Floor Effects

This week the walls were set, the dirt was back-filled in and the floors were poured. Now we really do have a giant swimming pool in the backyard and you can get a sense of what the footprint actually is for the new space.

 Here's the new basement floor, the retaining wall and the wall that will have the windows in front of it on the west side.

 Retaining wall and floor.

 Here's the garage side, with the garage and the mudroom floors laid.

 Collin, daydreaming about putting little footprints in the garage and workshop.

 You can see that the door looks tiny- its because its a foot or so lower than the actual floor. When all is said and done there won't be a regular door there anymore, so its all in the plan :)

 From the back side- this piece of the concrete is the workshop.

 Here's the front of the garage with the tie-down/ security straps for the garage so it doesn't fly away if there is a tornado.

 The basement floor, again.

The whole new slab.

Next week is Thanksgiving! Our builder is bringing the floor trusses over and then they'll start framing in. Fairly soon it will look much more like a new house!

Concrete Commitments

This week we're moving forward.
I still feel like I have no idea whats really going on.
They show up and say "we're putting in walls!" and we look on like ridiculous fools. We just believe them. I sure hope they are following the plan.

The boys were excited to see the pumper truck this week and anticipated the big boom that would go over the house.

 First the cement truck arrived with the GIANT boom crane to go over the house.

 The giant crane reached over the house to fill the forms in the backyard.

 Here are the forms for the new walls and basement, with the retaining wall in on the west side.

 The boys, excitedly watching.

 Poured concrete walls in the basement.

 The garage, mud room and workshop foundations.

 The "square" in the back is the footprint for Drew's woodshop/workshop.

 Ta da! Lots of foundations poured!

 The boys, playing in the wall forms.

 Watching from Mary Ann's yard.

 Adios uneven, miserable, porch thing.

 Finally, the last picture is of the cement truck pumping to the boom to fill the walls.
Now there are walls! Who knows what will surprise us in the coming weeks!

Just kidding. We're aware of the process. This concrete has to cure for at least a week, so next week the house sits as is, and the following week they'll start framing I think (although maybe its the week after that since its the week of Thanksgiving then). Fingers crossed for no snow until January so they can continue to have nice days like today to keep up the pace.

Onward we go!

In the hole....

Here we are! Its all started! The house is empty and all ripped up. The boys are on cloud nine. Excavators are serious fun!

Suddenly we were in over our heads. There is really NO going back now. I didn't know how intense it would be to sort of make that leap of faith and let it all start.

 First the siding came off and we saw the first evidence of shoddy craftsmanship.

 See that gap between the house and the window? Its not supposed to be there. A bit of a miss on the part of whomever wrapped our house before we bought it.

 More errors in wrapping. This guy must have been horrible at christmas gifts.

 Then we had a garage....

 

And then we didn't. Bye bye garage.

 Oh boy! Diggers and excavators! The boys were ecstatic.

 Time to dig a basement!

 Look, its a swimming pool. Or, you know, a basement.

 Taking a look inside.

 Here's the garage side all excavated.

 And the most fun, the giant piles of dirt!

 Digging, digging, digging.

 Collin just couldn't resist. Up, up and away to the top of the hill.

So much fun in the adventures of house building! 

Next week, concrete!

Bare Essentials

 

Here we are! Its all started! The house is empty, down to the very bare walls. All that is left is what they need to connect the new addition. It feels very real all of the sudden, nothing on the walls, nothing in the rooms, no small pitter patter of feet or giggles from bedrooms. Its just the shell of a home now.

That part makes me sad. 

Because once it was my home.

and I know, I know , I know. It still is. But it doesn't feel like it right now. I'm still in this weird home purgatory for a bit. I wish I knew how to relieve myself of the little spots of hurt that happen when you leave your house so I could eclipse it with the happiness of the new house. 

But I'm not there yet. I know I will be, when I see the beautiful new house, but for now, I'm still totally attached.

Change is hard folks.

So here are some photos of the before formal demo period, but after all is stripped down to the bare essentials.

 Lori's room/ aka the play room/ aka the spare or guest bedroom

 The basement living room. This is all of our own hard work. Its hardest to watch this part disapear.

 The other side of the living room.  Lots of Drew's handwork in this space.

 The ominous stairs that have to be moved because they are so out of code.  I fell down these stairs holding Owen when he was a newborn. Drew fell down them earlier this year, our old nanny got a concussion by hitting her head on the header at the bottom step and almost no one is able to naturally not have to duck when you walked down them. I can honestly say good riddance to these!

 The kitchen! Its a bit bigger without the cabinets.

 The other side of the kitchen. Bye bye red. You were fun while you lasted!

 The main floor bathroom. You can't see it in this shot, but there is an old blue bathtub behind the door that I can't wait to have removed. The wainscotting in here was quaint at first, but then I started to realize all of the gross paint blobs, rifts and the improper application. I love wainscotting, when done correctly. This was a nightmare. Bye bye!

 Collin's old room. Which actually looks pretty nice here. Not too bad. Except for that it isn't insulated at all and ice forms below each window inside the room in the winter. It is sad that we'll lose the original hard wood floors though, even if they were beat up. They had lots of character.

 More of Collin's room. This room is more dear to me. We brought him home to this room when he was born.

 Owen's room, which before Owen was a spare bedroom and before that was a guest room. IT is fairly cute still, but with all of the lovely ice problems in Collin's room. I'm also excited to get rid of the tiny closets.

 The hallway. With a toilet. Cramped. Difficult to see where the kids were. Tiny. Just way too tight and small for our growing family.

 Our bedroom, upstairs. Here it looks huge. I guess it kind of was huge. Except that we didn't have a door at all and 1/2 of it was halvies walls so you couldn't do much on the sides. It was nice though in terms of space. Except for the lack of closets. Oh it was horrible! No CLOSET!

 The other side of our room.

 The living room with the weird corner window and non-functional front door. This room, when we moved in used to be my favorite room because it was the first room that got "real furniture", it made me feel like we were adults way back in 2004 or so....

 More living room, and the stove, which we finally just sold (Hooray!)

 Between the kitchen and living room on the main floor.

 The hallway from the other direction...

 Outside. Nothing too different here yet except all of the landscaping is gone.

 The garage, sans the loads of stuff. It felt like Drew was packing this up FOREVER. There was A LOT of stuff in there.

So now we're here. Ready for the next step. Demo. The real deal, folks. No going back now.