Renovations: Week 3

So...what do you do with all that stuff that used to be in your kitchen, your laundry room, your closet, your pantry and on, and on, and on? Answer: move your daughter back to college and take over her room! Well that's part of it - the basement is pretty full too. Here's Chili's room now:



Our New Kitchen: Below you can see the dining room that is now serving as our current kitchen. We moved some basic food items and the microwave in there, followed by the stove and refrigerator. First though, Rocky had to enlarge the doorway to fit the fridge (and that was going to happen anyway) and then he built a tent around that doorframe. For now, we're washing dishes in the basement utility sink.



This tent, complete with zipper access, went up between the new kitchen and the living room. For those of you familiar with our house, the loft is above at the left. Before the renovations, there was a small pass-through window from the kitchen to the family room adjacent to the living room. Now, behind the plastic and the temporary studs, you can see that we've opened the wall all the way to the ceiling. You can see the light from the new kitchen windows at left coming through.



At left, below, you can see the new laundry room taking shape behind the studs separating the garage. At left was the former back door out of the garage, now to become a new window. The washer and dryer will go against the wall opposite the studs.

At right, below, Rocky (our general contractor) is stepping off the stepladder after adjusting a bulb in the new light fixtures in the kitchen. The view out the new windows is to the right, the new opening to the family room is on the left and the entryway to the dining room is off to the upper left in this picture.

One of the biggest surprises early on was that the floor joists above the kitchen ceiling ran perperdicular to what we, the architects and our contractor originally thought. This necessitated installing a massive composite beam in the ceiling to take the bedroom load; it along with some new wiring and plumbing is shown below left.

Below right, the new powder room is framed out. You can see the space for the fridge with the icemaker water supply towards the right; a floor-to-ceiling pantry cabinet goes behind that. In the far reaar of this image is where the laundry room goes

Back outdoors, meet a few of our other contractors: Nick is Rocky's father and he's a skilled carpenter. He shares his knowledge with his grandson Josh, on the right below.



Here's how the front looks this week: the new front porch is finished and the roof is going on. We chose a moderately brown, architectural shingle with a textured look. We;ve had great weather for the project so far - and this week was great with temps in the upper 70's and nice dry air. Hope it holds until the outdoor work is done!



- Pat and Chuck