White House Renovations 2014—Walls

Last weeks big development was that we had a foundation, with a door in the wrong place. I stuck to my guns, ticked several people off and sweetly requested that it be moved, and it was. Oh my…I cannot even tell you how glad I am that I didn’t cave, that I had them move the door. It is so much better now!

I had to go down on Monday morning to talk to our foundation guy, and it was a good thing I did, because once they knew they were moving it, they were still not in the right spot! The one thing about home anything is that it is so hard to verbally explain anything, because everyone has a different perspective. If you can be in person and walk through things, it makes it so much better. Interestingly enough everyone thought that the plans showed the door in an odd place, but no one thought to question it. Oh well. It’s fixed now.

By the end of Monday they had the door in the correct place with the concrete steps into the basement installed. Given the craziness of this week I have very few pictures showing the progress of this week. The door is now on your right side looking in this picture, rather than being where I was standing to take the picture. Straight ahead will be the stairs down from the kitchen and by that window will be the powder we’re squeezing in under the stairs…trying to figure out if we can fit a shower in or not.

On Tuesday my father in law and our contractor started laying the floor joists and ran all of the plumbing. You can now see the door in the better location {bottom left}.

The view from the upstairs doorway. On the left hand side you can see the rough-in for the stairs to the basement.
On Wednesday they laid all of the plywood down and started some other things that needed to be done.
Thursday was sunny, cold and windy! My FIL was struggling with the sheets of zip board because the wind kept gusting. This is the view from the fixed post in the backyard. It’s hard to see in this picture where things are falling.The other fixed point in the yard.The basement. Just a bit of cleaning that needs to be done down here.You can see the access to the old basement in the center background of this picture. We’ve since decided that this can NOT be considered our only access to the original basement, so my pantry in the old stairwell is out the window, but that’s ok. I have to get a clear shot of what this is, but because of the difference, we have to build a drop down set of stairs to even get into the old basement.And this….this will be the view from my kitchen table. I just had to plop on the floor and enjoy it this evening. There aren’t even words for how excited I am about this and how thrilled I am to see that mountain and those trees!Wide range view of the kitchen {left to right}: That corner will have 4 windows, surrounding the stairwell and the landing at the top of the stairs, the large opening toward the right is the backdoor.Continuing on…doorway with another 2 windows flanking that side, then 3 windows on the side that needs to be built still.
It’s pretty surreal to look at all this. To be seeing my plans coming to life. The one thing that we’re also getting to see is what the space will ACTUALLY be. The hardest part of construction, especially when you’re trying to marry two separate spaces, is the actual space. You can envision one thing, but then, suddenly, there is a beam that can’t be moved, supports that are necessary, and next thing you know, it’s not what you were thinking.

This room is not going to be as huge as it felt or seemed in the planning; which is ok, because a huge open kitchen, would actually look really awkward with the rest of our house. We’re already seeing that the cabinets where the stove is going are going to have to get shortened because of the stairwell; the island may not be as long {9’} as we had hoped; we’re not getting the pantry space we had thought, but it’s all ok, because anything we have is going to be more and better than what we had. Although, we do still need to figure out where the computer is going, because I want it in the kitchen, but there really isn’t that much wall space.

Today they’re finishing up the 3rd wall, then this weekend they’ll get the ceiling trusses up, so that they can start the upstairs framing. We’re ordering the windows and doors today, so they’ll be in in a couple of weeks.

White House Renovations 2014—We have a foundation!

Last week {April 9th} the house was demolished and the foundation was dug out; despite the weather not being overly agreeable they managed to get the footings poured, the walls done and the basement finished! There is still some work that needs to be done before we can start building {perimeter drains and replacing the cast iron sewer lines for starters}.

Obviously this isn’t going to be an overly exciting post, but there is progress!

One of the things with old houses is that there are ALWAYS surprises, our house is no different. Given that the original house has a full basement, that is entirely laid stone, but very short, we knew we might have some issues to deal with. While the inside of our basement wall are smooth and give a relatively “flat” surface, the outside is another story.

Enter the large stones that can’t be touched. See’em all there, poking out!

So what do you do with that?

You have to create a bump out and up in your basement to accommodate the existing foundation. I have no idea what the finished height of this is going to be. I’m hoping it will be high enough for a shelf or low enough for a bench, but we’ll see.

Forms are up for the walls.
And the walls were poured {it was starting to get dark when I got this shot}. Bottom right you can see one of the basement windows…they’re nothing fancy, just your standard basement windows.
You can see the bump up/out in this one. If/when we ever finish the basement the half or 3/4 bath will be on that far right corner, closest to the existing house. The bottom right corner is where the stairs will go from the kitchen to the basement.
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I stopped by on Wednesday to see how things were going, and there was an issue. We had talked about where the door to the basement was going to go. I wanted it on the far side {right side in the above picture}, Matt didn’t. My reasoning was that that part of the yard is already a dead spot {traffic wise} and I didn’t want it where the swing set was. We had agreed to put it as close to the fence as possible on the left side, but I guess that didn’t get conveyed to the people that it needed to be conveyed to.

The door and the huge metal bilco door way is in the middle of the left side, right in front of where you walk into the yard. Gah!! I was up half the night on Wednesday thinking this over and trying to convince myself it’s not an issue, but it is…it’s a HUGE issue. And unless we want to spend another chunk of change it’s going to stay an issue. Matt and I looked at it, and hopefully it isn’t as bad as I envision. I’m not happy, but we’ll manage.


The good news is the aforementioned bump out, is going to be a good height for a shelf. So the TV will eventually go on that wall, with lots of room to store things on it. The bad news is the basement isn’t going to be big enough to have a 3/4 bath…we’re going to try and work in a powder room under the stairs.

The boys got to be the first of their siblings in the new basement. I took them down Thursday evening to help Daddy and PopPaul put down the pex piping for the radiant heating.
They were more excited though to be playing in their own yard….
And climbing on Daddy while he worked {James}.
So, here it is…the basement.


Friday morning {today} they are pouring the floor, installing the door, and then moving our swing set someplace {I’m not sure yet where} re-grading the yard, and they should be done. The floor trusses arrived Thursday afternoon, and next week, we start building up. Now is the fun stuff, because now is the stuff that I can help with!

And yes, my boys were beyond excited about the “Mater” in the backyard {I tried explaining it was an excavator}. Henry especially loves Cars {Disney movie} and Mater, and tractors and anything else that’s a machine and moves.

God the Carpenter

We’re in it up to our elbows now, or deeper depending on where you’re standing. This morning the forms were going up for the basement walls. Hopefully they can get the concrete poured in this afternoon since it’s going to rain tomorrow. Trusses are coming on Thursday. I was hoping to have a work day this coming Saturday, since family will be visiting, but I’m not sure there will be any work for us to do yet.

I’ve really wanted to share with you just how God has been working before and during this renovation, and a bit more of the inside scoop.

Here’s a secret: Even though I am beyond thrilled that we’re doing this renovation and I’ve wanted to do it for a while, it really was just a pipe dream. This is not at all what I thought we actually would be doing once it was time. We had planned on just fixing the foundation, gutting the area and starting over; the space was more than big enough. But that wasn’t going to work.

We knew the foundation was nearly non-existent under that part of the house. Once we talked to the guy who is doing our foundation we basically decided to just tear the structure down. There was no benefit to staying within the existing structure. Because of how unlevel it had become, everything inside would have buckled and broken and needed to be replaced anyways. Not to mention it was going to cost us more to lift and gut, than it was to tear it down and start over.

So, where has God been in this {since I mentioned Him in the title}?

God was quite literally holding our house together and up. Once our contractor got under the addition and started looking around, there was, quite literally, a 2x4 holding the entire thing up, and ONLY a 2x4. Kind of scary.

Then there was that whole troublesome building permit issue, which showed up on our doorstep literally the last possible day for us to call the foundation company and have them put us on the schedule for the following week.

And of course the “where are we going to live while our house gets destroyed?” question. Oddly enough, Matt’s parents built a new house a few years ago, of which we are residing in the basement {which is bigger than our own home is}. Enough room for all of us.

God….very simply was in all of it. Keeping our house standing until we were ready to move forward, putting all the details in order so that we stayed on schedule, and providing for us a place to live in comfortably while the work is done. It’s often so easy to forget He has our backs and is looking out for us, but it’s always nice when we can see what He’s doing.

White House Renovations 2014—The Destruction

Demolition in real life is nothing like demolition on TV. Last week we started our demolition: Removing all the cabinets, ripping up flooring where it needed to be removed, pulling all of the salvageable electric and plumbing from the house, as well as all the windows and doors {which will be getting re-used} and using a chainsaw. Basically, other than the actual structure, nothing was thrown out, and everything is getting reused.

Obviously this is going to be a very phot0-heavy post…because the best way to talk about demolition is to show it. Let’s start, shall we?

We started with salvaging as much of our existing deck as possible. There’s no point in throwing out perfectly good lumber, when you’re going to need it again in a few months.
Once the deck was gone you could really see a lot of the issues that we had with the foundation. We knew they were there, but it was a lot easier to ignore them when they weren’t visible.There was absolutely nothing holding up the lowest back corner of the foundation. From the center of the house to this corner there was around an 18” difference.All of the kitchen cabinets were pulled and salvaged. While we won’t be reusing them in the new kitchen, we will be using some of the wall cabinets in the laundry room and the base cabinets will be getting hacked for an entertainment center when we eventually/possibly finish the basement.The new home of my stove and refrigerator. Since we packed almost ALL of the kitchen and attic into our 16’ trailer we really didn’t take over the rest of the house with stuff…which will make the cleaning process {anyone want to come and help with that?} a lot easier, and making moving back in when the house is closed up that much more comfortable.This is the column that was in the middle of the house, at the end of the run of cabinets. Pretty much this thing is holding up the entire back end of the house….kind of crazy.All of the cabinets are gone. Matt started chipping up the tile where the two structures met, so that we could chainsaw the house apart. I have to go back in and chip up all of the smaller patterned tile, because that will be in the mudroom/laundry room and will be getting new flooring.The closet in our bathroom is gone. This is standing in the kitchen looking at where my desk used to be and the white hutch. Where the pipe is that is where our new mudroom door will open onto the driveway. Unfortunately, we did lose a closet in the bathroom, but it isn’t that big of a deal. We’re going to build something narrow to store essentials, and make better use of the space under our vanity.The lovely old wallpaper we found. Old houses always seem to have a plethora of this, and admittedly I was kind of disappointed that we hadn’t found any. This was in the bathroom closet. I’m guessing early 1940s, and there was only 2 other layers beneath it…a silverish one and one with a heavier ivy pattern.Standing in the breakfast nook looking into the bathroom.At some point there was an extensive fire in our house; unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find much information about it. The fire damage was all the way into the kitchen ceiling.Standing in the bathroom and looking toward the kitchen. This is the window that sat behind my desk.Moving outside!
All of the windows were removed from the kitchen. The original windows will be replacing the living room replacement windows, the mudroom door will be reused, and 1 of the windows from the back of the house will be going in the mudroom, if we have space for it.
Finally it was demolition day! I was down at the house around 7am, waiting for them to start the work. Several of my mom friends were with me, bright and earlier, for a homeschool field day. Unfortunately, all of the kidlets were bored and missed out on the actual demolition.
I was sure to get one last picture from my upstairs hall window, and a few more as the sun came up.


Just as the sun came up and the clouds rolled in they started, with removing the 4x4s that were part of the deck {so we can reuse them}.Then they had to remove the stone slabs that were our “porch” area.
Then it started.

And I stood there, with a big ol’ grin on my face, watching them destroy my house, in a total of 6 minutes…my boys were born 6 minutes apart!
Looking out from my living room.Being brave and looking out the upstairs hall window.My kitchen floor: It was still all in one solid piece, despite everything falling in on it. They had a hard time smashing that up to fit it in the dumpster…the tiles wouldn’t crack.By sundown it was all dug out and a huge pile of dirt was hiding my apple trees.Kind of crazy to look at how the old foundation was built.There is so much more light in my living room now, it’s incredible! I know that it won’t be quite like this once the addition is built, but it’s still so cool to see just how much view we’ll have.Matt and Avie posing next to the 1 of 3 piles of dirt in our yard.
And just like that the destruction is done: In a little more than a week, we went from living there to having a pit in the ground. Now we move on with construction. We’re looking at about 2 weeks before the foundation is built and the structure can start going up.
If you really want to get a sneak preview of what’s going on in the White House, be sure to follow me on Instagram!