Old and New

Howdy folks!!!!

It has been a good three weeks, hasn't it?  Well, I am in good spirits today since I just found out I have been fully accepted into Marymount's Interior Design graduate program!!!  As of today!  I have already been taking grad classes there, but there was one last thing to do: Portfolio Review.  That was a beast, but is finally behind me.  One more week of classes and then one more week of finals/projects, and I am done for the semester and will be able to work on some other projects.  Namely, THIS ONE!!!!!

Ok, back to business.  This one will be relatively short, since I have a lot of school stuff goings on.  But, I did want to keep you in the loop of the exciting things going on our little site out in the country.  Gabe has been very excited lately with the visual progress that is being made.  We have now officially moved from the destruction phase to the construction phase.  Yippee!

A couple of weeks ago, we left with pictures of a concrete form constructed, ready to accept a "mud slab" (I learned this is not actually mud, but what they call a rough poured concrete pad, usually for crawl spaces).  In our case, the mud slab was being poured and leveled over the trenches that were filled with cement to be part of the foundation on the east side of the building.  Here's a good shot:

Notice the wood forms are still in place

We really felt like were making progress now!  As you can see, there is only one remaining existing pier.  The plan is to build a wall of wood around the perimeter of the whole space that has been layered with concrete.  The space on the right used to be a covered porch, but we are going to be extending the kitchen out to meet the wall and the concrete edge as seen.

Here are some pics of the crawl space opening from the original 1890's build:

From the outside, under the existing bathroom space

From the inside, through the floor joists of the existing main living room

They had some extra concrete, so they extended and smoothed it out into the main house crawl space.  Also, you might notice the raccoon trap moved from the crawl space in the previous picture...we never found him; he must have found a new habitat, thankfully.

And a complimentary picture of the happy couple, tools in hand:

In all honesty, I didn't work that day.  I did stay on site and work on one of my projects for school though!!  Gabe and Dad were the ones busy at work.  I must say I was a bit jealous, somehow.  I wanted to be in on the action!  Gabe was working inside on leveling and securing the transition of the dividing wall from the dining room to the main room:

Dad was working on getting the last of the bricks removed from the chimney stack.  We were originally going to leave it as part of the aesthetics of the main room, but when we tore out the floor, we found that it wasn't properly undergirded and was pulling the house off level.  So we are taking it out.  So sad.

                                                                   This is where the stack was

The next day, Saturday (April 14th), you can see Gabe got cement leveled off on top of the existing rubble foundation:

On the other side of the divider, after they removed the rotten wood supporting the studs, they replaced it with new boards.  See before and after below:

Before

After

I thought this next picture showed the old and the new together really well:

And Dad finished removing bricks:

He also carried them all out to the porch to be stacked.  Ei yei yeo, so many!  They are original to the house.  We plan to re-purpose them as pavers for a backdoor patio.  Dad says Gabe is gunna kill him with all the work, but I propose that Gabe is keeping him ALIVE!!!  :)

THEN, they started working on reinforcing and leveling floor joists in the main room.

Dad, what balance you have!!  That must be were I get my balance beam skills

They must have gotten 4 joists reinforced that day.


The next weekend, we made loads of progress.  When I say "we" I really mean Gabe and Dad, because I literally didn't help at all, minus taking a few pictures during breaks from my studies.

They hung more joists, continuing to reinforce the ones on the main floor, almost all the way to the stairs!!  They also took out the 2 risers in the way of the door as you see here:

Then they tackled the kitchen/dining room area, hanging a good lot of them, as well as blocking a few of them too:

At the beginning of the day

At the end: Look at all the joists!  We have a floor skeleton

The proposed dining room/kitchen area

Here is a detail of the joist hangers:

Detail of blocking work:

OH, and more good news!!!  We have an electrical box installed.  It's not hooked up yet, but at least it is there.  :D

And an exterior view of the electrical box

Here is a pic of the beautiful valley views just an eighth of a mile up the road:

Just gawjous!

Ok, now I've gotta run.  Class time!