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.

Time Flies.

Well it's the last day of 2011.  I would like to say that this was a great year, but as you know if you've been reading the blog all along, it's been an extremely difficult year for my family.  


In April, my beloved Grandpa died.  It's still hard to say that aloud.  If there is any blessing in it, it's that he did not have to suffer for long, or deal with a prolonged illness like my Grandma did.  Still, for our own guilty reasons, losing someone you love sucks.  Not a day, or probably even an hour goes by without something reminding me of him.  It's a healing process that is absolutely no fun, but I know he wouldn't want us to dwell on the past or focus on the sadness of losing him.

Grandpa in July 2010.

This might be new information for some of you, but while Grandpa was sick, he told us to keep on track with plans he already had to put his house on the market.  It turned out, the day before he passed, the sign went in the front yard.  He luckily never had to see his home of over 50 years for sale.  As the house was on the market, we started to worry that it was not priced correctly.  In June, My mom and I started going to open houses in a similar price range.  One of the houses was actually one street over from the new house.  While we were there, the real estate agent mentioned a house the next street over that was for sale.  Obviously we knew the house and decided to go through it.  I think we were both hit with the overwhelming sadness of seeing other people in OUR home.  From that point on the process of thinking of buying the house began.

Now, some six months after we started thinking of buying the house, we are WAY past the point of no return.  Remember the post I put of earlier this week where they were just starting to put in sub-flooring in the back room?  Yeah.  We've moved by leaps and bounds this week.  These are pictures from 12/30 actually.  There are pictures from 12/31 but I don't have them in my possession yet.  

This was the morning of 12/30/11

This was the afternoon round one.  The giant piece Mom is standing in front of is where the double sliding door will be.  

This is the afternoon round two.

As you can see, now that the basement covered, the renovation is going to be moving crazy fast.  It's really exciting that you can now see more changes in the progress on a daily basis.

It's also really crazy that as of midnight tonight, we're going to be in the year that we move.  2012 is already looking like an amazing and unforgettable year.  I can't wait for all of you to see the progress alongside us! 

Another Forest Glen

As exciting as the construction has been, Jessica and Peter have had a more exciting few weeks.  They made a pretty big purchase and bought their first home!!  If that's not exciting enough, the address is even better.  You see, there are three homes separating their new house from our future home (this would be the time for your "Everybody Loves Raymond" jokes).  We are all extremely excited about this.  In fact, Jessica is going to come on sometime and do a Guest Blogger post showing off their new abode.  

You know me, I'm not great with waiting to show off pictures.  So just to get you even more excited, here are a few:

How adorable is this?  And if you notice a slight resemblance to our house, there is a good reason for that.  I'm sure Jessica will explain more

Welcome home Rodriguez's! So happy for you!

Welcome

Hi! Well this is the first of many blog posts.  First I guess we should start this off with a little explanation of the blog.  My family and I live is Kirkwood, Missouri.  A BEAUTIFUL suburb of St. Louis.  For the past 23 years (keep note of that number, it will inevitably make some more appearances) we have lived an amazing home.  But if you know us, you know we can get a little crazy at times.  Crazy moments in the past include:


1. Bringing home a Christmas tree, setting it up, then deciding the room needed to be repainted.  After three days with the tree in a five gallon bucket in the garage, we had a beautifully repainted room.
2.  My sister Jessica and I heard a weird noise coming from our at the time unfinished basement, we went down and Mom and Dad both had sledgehammers in hand.  The basement was finished a few months later.


As you can see our craziness often revolves around home improvements.  Keeping that in mind, I guess it's not too surprising that we've decided to move.


Now, if you know our family, you also know that we are incredibly close.  So many memories are contained within the walls of this house.  It's going to be harder than I could ever imagine to move and have another family living there.  Literally, our blood, sweat, and tears are in that house.  Luckily, our new home already contains many memories for us.  We're moving across town to my grandparent's home.  This is the house where my Mom grew up.  Our grandfather passed away in April, and the more we thought about the family home being placed on the market, the more we came to realize that that was where we were meant to be.  


Now most people would just move into the house, no problem.  But if you remember from earlier in the post, we don't quite work that way.  We have some home improvements in the works, thus we probably will not actually be moving until late spring or early summer of 2012.  More photos will typically be included in posts, but I have been meaning to get this thing started for a few weeks, and I just wanted to get this boring first post out of the way before launching in on demo photos, remodeling, construction and such.


Thanks for reading this insanely long post.  Hopefully there will be some pictures up in the next few days. 


God Bless!
Christina