G&O removed asbestos siding, took down the outer kitchen wall, built a new bedroom upstairs along with a deck, heightened ceilings in upstairs bathroom, bedroom and downstairs dining room. Then our old kitchen came out. For a while I was using the open air kitchen sink but for the past few weeks, we have been doing dishes in the tub. The upper deck is almost done. Ryan has finished the insulation and is shown here finishing up the ceiling drywall in the new kitchen nook. Some painting is done. Our exterior colors are "salmon tint" and "cinnamon cocoa" with brown trim to match the new gutters. We also got a new roof on the whole house! Lovely articulated shingles with a heathered brown look.
County inspector was here and on his second visit, he mentioned that our stairwell was too narrow to pass code. We will either have to bump out the sloped (historic tent!!) wall or try to get a variance. Eventually we wanted to do a dormer there anyway, but I would like to extend the dormer to the kids room so that Harry will be able to have more room as he gets older. We are closing in on the end and need to be tighter with the budget though.
We have our reclaimed oak floors sitting in the neighbors trailer until we can get the drywall done. Then once the floors are in, we can install the awesome vintage cabinets I got from Community Forklift for $150 for a 13 cabinet set!!! Then we can repay our good friends who have been feeding us for months!
We have had some setbacks. I tried to save money by getting used items from Restore etc, but apparently with new construction, the U-value of each window or door must be below .3 in order to pass the energy code. I had no idea and spent loads of time and energy riding around with our neighbor finding the most awesome windows and doors. Alas, I had to sell them all (does anyone need to huge matching casement windows?) once another neighbor informed us of the building code. Grrr.
We are so looking forward to sitting out on the new porch if the weather is still good when its done. Hopefully we will be done before Christmas so Ryan's mom can come visit the new house. The other day, Kit had a friend over and they practiced violin together in the new upstairs (soon to be playroom?) bedroom. It feels like you are in a treehouse when youre in that room. I plan on making a "Lori Wall Bed" for that room so we can use it primarily as play/craft space without a huge futon taking up so much room.
