We’ve been framed!

Progress on the house has been coming along nicely.  Scott and Neil have been working hard, Arden has been doing the more skilled labor, the engineering and generally keeping everything on track and Lorraine has logistics under control.

All of the windows are in, demolition is complete and the walls have all been framed.  These two upstairs bedroom had paneling that was just glued on to the walls.

The bedrooms are now framed and ready for the electrical, insulation, and drywall.

 

The basement is now all framed with all the windows in.  We should hopefully get most of the electrical done this week, and maybe all of the plumbing (keep your fingers crossed!)

The window wells outside turned out really nicely.  Scott did a great job grading the soil so it slopes away from the house. 

We have a new outside yard hydrant that hooks up to the main water line.  Our plants are still doing OK, despite not being able to water them every day. 

 

Yeah for fresh grown tomatoes!

Road closed

We’ve found many revealing things about our house by trying to renovate a couple of rooms (more than we ever wanted to know, to tell the truth.)  Even though we didn’t plan on doing all this stuff, it’s good to get things taken care of. 

Here we have the road closed off just for us so they can put in a new sewer line.  The old one was made of clay and had several breaks in it and it it was partly disconnected out in the street.  

 

That hole by our house is over 7 feet deep.  Here’s one of the backhoes they used to dig up the street.

  

Here’s the dumpster that has become a permanent fixture in our driveway.  They’ve already dumped it 3 times.  Ian has the quite the formidable crowbar skills.

 

Here is our gutted basement family room.  Arden pulled off an amazing bit of engineering to raise the height of the downstairs entrance.

One of the surprises after we pulled down all the ceiling tiles were the 6 structurally unsound joists.  Here’s 2 that they had notched to put in some lights.  Here’s one they cut into for a heating duct that has started to split.

Here is one of 2 joists that someone inexplicably cut straight up into, and then decided they better patch them with some 2x4’s.

  

We are glad to have them fixed before our floor caves in.  What a relief!

Destruction

Here’s a short rundown of our week:

• Monday  - Due to the swamp cooler overflowing and leaking in the roof, there is some kind of electrical short.  Melinda goes to shower and discovers that the water is conducting electricity.  Fearing that we would just keep showering with electrified water, Arden installs a new GFI circuit for us. Now the lights don’t work in kitchen, bathroom, and reading room. However we can now shower without getting electrocuted.
• Tuesday – We break the water main while digging out the window well. Though Scott and Melinda bail valiantly, some water and mud still gets into the basement. After the water company turns off the water, Laird saves us by patching up the pipe.
• Wednesday – Arden very graciously takes over the management of our reconstruction project.  He was trying to let us manage on our own I think, but now that his grandchildren’s lives are in danger he must get involved. There is much rejoicing.
• Thursday – Thursday was a blur.  What did happen?
• Friday – I have the day off, so Scott and I cleared out the basement and start some serious demolition.  We moved our old ghetto couch and chair to the back porch, and now we have a redneck patio set.

The scope of our little remodel has changed from just enlarging a couple of basement windows and some new walls to completely redoing the electrical, water, gas, and heating/cooling system and framing and insulating the outside walls. Of course, we’ve read This Old House enough to know that this always happens, but still it wasn’t quite in our plans.

Here is Lisette’s old room. (Sorry Mom and Dad, we hope you don’t mind the new accomodations when you visit in a couple of weeks!) and our cozy downstairs family room.

Miles is showing his brother (Ian, previously known as ‘Structini) how it’s really done.  Here is the laundry room which is currently one of the nicer room downstairs. (Notice the water on the floor. Hmm, drain overflow again. We’ll have Apollo Rooter come check it out this week.)

 

The punctured water main pipe. (See what a pickax can do!), and our new outdoor living room (which is about 25 degrees cooler than the inside living room).

 

Rubble and old furniture. We hope the neighbors don’t mind. And we thought a 50-year-old house was new enough to avoid all of this!

      

We are going to send the kids downtown to sing on the street corners as a fundraising activity.  If you see them, please be generous!

Before and after

Here are our dining room and kitchen floors when they were still candidates for the Hideous Floor Hall of Fame. I thought the kitchen floor still looked pretty good (for a barn.)


Here's the dining room floor. As you can tell we used to drive heavy equipment on it.


Here's our living room all empty and ready to be sanded.


You wouldn't believe how much an empty house with hardwood floors echoes.


Here is the dining room floor "after" photo. Oooohh. Aaaaahhh.


Saffy can hardly recognize this as her own beloved kitchen.


Here's our living room with some of the furniture back. It's so nice to be back in our own home and somewhat settled back into our usual routine.


Arden and Lorraine were so kind to let us invade their home and pantry (though Melinda made sure to hide most of the treats so the kids didn't OD on marshmallows, Pearson's Nut Rolls, and Fresca.) The kids really loved it, I think they thought it was just one continual party at Hotel Grandma and Grandpa's

It was so good to have somewhere nice to stay while our house was in construction mode. But it's good to be back home again. Just like Dorothy with the red sparkly shoes always says, "there's no place like home, there's no place like home!"

Vacation at home (day three)

For the last day of our vacation we headed down to BYU for some free museum fun. We started at the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, affectionately (or not so affectionately) known as the "dead animal" museum.

It was actually a pretty good museum. They had a reptile animal show that started when we first got there. I missed most of it because Saffron was dragging me around to see the lions, zebras, and bears. She really likes anything that roars, seeing that she has quite the roar herself.

We went to the creamery afterwards to get some of their famous ice cream. The ice cream was really good, but they converted it into a mini grocery store, so with only a few tables, the atmosphere wasn't as good as I remembered it.

We then went to the MOA (Museum of Art). They had some really nice art there, plus they had a Minerva Teichert exhibit that was very beautiful (in spite of Miles and Ian muttering "boring" every few minutes.) We saw Melinda's aunt Coleen, her cousin Haley and Miguel and their kids, and had fun catching up with them.

On our way back to Salt Lake we stopped at the Draper IKEA store. They have some really cool stuff there, and it is definitely a unique shopping experience (as long as you can suppress the feeling of being a rat in a maze.) We had dinner there and ate their famous Swedish meatballs and some of their delicious "Chocolate Overload" cake.

We were getting kind of tired, and Saffron was getting out of hand so we were very happy to get home. After all, there's no place like home.