof:

No roof.  The Tiffany Blue room on the left will be Brian's room, the Big Bird yellow room will be mine.

I think I'm the only person who finds this picture cool, but these are the bricks cut to fit the former line of the roof.

Putting in the subfloor.

I can't be completely sure, but I think that facial expression is somewhere along the lines of "What did we do?!"

To the left of the staircase will be the little alcove - sitting room

This picture is taken from my room or possibly the bathroom.

Up the stairs and into the open air.

You can see the framing for the height of the room.  So the room will now go from where the wood ends to the bright blue wall you can sort of see on the far right side of the picture.

This is from 1/4 (the day after the roof was torn off).  The pictures is kind of blurry, but you can see the wall for the back of the bedrooms.

And again, as you can see, we're moving right along with the construction.  I heard that if all goes according to plan and the weather stays nice, there will be a roof by the end of the week.