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.