Windermere Road

 This was it.  This was the driving force of the last month: get everything done in time for the trusses to arrive.  They may have lost a bit of faith in themselves and pushed the truss delivery our a week, but were ready to go days before they actually got here.   Due to living on the single block of overhead power lines in all of Windermere, the trusses had to be delivered into the driveway and hand lifted up to the top of the walls instead of craned up.  I didn't watch that part, but they got it done! They also got full sheets of OSB board up there as well.  That could not have been easy.  despite hitting their goal, you can't fight the universe and our framer was under the weather for a few days.  So despite our excitement for a huge day of progress, we had to wait.  We'll have to get good at waiting, I think. So the trusses went up and early Saturday morning, I paid tribute to Bob and continued the topping out tradition he taught us...

Things tend to expand during the process.  This is something that had held true on just about every project I've ever worked on. Not a bad thing, really.  With perspective comes ideas, and that can increase the scope.   When we started this, we drew a hard line (well, a fuzzy line) from the front door to the back double doors.  One side would change drastically while the other would get a cosmetic lift.  As they say... the only thing constant is change and that was true for our house as well. Once the walls started coming down, spaces looked different and we started to look at how they cold all be used.  One thing - one big thing - that was limiting our ideas was the fireplace right in the middle of the house.  While some of our ideas still included a separation between the two living rooms, the more-thank-three-foot-wide fireplace had to go, even if a wall was put back in its place.   So down it came... we'll keep working on what, if an...

 It seems that at this point we would be remiss if we neglected to mention our first significant hurdle.  Along with the demo and framing of the addition, new footing were framed up and ready for concrete so that the new exterior walls could be built on top of them.  Well, enter a continent wide state of labor disputes, affecting us in the form of a concrete truck drivers strike.  Initially, we were waiting it out.  When it was determined that this tactic may not let us take a step forward before Memorial Day, workarounds were brainstormed.  One crucial but small footing was mixed and poured by hand.  Another however, was too large.  While we are still waiting on that one, there is a plan in place.  A great building team has great contacts and we're hoping to get that taken care of in the next ten days or so.  

 One of the weirdest things about this house was the fact that the path one must take from the kitchen to the garage is through the middle of three separate rooms.  A Kitchenette, and office and the laundry room became a strange, cluttered corridor.  In addition to updating the kitchen, this is one of the things I am most excited about on the main floor.  The new design creates a hallway adjacent to the office and closes off the laundry area into its won room.  No longer will video conference calls have shadowy figures racing by, trying to remain unnoticed.  Some of our decisions about how things would be put back together are still unknown at this point.  In order to know if we can open a wall or raise the ceiling, we must first be able to see inside.  So... we opened it up!   The drywall came off, while interior walls, wiring and plumbing were all removed.  This gave us a great look not only at what we could do with regard to ceil...

 Amazingly, before the garage was fully taken apart, they were already starting to put it back together.  After removing the roof and adding a top plate to give us a little more headroom, the joists showed up on site. After a couple of days, the joists were in.  The next day, the plywood floor.   Before long, a wall appeared.  One night i hopped on a ladder and looked up there.  Another wall was built and just waiting to be tilted into place.  And then there were four. We now have an upstairs!    

 From the jump, our team set a very ambitious schedule.  After starting exterior demo on December 21st, and justifiably taking most of the week between the Holidays off, the had already ordered the trusses to be delivered by the end of January.  I loved their ambition but questioned their sanity.  Could they do it?  Turns out, yes.  I will no longer have any doubt in our builders.  Great start!   But I am getting ahead of myself.  That left a ton of work to do before trusses arrived.  The garage floors must be protected.  Roof taken off. Walls and cabinets torn out. Other walls moved and more put back in. The joists must be installed, second floor exterior walls built.  Second floor interior walls built.  But again... getting ahead of myself.  What it boils down to was that there was a lot to do in a short amount of time. oh.  I got a little behind as well.  Since 12/21, we also ordered appliances, spen...

 We knew we would be tearing down a lot, with the inevitable, frequent runs to the dump.  We tried to mitigate some of that by working with a salvage company. While our crew was working on taking the outside brick and cement work out, the salvage company came inside to take what could be reused.   They didn't take as much as we had hoped and left some items they wanted for later so that we could keep the house closed and private until things like doors could be replaced. Still, they took enough in the way of cabinets and appliances that it was suddenly very apparent that things were changing... the renovation begins!

 It Seemed simple enough. 1. Buy a new house 2. Make it ours 3. Live happily ever after.  1.  Check!  2. Oh boy, what did we get ourselves into? 3. Looking good so far! Things are easy in theory, but tend to take longer than you think.  After buying our cute little house we moved in, got partially settled and started planning.  Working with a great team, we started working with the architect , hoping to have things all ready to go by early November.   Since renovating a house is a super easy and non-stressful thing to do, we decided we had plenty of bandwidth to take on a couple of other things this fall. So between us, we sent a kid to college, ran two marathons... a month apart... on the east coast, started a new job, moved back out of the house and got married.  Easy peasy.  What's next?! Next turned out to be hosting the wedding reception followed by Christmas the next day and beginning demolition on the house the day after that....