Surprises

Yes, I slacked off some last week, but we were out of town for a wedding from Wednesday through this afternoon. Not much happened on Monday and Tuesday, but while we were gone for the rest of the week, lots of things happened! It was like Christmas when we got home! Well, not quite, but you get the idea.

They replaced the rest of the old windows on the main floor and cut out a doorway from the landing at the bottom of the stairs to the addition. They framed up a pantry and pulled the basement door into the kitchen space about three feet.  It looks as though the electrician came while we were gone as well and wired all the ceiling lights and outlets. They also added gutters and trimmed the outside of the windows with vinyl to match the existing outside trim. They also installed a hidden ladder into the ceiling of the garage so we can climb up into the rafters to store things there.

Miscellaneous Projects

Today was a rather miscellaneous day. A little bit of everything was worked on...the garage, both inside and out, the kitchen floor, plumbing, chimney, a window and the porta potty.

A level floor that lines up with the addition's floor

Kitchen view plus new window!

Kitchen window and sink plumbing

Make an invisible chimney from the square in the floor up to the ceiling of the basement and you will see the last chunk of the old chimney that they took out today. 

The porta potty no longer resides in the middle of our yard. It was too hard for the septic guys to maneuver their truck around the construction trailer parked in our driveway when they came to empty it today. 

A garage with shingles! 

There's the stove!

They added ceiling boards into the rafters so we can use the space as storage.

New pipes plumbed through the roof. No idea what they go to...ask my momma. 

Leveling

Today's project: Leveling the kitchen floor. Which requires several steps:
     1. Cutting out parts of the old floor that are too tall to level. Literally.
     2. Nailing down strips of wood of varying thicknesses to the old floor.
     3. Nailing a new wood floor that is level with the addition floor to the strips.

They also framed up the new kitchen window that is going where the old window was, but is smaller since our sink will be under it, and brought in a palate of shingles for the garage!

Missing chunks of floor! 

You can see that the wood strips are different widths to help level the floor when it is finished

Part of the kitchen floor that was cut out

New window spot

They also added the metal/vinyl roof overhang sealer thingy today

Shingles

Fewer Studs

Not a whole lot happened noticeably today. They put 2x4s in next to the crooked ones in the kitchen wall and used a string line to nail them so that they are straight in line with the ones in the addition. The electrician was here and took care of some of the scary wires that can be seen in yesterday's post, removing old wiring and replacing the important ones (I think?). They also opened up the kitchen to the new space by cutting away the old wall studs between the two spaces. It was super loud and made the entire house shake! They also finished up the last bit of the garage, which has the exact same footprint as the old one, but just with a taller roof-line.

Yesterday

Today...after adding new 2x4s....really shows off how NOT straight the old boards are! 

No more studs! (between the room I am standing in to take the picture and the kitchen)

They also put new boards along the old ones in the ceiling to make the ceiling level...because yes, ladies and gentlemen, that was not square or level either. Surprise!

New heat vent and/or cold air return (?)

Kitchen window! 

I'll give you $5 (in monopoly money!) if you can find our stove and kitchen table

New garage! The taller roof line makes it look gigantic!

The full view, minus the porta potty that I specifically left out of the picture

Studs

And for today's work: gutting the kitchen to the studs. Pretty self explanatory.

The discovery of the day: "Joe Peters 1907" written into the stucco around the chimney in the kitchen. Joe Peters was the father of the man we bought the house from in 1990. Pretty cool!

Crazy wiring...

Close-up of the top of the last photo. The electrician is coming over first thing tomorrow morning...any guesses why?

Gutted kitchen!

Where new meets old

There was an old doorway hidden in the wall that our stove was on between the kitchen and the living room!

To the basement

Kitchen window

More proof that our house is not square...as if we needed any

The space above the basement door is open to the underneath of the landing at the top of the stairs going up to the room of crap

The doorway into the living room on the right, and asbestos coated flues running up the dining room wall 

Helping.

These two vertical 2x4s make up the ENTIRE support beam for the north side of the house.  Oh boy.

There were surprisingly only two layers of linoleum under our cork floor and one layer of tar paper before getting to the floorboards