Shingles, Framing, & Drywall, oh my!

I'll just jump right in and share what we've been up to with the house projects in the last month and a half.  I have split it up into two separate posts, for easier readability:

For those of you who are list people, here's a list of the things we have done on the house in the last month and a half:
Completed shingled roof
Insulated ceiling of great room
Removed brick on existing house at openings
Shopped for walnut slabs for countertop (some but not all surfaces--we are mixing with granite) in my parent's side yard
More windows installed
Interior framing: peninsula and pantry in kitchen/DR, closets in MBR
HVAC installed on all additions
Cut a hole into our existing living room
Drywalled
Some mudding/taping
Cleared out the existing kitchen
Demoed kitchen!!
Expanded kitchen
Leveled out the flooring from existing to new
Received cabinet delivery
Installed electrical and plumbing in kitchen
Cut another hole into our living room
Removed old flooring in kitchen
Installed cabinets

On the design end of things:
Ordered received cabinet handles
Measured for countertops
Ordered appliances
Ordered hardwood flooring
Ordered some light fixtures
Ordered sink/plumbing fixtures
Shopped to match existing brick/mortar
Ordered sectional for new Great Room!
Designed a built-in walnut desk/TV area in Great Rm
And lots of other things I'm sure I missed!

Here are some details/pics of the process for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing--

Starting with finishing up the shingles on the roof:

An in process shot--not too many of those here, not sure why!

Didn't realize I didn't have any closer up pics of the finished shingled roof until just the other day! So here you go: green grass, blue sky, dirt piles, and little boys with shovels:

Couple windows installed:

Dining Room window about to go in

Large ones going in!  Contractor Dave had Gabe's help on that one:

Sadly, it will be a while before the trapezoid/triangular ones on top are ready to go in:

All suited up with tarp

On to brick removal of the wall coming down to create a bigger kitchen:

A couple of loud days later, the brick was finally removed.

Don't mind the blurry child flash of lightning in the lower right hand corner :)

Dave diligently cleaned old mortar off of the bricks to be used for patch jobs on the west addition, bricking over a few windows.

In which one is seen here:

He removed brick where the doorway will be into the master bedroom.  Where the window is will be another doorway into an ensuite master bathroom (formerly Zoe's room).  The other window being bricked over is to the right of the doorway:

Judah is not super happy his window is being bricked over!

One weekend we went over to my parents place to "shop" for some walnut slabs.  My parents had a walnut tree come down (accidentally landed on their car--but that's another story for another time ;) and got it sawn into slabs for an opportunity such as this.  They have been sitting in my parents yard under a tarp for quite some time now, so we went to go take a look.  The plan is to use live edge walnut for the west wall countertop and the bar top.  We also have in mind to put a built in live edge walnut desk to the right of the brick stack in the Great Room.  So, we were looking at the slabs, and decided on taking two roughly 15' long slabs, approximately 2" thick to get planed down to 1.5" thick for the countertops and a roughly 8' long slab for the desk, this one being about 17" wide.  There were other smaller slabs to be planed down to 3/4" thick to use as live edge shelves on the brick and open shelves in the kitchen.

Isn't this exciting???  I can't wait to see them all cleaned up!!!!!  !!

Next, Dave installed baffles in the Great Room ceiling to vent the air up to the ridge vent to go under the insulation.

Yes, they are pink

Next, here's a before and after of the "cut through" to the existing living space:

Woo hoo!!!

A perspective from the other side:

Some kitchen framing pics:

This next picture shows the opening Dave uses to get into the space so he didn't have to come thru our living room all the time.  It was connected to the front porch by a 2'x12' plank that spanned about 14' and at one end was about 10' off the ground.  Which, ahem, Zoe NEVER walked across without us....

And then, it was time to drywall the ceiling.  But not without first, the excitement of watching the delivery truck unload it.

Dave had someone come help him with drywall for the ceiling, since he was using long 12' pieces.

And then, over in the west wing master bedroom addition:

From inside one of the closets:

Back to just Dave still in the west wing:

Moving around the room clockwise:

More drywall pics in the east wing:

Taken from my existing kitchen window

On to some mudding and taping of drywall:

Taking a walk thru the space, counter-clockwise:

Take one last look at this window wall as it's coming out in a couple days!!!!

Amongst the drywall, mudding and taping, Dave worked with Furlong's Sheetmetal subcontractor to get HVAC set up for the new space.  Fortunately, right after we bought the house in 2013, we decided to outfit it with a bigger furnace (and moved to a better location) that would accommodate a major renovation we were only toying with at the time.  Well, down the road, we DID decide to take on a major renovation/addition project now, didn't we?  So that worked out nicely to not have to deal with that all the while.  It was a relatively smooth 2-3 day process, with a team of about 4 guys working in various parts of the house adding vents, ducts and things.  I asked Gabe one day, "our bedroom (in the basement) is the only one that won't be touched, right??  a sanctuary of sorts with all this reno???"  Nope, think again.  The main trunk line duct runs straight thru our room and Gabe created (since we did our bedroom in the basement ourselves) a removable panel over the duct for just such an occasion.  We had to clear out a space in our room (mostly Gabe's closet) for them to tie in the new venting system with the existing one.  So that is what we did, and boom-bada-bing, back in business, with very little hassle and mess.  I call that a Gabe win!

So, we now have working HVAC for the new spaces.  But, being that there is still one crucial window we are waiting on, exhibit A:

we still have most of the vents closed.  Thankfully, it just so happens to be warming up weather-wise so we aren't needing HVAC quite as much now.  The weather will be a consideration with the cabinets coming in to have a climate controlled space to put them.

Here's the cliff hanger I'll leave you with---

Pictures of a cleaned out kitchen, ready to be demoed!!!!

My "make do" kitchen has a shelf life!!!!  But, we will keep a few things to add to a mud room/kitchenette in the basement directly below this kitchen.  These few cabinets (one base cabinet, microwave shelf, and glass front wall cabinet) we added in the last couple of years will stay in the house, the dishwasher will move into the new space and this butcher block countertop will be made into a kids table eventually...  This old 36" refrigerator will stay downstairs as well.  The sink will move downstairs and we plan to keep the old vintage stove vent we restored back in 2014:

Not keeping backsplash (it's a peel 'n stick tile, meant for temporary use)

Demo day, here we come!!!!

Stay tuned.....

House Construction Firmly Underway!

Jumping right into what's been going on at the ranch in the last three months--

I'll start with the east wing addition since there is less progress on it :)

On a snowy day after a lot of progress had been made building up the concrete walls:

A couple of days later, on a December weekend we realized we needed to make room for a pile of gravel and a neighbor building a house and moving into the area was asking for some extra fill dirt.  And we happened to have some!  So, Gabe made 7 or 8 loads with a borrowed trailer of LOTS of dirt to the neighbors house.  He made sure to have a little fun with the borrowed bobcat and his 4 year old son:

Notice the space freed up for a load of gravel the following Monday!

Contractor Dave still had a good bit of work to do to grade down the dirt where the garage pad was going to go.

The ground was so hard and compacted from where the driveway had been, he had to manually grade it in some spots, hiring a few guys to help.

All prepped and ready to go for concrete pour!

And then, the day we left for Christmas break, the concrete truck arrived to pour the slab for the garage!!  It was fun to be there for a little bit of it!

Oh the excitement of a cement mixer!

Kids loved watching (us adults did too):

The morning was chilly, so it slowed down the process a little at first, but ultimately it was not cold enough to stop them!

Freshly paved!

Photo cred: contractor Dave

Photo cred: contractor Dave

Quite a few weeks passed by, while Dave worked on the west wing, before this picture was taken:

He was filling the top holes of the concrete block with more concrete to install bolts to attach the sill plates for wood frame walls.

About a week ago, Dave started framing the east wing walls.  It was a beautiful day, perfect for watching!

This exciting step goes so fast!

Just this last weekend, Gabe tackled the replacing of our mudroom/basement door.  It did a poor job keeping the cold out anyways and the storm door would need to be removed soon anyway if we were going to finish up the frame walls of the garage.

Gabe removes the door and the trim:

Funny story about the door just removed--it so happened to be a windy day, from the south, and would have knocked the door over if Gabe had not caught it!  He promptly moved the door to prop it against the brick wall ;)

An overview of the current state of the framed walls this last Saturday:

Varying stages of doneness:

Okay.  Now I want to back track a bit and detail the west wing addition.  There is much more visual progress here!

Rewind back to the middle of November.  It's amazing to notice how far we've come in 2 1/2 months!

Reminder of freshly poured footings on the west side:

Almost a month later, concrete walls going up, corners first:

And then the task of grading down, much easier than on the east side:

Complete right before Christmas.

Our contractor sent us a few pictures of his progress while we were out of town:

Photo cred: contractor Dave

Photo cred: contractor Dave

And then Dave surprised us with all the progress he had made when we returned, right after the new year:

He had finished the joists, platform, frame walls, some roof joists, and some sheathing.  We were impressed he had placed the ridge beam BY HIMSELF.  What???

A couple of days later he was finishing roof joists, working on placing windows, finishing the sheathing on walls and roof:

And then home wrap/vapor barrier:

A couple days later, he accomplished the fascia and some prep work for roof sheathing (shingles):

Here it can be seen that until the power line is moved he can't finish the roof:

Some shots of the interior:

Imagine the existing brick staying in our master bedroom.  Yes! Without the power meter there, of course :D

The window on the new north wall (pictured below) will be enclosed in the "her's" walk in closet.

Looking at this brick wall below, imagine there is the hall door cut right down the middle, in-between the two windows.  There will be a small 2' door overlapping somewhat with the left window which will lead to the future master bathroom (currently "Zoe's bedroom"--she sleeps in the basement with us currently).  The master bathroom will be a project for another time and not under the scope of what our contractor Dave will be doing for us before the summertime.

After a frustrating morning trying to locate the actual shingles of our roof (that was replaced less than a year ago), Dave hustled and accomplished most of the shingles on the westerly addition.

From the back:

I'd say it looks great!  It it a slight shade darker, but will fade out as the existing roof has done in just a little over 6 months.

From the front side:

Dave has to keep it tarped over until the power line situation can get taken care of.

He framed in the large triangular transom window in the master bedroom:

Hello sunset viewings from our bedroom!

Showing the recently framed his and hers walk in closets:

The framed south window--larger for egress:

Over the next couple of days, the contractor worked on things that aren't so visible, like hurricane ties for the joists, blocking and adding electrical boxes.  He placed a window order, which was exciting!

Last week was pretty slow around here, waiting on a few materials ordered, acquiring electrical permit so we can move forward moving the power lines underground.

This week already proves to be more exciting since we got 2 metal I beams delivered this morning, one of which is 800-1000 lb and will be the headers for the garage doors:

 East wing trusses will be delivered on Friday! FriYAY!  Can't wait to see the east wing addition take shape!!


More to come....