Renovations Week #2

During week two, the demolition on the outside was completed. To prepare for the siding, the new windows went in on the entire house. In this picture (left) you can see the house wrap and four new windows; the new kitchen and front bedroom windows are not in yet. The green house wrap is ready and the old porch is long gone...

The picture on the right shows the beginning of our new porch. It will have exposed posts with Douglas Fir planking inside. It lets a lot more light in, and its height allows people arriving at the house to actually see the front door. Now you can see how we tied back in to the rock wall.



Here are two more views of the front; at left before the new kitchen windows went in and at right, just afterwards. So much more light gets in - amazing. We don't have the interior picture to go with this, but Rocky had removed part of the powder room and our small kitchen pantry closet to make room for these. We'll have kitchen until Monday of week three, then it's sledge hammer time...



Moving to the back of the house you can see the exposed chimney. No more siding there either - it will be covered with a stone veneer that matches the front wall. That and the new windows are about the only change in the back; we replaced the sliding door in 1995 when we moved in. It, like the new windows, is Anderson and is aluminum clad outside in terratone. It's not quite as good as new but still looks and works great.



On the inside, here's the view in our master bedroom towards what will be the new corner of windows - two facing west (on the right, already in position) and four facing south (currently a big hole that will be used to bring in drywall). The west facing and bottom two south facing windows are fixed and the two top south windows will be another gliding set of windows. The small bathroom window at left is a casement.



Here's where the new master bathroom will be. It's about the same size that we had before, but it will have a glass-enclosed, tiled shower only without a bathtub. We can't wait - it's going to be great!



There are many other changes out there; in every room we have some exposed drywall cuts where the new windows went in. It is hard to keep the dust down but we're trying and Rocky is working hard to keep everything covered. A lot of effort also went in to the placement of a massive, composite beam in the kitchen ceiling; while they were pounding it in to place the desk in my office two rooms away (where I was trying to work) was bucking and jolting like a wild horse! It is exciting to see all the changes we've been planning for so long start to take shape.

- Chuck