Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Some Before and After Pictures

So, somebody had a busy fall and hasn't gotten around to posting in months. I figured it was time for a few 'before' and 'after' shots of the addition, which is officially done and has been for several months. We'll start outside and work our way in.

Here's the 'before' shot of the back of the house, looking north.


And here's the 'after' shot looking north as well.



And here's the 'before' looking East.


And the 'after'.


Moving inside, this is the kitchen before we did the addition (but after the 2013 renovation).


And here is the view now. The addition is in and we actually decided to repaint the kitchen a darker color. Jewel tones are in!


If we go way back to 2012, here's how the kitchen looked when we moved in.


And here's the same angle now.


And lastly, a few panorama shots. Here we had just started demo on the original kitchen in 2013.


And here's the panorama view today, which is not the same angle, but shows the whole space.


Lastly, here's the breakfast nook. There's no 'before' shot since it was just yard before this.



Friday, August 26, 2016

Pavers and Landscape Plan

Progress continues on the backyard. We have pavers in now that surround the concrete. Eventually they will have moss planted between them to form a transition from the slab to the grass and landscaped beds.



And speaking of landscape, we have a plan that includes adding a lot of shade-loving perennials that will have the backyard blooming from early spring through late summer. Here's the highlights of plants below:

After burying some downspouts and adding a rockwall to the patio, plants should go in around the first of September!

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Who knew concrete could be so exciting!

Our concrete slab is finally in our back yard AND the fence is back up so Ellie has free reign again!

Here's the progress:









We tried getting Clara's hand print in the wet concrete...that was a disaster.

The next step is to install pavers (see the stacks in the background of the last photo?) around the patio and re-plant Irish moss like we had before.

Monday, July 18, 2016

Baby Steps

Most of the construction work inside is finished except for some touch-up painting. We're still waiting on work outside to pick up again and are starting to use our new space!

We put together my great uncle's table, ordered some new chairs, installed drapes, and painted a child's table and chair for the nook as well.


We're still moving things around a bit so some of the pictures are not the latest.





Monday, June 27, 2016

Building the stairs and railing and installing the light fixture


 The cork floors are now exposed and the stairs are built. They are working on staining them, which is proving challenging. We'll get there though with another coat or two.






The light fixture and ductless air system in the mud room are installed now too!


Inside, there's still paint touch-up work to do and staining a patch of wood flooring, but that's about it. Next up is the back yard, which still looks like this...


Thursday, June 23, 2016

Such a busy month!

In addition to work on the house, I've have four works trips and we've been out of town for three weekends since Memorial Day, hence the lack of posts since June 1st.

The project is actually wrapping up, at least on the inside of the house. Even more work has been done since these pictures; hopefully that progress will make it online in the next few days.

Here's some progress the master bath:




And outside, things look practically finished (except for landscaping) now that brick is on. The brick on the addition is a blend of old salvaged brick from our house and new brick. Apparently new bricks are smaller than old ones, so all the old bricks  - approximately 1,000 of them - had to be cut to match the size of the new ones.




We also have back porch lights again!



And inside the nook, the plastic wall came down, giving us our first glimpse of the full open space next to the kitchen. It's great!


Cork floors are in and the stair railing is now in, though this picture only shows it partially finished.




Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Lots of pretty pictures!

Things have been very busy around here with four work trips and a short vacation in the month of May for us. But, we're seeing lots of good progress, so here's lots of pictures of the latest work. Since the last post, walls were sanded and painted, siding was painted, shower and bathroom floor tile were installed and grouted (except for a small section to be done tomorrow), subfloor went into the breakfast nook, and an HVAC return vent got removed and patched with oak flooring in our kitchen.

Here's progress in the bathroom:

 We had to patch the floor because we removed the tub.


Shower floor:




Woohoo, plastic is gone! It's not functional yet, but we're close!

The glass door is on order as well. It should be here in ~2 weeks. In the mean time, we may just stick up a shower curtain...as soon as we have a shower head...so we can start using our bathroom again.

And here's progress in the nook and mud room:

 They still need to stain the wood where the air vent was removed.


Here's a piece of the new cork flooring for the addition, next to the existing kitchen flooring.


Brick was also delivered today, which was a huge success, but a boring story, so I'll spare you the details. Masons were here earlier today to start laying out the brick and it should be in three days from now.


Stair parts are also in so it's time to finalize stain colors, and tomorrow the plastic wall separating our kitchen from the construction comes down.