New Year, New Pictures

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe New Years!  We kept it pretty low key around here.  Of course, it's been a few days since I posted last, meaning that there is lots for you to see!


There used to be a side entrance to the house that basically everyone used.  I could probably count on one hand the number of times I used the front door to the house, prior to construction.  As you may or may not remember, that side door was closed up and will now be part of the wall of the kitchen.  Since the side door is used so often though, there is a new entrance to the house through the garage.  Meaning: a doorway had to be cut in the garage and a new "hallway/entryway" had to be built.  This new entry will lead into the kitchen.  After the walls were put up last week {see last post} they were able to frame this little hallway.

The is the hallway as seen from the "kitchen".  You can see the door on the left side into the garage.  There will also be a little coat closet in the corner between the garage and the kitchen - sort of where the ladder is.  Clearly it's going to be well lit with the two windows.

Here's the hallway from the outside

It's kind of hard to see, but the gap between the garage and house that is concrete and wood used to be the doorway

Here are a few pictures of the back of the house and side of the house too.

This is the side of the house I typically don't show.  The bay window the dining room if that gives you a better reference point.

With a sky like that, you can't tell me my Grandpa isn't watching over this renovation. 

The back/side of the house.  See those little windows in the new concrete?  That's where they'll be pouring the basement floor from.

There is more progress since these were taken, but they are in route to me via pictures messages as I type.  Hopefully they will be posted later tonight or tomorrow.

In an Effort to Catch Up

Rather than three separate posts with a few pictures each, I thought one SUPER post would be better.  We'll just get it all done!  The good news is that with this post I will be completely caught up...for the time being.


First up: recent pictures of the first floor of the house.

The tub is from the first floor bathroom prior to the home being torn to pieces.  It's awesome and old and weighs about a billion pounds.  We're saving it to put in the upstairs bathroom.  The brick wall you can see there is the back wall of the house/ the end of the master bathroom/closet.

This was originally the den and will soon be the master bathroom/closet.  We're saving a few things from the house before, such as the tub, toilet, wood bin, and wood stove.

The stairs going up, and the soon to be wall of the living room.  The giant piece of plywood you can kind of see in the back, is covering the opening that will be the walkway between the dining room and the family room.

The slab for the front porch was poured this week too:

I guess something else will eventually be poured on top of this too and that's where the posts will go.  Did I just wow you with my construction terms?

Next, the supports for the floor in the back room were built.  Getting this done is huge, as building the new kitchen and addition are probably one of the most substantial parts of the project.

Last weekend (12.18.11) they started building the supports for the floor of the back room/ family room/kitchen.

Later in the week once the "I" beams were attached.

Again.  As you can see from this photo, the concrete in the basement was never poured.  The weather still has not been dry long enough for the ground to be dry enough.  The construction workers decided to continue on without it, and when the time comes, the concrete will be poured through the windows on the far side of the room.  Not ideal, but at least the project can still move forwards this way.

Even later in the week.  Mom standing on the addition.

I can't say enough about the amazing workers who have been tirelessly working on the house.  Last weekend they worked Saturday and Sunday because the weather was nice enough to work actually.  Luckily they took the weekend off for Christmas and took today off as well.  It rained this afternoon and evening so who knows what tomorrow brings.

So remember at the beginning of the post when I was boasting that I was finally caught up on posts?  Well in the duration of writing this, I was informed that there are more pictures waiting for me.  Oh well, more for you!

So it Begins.

Good News: The semester is over!  Meaning I now have tons of extra time to get you all caught up on the happenings with the house construction.  I am going to split this up in a few different posts so it's not only sequential order but also is not completely overwhelming.  You're welcome.


So first things first, the last time I posted there were two pictures of the first two days of official construction.  They were tearing off the back room of the house and digging the new part of the basement.  I guess that's where I will begin with the new pictures then.  Sorry if I repeat myself.

Chopping off the back of the house.  So the room that was taken off was originally porch that was turned into a room.  The room really is gone in this picture, it's just a little confusing given that there is still a brick wall there

This is probably a better view of the room removal.  The brown wall on the far side used to be the wall/entrance to the back of the house

Another view, you can see all the different layers of roof here.  They had to replace it a few times when my mom was growing up in order to make the incline less severe

If you think the backyard looks messy and construction-y here, just wait!!

Why yes, there is someone standing on the roof.  We've had lots of workers at the house, they have been awesome.  There has also been a ton of construction equipment

This is the view from the dining room out the back.  That doorway was from the kitchen into the back room.  How crazy is this?

Messy, messy

So that's how he got on the roof!

Cleaning up a bit.  We've gone through a few dumpsters...

The end result for the day.  now you can see the doorway and stairs a bit better.  It's crazy to think that in about six months, a picture taken of this same location will show the kitchen.

This is Olive.  She is a big help with all remodel decisions.  As you can see, here she is guarding the pictures of how the new house will look.  

Well this is the end of post number one of a million in the next few weeks.  I am going to attempt to have at least one new post daily for the next week or so until I get caught up on everything.  Keep in mind, these pictures were from October 25th.  We have come incredibly far since then.

Cheers!

And So It Begins

On Tuesday Oct. 25 construction officially began!  The first step was tearing the back room of the house off.  Little fact about that, the room in back (which will eventually be the kitchen and family room) was originally a porch.  When my mom was in high school (I believe) it was made into an actual room.  So Tuesday the room was torn off, and Wednesday the wall that was the end of the dining room, where the house ended was torn out. 


There will be more pictures to come later, but here are a few just to let you see the progress:

After Tuesday.  The room is gone.  A little weird to see.  My favorite part is the door on the right side.  When we would go visit, this was the door we always used.  Now it will be filled in and a side door/entrance to the house will be through the garage and a new stairway will be made from the garage to what will be the kitchen.

Well half of the wall is gone.  I kind of like it.  Maybe we should leave the wall like that.  A little alfresco dining?  I guess it would work better if we lived somewhere other than St. Louis.  The weather isn't too cooperative sometimes.

Those are the only pictures I have for now.  Hopefully there will be many more to come in the next few days.  So much for my slacking on blog posts.  Now that the ball is rolling, I really can't slack anymore!

Christina