Ack! (And someone might need more work to do!)

I stopped by the house yesterday after picking up the niece and nephew.  The nephew refused to get out of the car but the niece agreed to come in.  I have to force the nephew to come in and I don’t understand what the big deal is.  He also refused to go inside my friend’s new house this afternoon and just sits in the car, in the heat, like an idiot.  God I hate pre-teens and teenagers!

Anyway, when we walked in, I noticed there was a lot of light coming in from around the bathroom door – it’s easy to see that since the molding has been removed from the door – and heard a saw going so I opened the door and saw:

Ack! The wall is gone! That smaller-than-a-jail-cell bathroom will soon be a same-size-as-a-jail-cell bathroom!!! Yay! You might be able to breathe in there at some unspecified point in the future!

I think F is using my wall as a to-do list for the workers he hired off of “the list” – you know – that one online.

Oh, and for a job to have so much work to be done, somehow someone has found time to doodle on my walls:

Get back to work!

There was a slight lull early in the week but we are back up and running again!

F moved this week so there was a halt in construction or at least a major slow down for a day or so.  I did make it by there to take a picture after the first tearing off the aluminum siding day.

Now all of the siding is gone – here’s a picture from today:

Wow!

Inside the house, some more electrical improvements that you can’t see, and most of the drywall is up now. Some lights are up in the living room but still bare. Also all of the windows are in except for the bathroom which is still just sitting there gutted.

Note – these aren’t the greatest pictures. I didn’t take my camera down there and had to use my iPod camera, but they’ll do.

Here is the living room earlier this week – at least the ceiling:

Here is the dining room into the back den:

Here is the kitchen – also earlier this week:

Before I post the picture of the kitchen from today, I have to say that I did receive a couple of calls today from F that I couldn’t answer but called him back and he says, “Now don’t freak out but…” This had to do with putting up drywall in the kitchen without my specifications of the size and place of the doorway into the back den and with no cutout for the fridge to be inset a little bit. Freak out? Me?

Here is the dining room/kitchen with a little view of the doorway into the den:

The new kitchen window:

And the old window that has been closed in:

Den and its new windows:

New den windows and closed up hole where AC unit used to be:

Laundry room/pantry:

Whew! Hopefully tomorrow I will get some more information on the timeline for the projects. And write another check.

Bathroom demo is done and there is a bathtub on the front porch!

Of course Jennifer couldn’t wait to call me to tell me that there is a bathtub on the front porch since I took a picture of her toilet in her front yard back during her bathroom renovation!

And the bathroom still looks tiny even without the fixtures – well, the toilet is still in there, just for Kayleigh…

Primer has been sprayed in some rooms which makes them look like, well, rooms.

Kitchen picture below – the window facing the front has been walled in and we are just waiting on the final cabinet plan to replace the window with the bigger one:

And the pantry/laundry closet is coming along – the floor wasn’t exactly sturdy so that is being fixed. Kayleigh is convinced this is bad – that someone is going to crawl into the house through the closet and murder someone. She swears she went to see The Lorax yesterday but I’m thinking it was a horror movie.  Just in case, I’m going to tell F to watch his back.

Windows! And less exciting but just as important – insulation!

Most of the new windows are in!

Yesterday, fiberglass insulation was blown into the exterior walls where there was nothing. They cut holes in the drywall, blew it in, then F and the crew have been patching up the holes with the puzzle pieces. The picture above is of the new windows – that insulation was surprisingly in those walls. Below are some of the patched-up holes.

I finally met with the kitchen cabinet lady again today – preliminary results – saving at least $2000 by going with a local company rather than HD or Lowes. I’m going to meet with her again in the a.m. and hopefully place the order.

Ugly awnings are down!

The awnings are gone! I think it makes a big difference but maybe I am just looking for a difference.

The back room’s floor has hopefully been successfully leveled out in preparation for whatever floor I decide to put back there.

There has been some progress on the front porch floor.

Now, DB wanted to pour concrete on top of the existing floor that has cracked and looks awful. He says this would save money but the plan would have an end result of the concrete floor having a lip on top of the existing brick edging that I like, and the lip would be a couple of inches higher than the brick edging which I imagine would eventually result in my stepping up on the top step, toe hitting the concrete lip, falling over and breaking my front teeth out and then I would have to hunt DB down and break his front teeth. Not to mention the UPS guy, FedEx guy, friends and family members who would also trip over that and get hurt and sue me for their injuries.

DB swears it wouldn’t be that bad.

I had to put my foot down so now the concrete will be removed and replaced with something else – concrete again but dyed to a darker color? DB did talk to a guy about pea gravel with epoxy and I did some research online but can’t decide on anything.

Meanwhile, I still can’t manage to get the girl at Florence Carpet and Tile to return my phone call or finish my cabinet plan/quote/etc. and really can’t figure out what is going on with that. If I don’t hear from her Monday, I’ll call and stop by and post a link to their website here to see if that drums up a response.

The entrance cubby hole is now gone. I am thinking I will replace the front door and make the new one open the opposite way – towards the closet – so that when you walk into the house, you walk right in and don’t have to deal with the door hitting the furniture.

More demolition, more discoveries!

Now there’s some old termite damage in a little wall that we had discussed taking out before – the wall at the front door – it did seem uncomfortable that you walk into the house into that tiny cubby – if you want a foyer, do a foyer, not some sad, tiny excuse for a foyer, so maybe this has worked out for the best?  I don’t know – we’ll rule on that later. Either way, more walls have come down. So here are the updated pictures:

Bedroom 2 – bad sheetrock gone, good sheetrock put in to replace it:

Bedroom 1 – bad sheetrock gone, good sheetrock put in to replace it – plus the closet has lost its awful paneling.

And yet another kind of wallpaper!

Let’s go back to the front room/living room/entry way:

All of the walls are gone plus the ceiling!  I did decide to do away with the little wall, move the supporting beam up into the attic, then just make this one room which does away with my sectioning off the picture window area as either an area for a daybed or an area for a couple of armchairs and a table, but I will just have to adapt.

Back to the den/old porch/back room – here’s a view from the living room:

Closer view of the closet:

Now that they have removed the existing ceiling, we find out that we can raise the ceiling so taller people that may live here in the future could actually do their laundry without kneeling down! That’s a good thing!

The old AC unit has been taken out and the hole has been patched up:

I did decide to move the door to the laundry/pantry down and may be able to put the piano in that corner if this all works, which will be great, although with all the changes in the living room, I may have a spot there, but don’t let me get ahead of myself

A lot has been done, but I still can’t manage to decide on a kitchen cabinet door.  Or a kitchen floor.  Or a backsplash.  And I haven’t even talked to the contractor about the bathroom.  Or the deck.  My head hurts.  Wait – what am I doing about the front porch?  Shut up.  I’m going to bed!

We are hitting the point where I have no idea what’s going on.

I am literally losing sleep and when I do sleep I dream of cabinet choices, kitchen layouts and stabbing kitchen designers from various stores.  Well, maybe that last part was a little exaggerated, but still…

Here are the latest pictures:

Kayleigh says hey!

There actually is insulation in the former porch/now den walls – surprise, surprise!

There’s now drywall in the closet and the ceilings!

And this is what happens when you have a window AC unit that leaks into your walls for 492 years.

Gross!

And I really don’t know why we have removed all of this drywall from this wall:

Kayleigh and I biked/walked down there today with Lucy who marked her territory 9 times – NINE times – which is a phrase from Ferris Bueller, right? But Lucy really did – I was impressed. And irritated. But she’s still cute.