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...

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.

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.

Framing, Dry Wall, and Siding are done!

Framing and insulation were done last week but here are the pictures before the insulation went in.

And mid-week, the dry wall was installed. The master bath shower is no longer visible from the mud room, probably a better long-term plan than having it open. :)

The door to the garage isn't installed yet and will probably be one of the last things to get installed so that it doesn't get damaged with all the in and out.

And here's the master bath, looking towards the new shower.

And we got new siding yesterday. It still needs to be painted but it's a great match with the old siding!

Much of this week was also consumed with choosing stair parts - newel posts, balusters/spindles, treads, handrail, risers, nosing, and another piece I can't remember the name of. We decided to go with custom-milled newels and a custom handrail that have a really cool turned profile. They look like something you'd find in an old house, which you just can't find in the catalog from big box stores. I can't wait to see them in a few weeks!

Next week we should be sanding dry wall and painting. Well, not "we", but you know what I mean.

Productive but not much to look at

A lot has happened in the last two weeks, but it's not the stuff that makes for good pictures. Our A/C unit was reconnected, light fixtures arrived, electrical and plumbing rough-in and insulation went in, and a big pile of scrap wood was removed from our yard. We passed two inspections (yay!), and we're ready to start finalizing decisions on newel posts, balusters, a shoe rail, and paint colors.

The inspiration for the interior of the addition is generally French country. That style is kind of hard to describe, except for light colors, weathered wood, and lots of linen and texture. I bought an antique ceramic jar at an antiques store here in town a couple years ago that will go perfectly in the new space. I also re-painted a desk with Annie Sloan chalk paint last week with my mom, which turned out beautifully! The color is French Linen (how appropriate!). We won't have much other furniture/furnishings for a while since we'll need to refinish my great uncle's pedestal table and order chairs, other seating, and curtains. But I'm sure we'll quickly fill the space with toddler toys and such.

How cute is this table for Clara? It would look great!

Too bad it's from Restoration Hardware...enough said! We won't be ordering that any time soon. :)

Here's the inspiration in pictures for the space:

I think we're less than a month away from being done on the inside. Then we have to figure out the mess in the backyard. :)

A Very Productive Week

We had a great week here with the addition. Windows and a back door went in and several walls came out. We've also lost access to our bathroom, so we're down to one tub...upstairs.

Here's the exterior early in the week:

On the inside, the exterior kitchen and master bathroom walls came out, and support beams went in to hold up the house. A last-minute change led to the bathroom beam being nested in the ceiling instead of hanging down. Our awesome architect brought over a structural engineer to confirm our change wouldn't affect the structural integrity adversely. 20 minutes later, we had a new plan! Nesting the beam in the ceiling will really open up the new shower in the bathroom.

Here's the exterior kitchen wall with the outer layer already removed. You can see the spray foam here we added when we renovated the kitchen in 2012. Too bad we had to lose all that nice insulation.

 Here's how the same space looks now - no wall!

And from inside the house, this is the view. Needless to say, tonight's thunderstorm was loud!

From a frame to a structure with a roof!

There's been great progress here on our addition over the last week.

The roof was framed early in the week and the shingles were on by Thursday. There will be four arched windows on this wall but the openings are still covered up. We should get to see windows go in within the week!

The outer wood walls were removed on Friday, exposing the insulation in the kitchen and bathtub in the bathroom.

Also on the schedule for this week is removing this wall, which has the kitchen on the other side of it. Since our laundry room is right below the kitchen, we're trying to figure out a way to fit in a laundry shoot!