Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Week 3 Progress

We've gone to check on the progress at the house multiple times over the last two weeks, but since they were working on things such as electrical and plumbing, there weren't that many cosmetic changes. Now that the framing is complete, the new drywall will be going up this week, so we wanted to get some pictures before that happens.

KITCHEN

Doesn't look like much has changed since our Day 5 pictures, but they've removed the hanging light from the former eating area and added four recessed lights, and an additional recessed light above the sink/window. The wall that used to be in between the kitchen and dining room is now completely gone.


DINING ROOM

The walls around the dining room are all gone, so the living room, dining room, and kitchen are all one big open space! We love it.


LIVING ROOM

Once again, it feels so nice for the area to be opened up. They were able to shave off about two feet of the wall next to the stairs... but I forgot to take a picture of that. They've installed a light on the wall that will eventually be a track light with four lights on it.



HALL BATHROOM

They were able to reframe the wall to get rid of all the rotten wood/siding, install a smaller window (we didn't want the water leaking in from the window frame again, and had considered just sealing up the wall, but thought that it should still have some natural light, hence the small window).


HALLWAY

Nothing much has changed since Day 5, other than an additional recessed light and two cuties running around.


BEDROOMS

Seeing the kids in Peyton's new nook makes us realize how high it actually is for them, and how dangerous it could be even with the proposed stepping shelves. Peyton was pretty disappointed to find out that the "window" to the hallway will be drywalled up. We might consider putting his bed underneath, but then we don't want him to break his bed by jumping down on it too often.


MASTER BEDROOM / BATHROOM

The master bedroom originally had no overhead lighting so they installed 4 recessed lights. We are planning to paint the room a darker grey so having enough light is essential.


As for the bathroom, they've installed the bathtub and redid a lot of the plumbing, including moving a pipe so we could install our window. Originally this corner behind the door and tub was just going to be some storage shelves, but now that we are adding a window, we are going to put a small countertop there, and we can either use it for my makeup table with a chair, or we could stick a laundry hamper under there.


FRONT ENTRY

The wall at the bottom of the stairs is completely gone! It opens up the space so much. The end of the weird ledge will be closed off to make some storage shelves, so it won't be as long and awkward.  We considered widening the stairs since it's hollow beneath the ledge (why, builders?) but that would be pretty costly and a small ledge isn't that big of a deal.


DOWNSTAIRS

They've framed in the strange stair step wall and scraped the popcorn ceilings downstairs.


They've removed the wall and door for the laundry room, so now the end of the hallway looks a bit wider. In the below picture it shows that they opened up that wall at the end of the hallway to see if they could remove it, but it had a large support beam so it has to stay. The laundry room is on the right.


It looks like everything is ahead of schedule, and our contractor said they will be able to complete the last week of March instead of early April. Exciting!

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Day 5 progress

Only a few days in and we're already seeing so many changes! I don't think they've been working all 5 days because of the weekend, but we'll just go off the calendar. The cabinets and kitchen/bathroom fixtures are gone, as with most of the flooring and the upstairs popcorn ceiling.

KITCHEN

The only problem they found in the kitchen was that the original range hood was blowing the air into the attic instead of through the vent hole in the roof, and all the insulation in the area above the kitchen was black and greasy. Yuck.


DINING ROOM

After opening up the ceiling, they found that the center beam in the dining room that we thought was load bearing actually can be removed! The horizontal beam across the room is actually supported with the beam next to the stairs and NOT the center one, but our contractor has to bring in an engineer to double check to make sure we can safely remove it. If that center beam can be removed, it's going to open up the room so much more than we thought possible.


LIVING ROOM

The only thing different with the living room is the scraped popcorn ceilings.


BATHROOM / HALLWAY

Here is where we had the biggest surprise. We had already known there was water damage from the window in the shower, but we had no idea how extensive the water damage was. The wood was completely rotted away and crumbling in some places, and that area needs to be completely reframed and we will need new exterior siding too.

The damage was all from water leaking into the window sill and into the wall, so thankfully none of the flooring was compromised, but it did extend to the master bathroom (you can see the wall was opened up- the master bath is visible on the right) so we will need to replace a few beams over there as well.


The other half of the bathroom had no issues, and neither did the hallway. The cubby hole for Peyton's room is framed and ready to be drywalled in on the hallway side.


BEDROOMS

The bedrooms are pretty much ready to go for paint/carpet. Peyton's nook was not able to be opened to the ceiling because of the beam running across the top but that's fine.


MASTER BATH / WALK-IN

They cut a new hole in the wall for the walk-in closet door (on the left) and framed in the original door smaller to fit a door (originally there was no door to the sink area, only to the toilet/shower room and the walk-in closet).


It's kind of hard to tell what these pictures below are because of how small the space is, but on the left you're seeing the new framing that will soon be a wall where the old walk-in closet door used to be. On the right you're seeing where the old one-sink vanity used to be, but they have framed in the drywall that will house the showerhead for the new shower/tub combo. You can kind of see some of the beams that have rotted away due to water damage at the bottom of the picture.


FRONT ENTRY LANDING

They're going to take down that wall at the bottom, which you can tell from the side-by-side picture, will open up the space a lot.


DOWNSTAIRS

They hadn't done much downstairs yet in terms of opening up the laundry/mudroom but we got rid of the brown wood paneling above the fireplace. One thing that we didn't like about the house is that the electrical panel is in a really awkward place next to the fireplace and window, and it'll be hard to disguise, but there's no way that they could move the panel due to all the wires in the house and the electricity coming into the house from the street. Well, technically, they could move it, but it would cost $$$$$$$, so... no thanks.


Looking forward to seeing some more progress!