Moving right along

I met with our contractor and electrician yesterday morning to walk through our electrical plan. There are so many details to a plan. Walking through it helps to work out what looks good on paper, but doesn't work in reality.

I also got an idea of the timeline for our renovation project to be completed. It could be done as early as the end of April and as late as the end of May. Either way, it's earlier than we thought we'd be able to move in. Peyton and I had set our mind on having everything done by mid-summer. So, we're thrilled to possibly move in sooner!

Other things happening with the house...

- Our trim was painted white this week. And the color we've chosen for the main color of our house is Templeton Gray. Colors on a computer can be hokey...but here it is. In "real life" the gray looks bluish, greenish gray.

- Will, our contractor, met with our engineer this week to talk about adding a steel beam to go over the chimney. They came up with an awesome design that will distribute the weight appropriately around the chimney and will still leave the flue open so we can eventually have a working fireplace. 

- Our heating and air conditioning unit for the upstairs is being installed. We've also decided to have the ducts for the downstairs replaced (cha-ching!). There was quite a bit of mold and dirt in the downstairs ducts. And with Peyton's allergies (and Ainsley's suspected ones) it'll be good to have a clean ac/heating system. 

- The vinyl floor was ripped up from the bathroom and the hardwood is showing. The floor is in awesome condition! Yeah! I'm super excited to sand and stain all of the floors at the end of this project.

- The heart pine flooring we bought a few weeks back ended up not being as much as we thought. We certainly have a novice eye when it comes to eyeing the square footage of flooring. In our defense there were nails in the boards which made it look like much more. Anywho...the square footage ended up being around 400 sqft. instead of 1200 sqft. (I know, big discrepancy) We emailed the kind woman who sold us the flooring and she has offered to mail back to us a portion of what we paid for it. We really appreciate her willingness to offer that to us. We'll be a little short on the amount of flooring to complete the upstairs, but we hope to find the 50 sqft that we need to complete the space.

Next week...

- Heating and air conditioning, electrical and plumbing.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the outside getting finished. To see the colors and roofing on the house will be satisfying. 

Week 3

We met with our contractor, Will, yesterday to talk about the next steps for our little millhouse. The upstairs is framed and is a defined space. It's been exciting for our whole family to see it take shape. Ainsley and Asher are thrilled about their new bedrooms. I think each room has fun things to offer them and will be their unique space.

So, the next steps...
- Currently some vertical beams are supporting a major steel beam that carries some 2nd story weight. This week the beams will come down and we'll see if the chimney (oh, our poor chimney) will be able to hold the weight. If not, we may need to consider completely giving up hope on having a working fireplace in our house and closing off the chimney to allow for more support. We may decide to do this anyway. As pretty as our brick statue is in the middle of our living space, its usability is slight.
- Downstairs walls. We originally thought we'd remove the drywall to expose the beadboard. And, down the road we might do that. But for now we're going to patch the drywall and use it. This is going to make it easier to get insulation in the walls (much desired) and cut out a lot of work for us. Painting the beadboard looked like a beast to tackle. Anyway, some great colors on the wall will be enough to make the space unique and we'll be nice and toasty in the winter with insulated walls.
- The kitchen. Our original idea when we bought the house is to leave the downstairs as is. And then we decided to knock down some walls and change one of the bedrooms into a dining room. Plus, our architect came up with an awesome layout for a new kitchen. However, we've reigned ourselves in and decided to do very little with the kitchen. We'll move our stove from one side of the kitchen window to the other and add a dishwasher. But we won't add anymore cabinets and will keep the sink where it is. Because we have an awesome retro pushbutton stove, I love the idea of leaning toward the freestanding kitchen. And with our new plan for the kitchen we'll definitely have that feel.
- And finally, we'll add our beautiful new to us heart pine floors to the upstairs. We bought the floors last weekend for 50 cents/sqft. with the nails still in them from their last home. And Peyton has been working on getting the nails out this week. He's about 1/3 done having put 2 solid evenings and a Saturday into it.

HVAC and electrical folks will be coming in this week (I think). And some folks will be coming in to take out the linoleum in the bathroom (heart pine floors underneath!) and take out the old tile ceilings. Another exciting week to come! But before that, pictures from this past week.

The view from our dining room into the living room/kitchen.

Our staircase.

The tub. Peyton and I helped the folks from Hillsborough Plumbing carry it from our shed to the 2nd floor bathroom. It's cast iron and HEAVY. We got to know our plumbers quite well over that bonding experience.

The view over our clerestory stairwell. So pretty!

The view from Ainsley's room. A wall of windows. Helps to make the small bedrooms feel bigger.

Peyton's stack of denailed heart pine floors. He's a champ at nail pulling.

Tore the roof off

This week...
- The new staircase (a temporary version...but in the right location) was built.
- The roof was torn off. How wild it was to see our house that way!
- The 2nd floor subfloor was put in.
- The framing for the upstairs began.

Our house has finally taken its new shape and we love it! It's only been two weeks of construction and so much has happened. And I'm thankful there have been very few surprises as the demolition and framing has begun. The only real disappointment for us thus far has been the fireplaces and chimney being unusable and will be very costly to get them in a working condition. For now we won't have working fireplaces but haven't given up hope that we'll eventually rebuild the chimney and get them in working condition.

So I leave you with pictures from this week:

Demo Week 1 complete

Here are a few pictures from the 1st week of demolition.

 A view from the kitchen into the living room. We're hoping to find out soon how usable our fireplaces will be. We're hoping for vented gas logs. If the chimney isn't usable, we might go for ventless logs.

 Looking into the house from the front door. There are temporary supports for the second floor all around right now. We're not planning to put up new walls downstairs...just knocking some down.

Peyton and I spent this morning chipping away at an excessive amount of mortar on the fireplace. Hoping to get it pretty enough to leave it unpainted.

It should be an action packed week if the rain doesn't slow things down.

The writing on the wall.

This was found written on the wall in a closet after the closet was torn down. Not sure if it was the previous owner or not. Some funny 1999/y2k predictions.

Some serious busting

Well, the workers started demolition today. I really thought they would start outside, but instead worked inside all day. Now, I drove by the house a few times today and didn't see much action and knew I'd have to stop by tonight to see what they were up to all day. And they were definitely up to something. (sorry for the horrible pictures but they were taken by an iphone in the dark).

 The view of the fireplace/chimney from the living room.

The chimney/fireplace from the kitchen.

So, they demolished the wall between the kitchen and living room exposing the chimney and fireplaces. No cleaning of the debris had taken place, so insulation and dust were everywhere. But, we saw that the wood floors go all the way to the chimney (yay, I had feared a great big hole) and that the chimney has a pretty cool shape to it. The bricks seem to be in great shape, but definitely need some cleaning. Yay for demo day 1!

Busting through the wall

Update: Our contractor just emailed to say demolition starts tomorrow!! Pray for dry weather.

So far there aren't any visible signs that construction has started at our house (beyond the permit sign). However, we know that holes are being dug and concrete is being poured to create footings under the house. Believe me, when the roof comes off I'll post pictures.

Until the exciting stuff begins, though, we are spending these awesome and sunny afternoons working around our "new" house. Peyton has been working to clean up the yard and remove part of the fence in the back to open up the yard a bit. Honestly, his project has taken many hours and lots of effort. And it's looking awesome. He's chopped down many little "junk" trees and removed lots of random objects (string, styrofoam pieces, sheathing) that's really opening up the yard to show lots of potential. My project has been out of curiosity and fun. I have put neither much effort or time into it. But look what I discovered...

It looks like the last heating source the fireplace was used for was a wood stove. Although I think we'll have a wood stove in the kitchen (which is completely bricked in), I think we'll try to bust through and have a fireplace in the living room. We're still debating between wood and gas logs for the fireplace. Peyton would like to use wood and I'd like to use gas...we'll see. Also, you'll notice the beadboard above the fireplace. Our idea is to remove the walls down to the brick of the fireplace and have only the masonry chimney dividing the living room and kitchen. Not knowing what condition the brick is in makes me a bit nervous, but I suppose we can always cover it back up if it's awful. And for the rest of the walls in the living room, we plan to expose the beadboard walls by removing the drywall that is currently covering them. But for the kitchen and the dining room we're going to keep the drywall on and not worry about the beadboard. It will likely be tedious work in the living room and taking the drywall off of one room will be enough for us.