Friday, May 2

White House Renovations 2014—Framing

Last week we had the downstairs pretty much completed for the framing. On Saturday we got a bunch of people together to help put up the 2nd story floor trusses; the whole thing took 34 minutes {Matt timed it}. It was a huge help, because then they could start on Monday with putting the decking down for the 2nd floor and getting the walls up.

Here’s the 3rd finished wall of the downstairs. You can see the 3 windows that will look out on the swing set and side yard. The woodstove that we’re looking at will go in the corner to the right of the furthest right windows, then there will be a wall and the FRONTS of my washer and dryer will line up with the original house.

DSC_0371DSC_0372DSC_0374DSC_0376DSC_0377The second story floor trusses in place…they weren’t nailed down. Of course the delivery truck arrived with the plywood decking 10 minutes after everyone left, otherwise they could’ve worked for the day and got them down and started the walls.DSC_0379DSC_0381DSC_0382DSC_0385This is the crazy access to our original basement that I mentioned before. We will have to build a flip down staircase to access this part from this room. We’ve decided to not lose the stairwell from the kitchen {we were going to make it a pantry}, because this is just ridiculous. I am not going to climb into this thing every time I need to get something from the freezer.DSC_0386On Monday, my father in law and our contractor started the upstairs walls.DSC_0394DSC_0395Avie got to come down with us to check it out and took advantage of the wide open spaces to practice her dance routine.DSC_0397This wall here is the kitchen. You can see on the floor the sheet of plywood higher than the rest, those are the stairs into the basement. There will be a pony wall {meaning it will only be about 4’ high and 3’ wide} on the narrow end {opposite the windows}, then our range will be there, and the kitchen cabinets.DSC_0398Looking through the doorway and windows to the backyard.DSC_0399DSC_0400The fridge is going to go between the green post in the middle and the red post, then the rest of it will be cabinets, with our pass through to the living room.DSC_0401DSC_0402DSC_0403Upstairs….let me just say how weird this was….to stand in what I remember our attic being {damp, dark, and just nasty} and see this… it’s just incredible!DSC_0406My Mountain….with our White Tree of GondorDSC_0407DSC_0410This is the view we will have from our bed, add in a few windows and walls though.DSC_0413DSC_0415Tuesday and Wednesday were miserable…absolutely miserable. It was cold and rainy and just not nice. I felt terrible that they were down there working in the rain. But they did get a few more walls up!DSC_0424DSC_0425These are the windows that will be in our bedroom, all but the one on the far right, that will be in the center of the bathroom wall.DSC_0427The two windows toward the left will actually be in the closet/storage/studio area.DSC_0428It looks massive from the outside. I keep thinking to myself, “oh my what did we do?! This is huge and unbalanced, and oh my.” I know it will be more balanced once it’s finished, but boy are there a lot of moments of self doubt in a house.DSC_0431Despite the rain they did manage to get the tile floor ripped out of the breakfast nook {soon to be mudroom}. My FIL said it was miserable, it took 2 hours to break up all the tile and get it out, but the original wood floors {which I’m thinking were the original pine subfloors- Thank you Rehab Addict} were still intact.DSC_0436You can just see how much water damage there was.  There was a hole in the floor and it was all spongy. I don’t know if there was a bathroom here at one point or what. From what we can tell the bathroom was at least in 2 previous places before existing where it is now.DSC_0442The kitchen has an entirely different feel once there are walls. It went from feel big, but not really that big, to feeling like you have a room that’s a good size for what we needed and wanted.DSC_0444DSC_0445

Thursday and Friday they worked on getting the roof trusses up and in place.

DSC_0004

The second floor…

May 2nd Roof PanThe Kitchen….May 1 img

Tomorrow Matt and a friend of our’s are going to finish putting the plywood on the roof.

The roof….the current source of deliberation and stress.

We had planned on using a charcoal gray metal roofing, which we then discovered would basically mean that all of our trim molding along the roofline would be non-existent because of the need for the roofing to overlap the fascia board. You can kind of see that there is a lot of detailing on the molding along the roofline…I’m really rather sad about the possibility of loosing it. But I had consoled myself about that possibility with the possibility of doing some sort of scallop detailing in the gable and putting a new vent up.

IMG_4292b

The other topic on the table today was whether to reside the originally part of the house, or leave it as is {there really is nothing wrong with it}. I contacted the company that we’re getting our siding from {LP SmartSide} about such siding, and they don’t make it. Great! But they know of a company who can create it for us, but I haven’t heard anything back from them yet.

So. Big decisions to be made this weekend: Whether to stick with the metal roofing and loose the trim molding or possibly go with shingles, which then flows into trying to add more detailing into the gable siding {if we lose the roof detailing} and whether or not we should reside the entire house. Decisions. Decisions. And Matt and I are going to Bing-town to look at flooring and tile tomorrow, at least it will be an afternoon out.

No comments:

LinkWithin