Shake it, Shake it, Baby!

Day 2

So, if our neighbors really loved us yesterday, we expect they really, REALLY, are loving us this morning as the jack-hammering started at 7:25am!

Maybe our new student neighbor who is a DRUMMER will think twice about practicing his craft at midnight from here on out. :o) He does sound like a beginner, so our worker guys said maybe the sound of the jack hammer will teach him how to do a proper drum roll. Too funny! Luckily, our immediate neighbors are very excited to see the transformation of our house, so they will put up with the occasional bad day of noise coming from our property.

It is amazing how the shaking and noise from the jack hammer penetrates the house. The cats, bless their little hearts, are just not quite sure what is happening. First we moved all the furniture, walled off the doorways, moved their feeding location and have completely turned their world upside down. Now, it's like we are in the middle of a day long earth tremor. I finally took them down to the basement where the noise is more muffled. If they can just survive this day, it will be great. Hopefully, they won't start losing their hair because of stress (nothing worse than a bald cat. So unattractive and chilly as winter is approaching).

As the concrete porch and garage slab were being demo'd, a couple of the guys were set to the task of removing the many nails from the garage framing lumber.

A tremendous pile of broken concrete and old foundation block began to take form in the front yard. Because it freezes here in winter, the footers and foundation can't begin above 24 inches below grade, which means there is lots of old concrete to remove well below ground level.

To get the concrete loaded into the salvage truck, the guys had to build this long ramp. We are not quite sure how any of these guys will be able to move tomorrow morning after jacking out the concrete and then moving it by wheelbarrow load up the ramp. UGH! Don't try this at home.

So while all of the shaking and digging and destruction was going on at the front of the house, the insulation removal guys were sucking the old blow-in fiberglass out of the attic. You can see in the photo the big hose going up into the attic. Once the loose stuff was out, they removed the roll down stuff below that. This has to be one of the most horrible jobs in a remodel job, besides digging out a broken sewer line. YUCK! They hauled away around a dozen huge bags of insulation on a huge flatbed.

After only 2 days the dumpster is full. A sign of good progress. If they can keep up this pace, we will have that new roof on in no time. Fingers crossed it will be before the rains come.

Half A House

Week 1

7am, Tuesday, Sept. 7

Ask me how excited I am that our builder, Jim Wright-Kaiser, has his crew start their work day at 7am!!! I guess if there is one good thing about my hormone chaos right now, it is that I am usually awake at 5am anyway, so the coffey pot just goes on then :o)

As the sun came up, the dumpster arrived (we suspect our neighbors are loving us more than they already do!)

Jim's crew of 6 strong young men landed on the house like a swarm of flies and took no time at all raising the front porch. It took them about 3 hours to remove it. This brought us great pleasure as we have wanted that eye sore removed since we bought this house.

You can see why this porch needed to come down now before it fell down. YUCK! We expect the porch was added about 25-30 years ago and wasn't built very well. It has always leaked since we have lived here (9 years now).

We are having the crew remove the original cedar siding so that we can reuse most of it to re-side the new addition. This house was built in 1953 and the siding is in fantastic condition. They just don't build houses today like they used to. The quality materials used in 'the old days' last a lifetime.

Wow! The house already looks so different without the porch.

This is our friend Josh who is also on the crew. He used to live in one of our rental houses. He is the one who introduced us to our builder Jim (who is his step-dad).

The crew quickly moved on to raising the garage after the porch came down.

This is our builder Jim. A really wonderful guy and a great builder. He helped us remodel the roof and add on a new front porch to one of our rental houses a few years ago. Please take note of this friends if any of you have any building needs. And, yes, that was a plug for Jim :o)

Once the siding was removed from the garage we noticed what perfect shape the original douglas fir framing was in, so we decided to salvage most of the lumber to reuse in the construction of the addition (ching, ching! I can hear the savings). That cedar siding really has protected the framing for the last 57 years. Absolutely no bug or water damage anywhere. Not even on the roof.

This is Chris, our youngest member of the crew at 20 years old. He is a solid ball of testosterone. He attacks every task with gusto and wasn't even asked to take this sledge hammer to the concrete porch slab. He just wanted to do it for fun! Just couldn't wait until tomorrow when the jack hammer shows up to help out with that task.

It is amazing how they got the porch and garage raised in one day. They are certainly moving right along.

At the end of the first day, we now have about half a house.

Can't wait to see what happens tomorrow :o)

New Digs

Here is an update on what's been happening during the last 10 days.

We have finished moving everything out of the living room, dining room and kitchen. It's a miracle we have been able to store everything (except the couch) in other parts of the house, which will save us a chunk of money otherwise spent on renting a storage space. Believe me, now that all of the estimates have come in, we are hacking away at saving every penny we can (I REALLY want a new stove for the kitchen if we have any cash left after the build :o) ).

Here are some photos of the final move and our new living space:

For protection, we are covering all of the wood floors with a layer of red rosin paper, cardboard and then OSB board on top of that.

The kitchen floor will be covered the same way. I have started taking some of the cabinets out too.

The doorways to the hallway, kitchen and washroom will be sealed off from the bedrooms and bathrooms to help protect us from the demolition noise and dust (yeah, right!). I am screwing a layer of blue foam, plywood, tape and plastic to the door frames to seal us off.

Here are some shots of our new digs. We have set up the kitchen and living room in the basement (we added a stainless steel sink last year in preparation). It is all working out pretty well, so we think we may survive trying to live here while half of our house is torn away (who needs clean clothes anyway?....).

So, all of you know by now how much I love to cook. Well, this new situation presents a challenge as the stove is currently being stored in the garage. To solve this problem, we went out and bought a new grill last weekend. We had intended to use our camp stove, but we will need a new grill for the new grill chimney on our new front porch anyway, and since they are all on sale right now, it was the right thing to do. We got a steal deal on a new grill that includes a burner on one side, so I am still able to cook some pretty tasty morsels.

Here is my first try at coq au vin with mashed potatoes using the new grill. Yummy!

Also included is a delicious heirloom tomato. It looks like we will not starve :o)

Get ready for some MAJOR demolition in my next post.

No Turning Back Now

We are committed. Or, maybe I need to say 'we SHOULD be committed!'. The Baker Stone guys came Monday and removed the stone from the front of the house. It was amazing how quickly the whole thing happened. An example of how having the right tools for the job, and some really strong guys, really makes a difference. They had all of the stone removed by lunch time. Here are a few photos of the process.

This is Bubby. He was the first of the crew to arrive. This man can perform magic with a hammer and chisel.

When Sam (the head of the crew in the white shirt) and the others arrived, things moved along really quickly.

Eventually, the guys brought out the big guns using a small hand held jack hammer to remove the more difficult stones. The sound and vibration in the house sent the cats right under the bed to take cover..........and this is only the beginning! We found it truly amazing how these guys pick up these stones like they are a bag of groceries. We are glad to let them do this part of the job.

All of the stone is being stacked on pallets in the front yard. It will all be reused to extend the height of the chimney and added with some new stone to build the new porch.

The house is now naked on the front and of course it will now RAIN!!!!! I will be covering the exposed part of the house with plastic by Thursday morning. Starting next week the house will lose an arm - the old garage. stay tuned for that. We cannot wait for that old porch to be gone too!

This weekend we will lose our kitchen for about 4 months. Everything will be moved to the basement, including the fridge. What an adventure!

The Big Shift

Definition: Shift (Oxford English Dictionary) Only appropriate definitions shown.

1. A movement to do something, a beginning 7a. Hist. A woman’s loose-fitting undergarment, orig. worn also by men; a slip, a chamise b. A woman’s loose straight unwaisted dress 9. A group of people working for a specific period of time, usu. One equivalent to a days work; a period worked by such a group of people 11. The action or an instance of shifting; a transfer, a transition; (a) change, a move. And the definitions go on and on and on and on…………

It's time to catch all of you up on what has been happening with our house project for the last couple of weeks. As you can tell from the title of this post, there has been a lot of moving going on and some of it while wearing a dress :o) Lets just clear all of that up right now.

Here are photos of us shifting our things for storage:

The guest room is now the storage room

The dining room gate-leg table has now been moved into Rowan's office as our temporary eating space. You can see we have also moved many of our plants here too. We think it makes a nice cozy little eating spot where we can look out over the backyard and try to forget about the chaos taking place just outside this room.

We have also moved all of the irises and lillies from the front beds of the house. We are storing them in big containers in the backyard during the construction.

Now that shifting should not be confused with this shifting:

I know you must be laughing right now :o) but I do wear my grandmother's old shift sometimes while I am packing (I have even been seen wearing it out front when I am grilling which makes Rowan run and hide). It has been so bloody hot here the last 2 weeks (mid 90's to over 100) that it is the coolest thing I can wear. Gram would be so proud of me!

Here are some photos of what some of the remodel will look like. We have taken masking tape and drawn out on the walls where the entry for the new dining room will be, and where the french doors to the new porch will be. You just need to visualize.

Part of the dining room entry is shown below (that whole wall will be knocked out). Shelves will be added in the rectangle on the left. The window will go away and that wall knocked out too.

The blue tape is the new french doors that will open out to the new stone porch. The existing front door will go away and be moved to the far right end of the orange room in the previous photo. The ceilings will also be removed and we will have new vaulted ceilings with skylights.

And of course the cats have been a tremendous help!

We are not only shifting the contents of our house, but also food and all the ingredients that go along with making it. We have packed away most of the kitchen utensils and cooking pots, etc. except for the basics. We will spend this last week of having our kitchen appliances (stove/oven) by cooking up a storm and filling the freezer with staples to get us through the next few months until we have our kitchen back. We will be cooking by microwave, toaster oven and a camp stove starting Sept. 7 in our temporary kitchen in the basement. We have also moved the gas grill to the back garage so we can do the grilling in the back yard. So, here are a few photos of what is being cooked up for storage in the freezer.

Goolash. A fall and winter staple in our house. My mom's delicious recipe.

Grandmas shift is also frequently found at the butchers block in the kitchen. Still witnessing delicious things being made in the kitchen.

The mince ingredients for shepherd's pie.

And, you just must see the most FABULOUS brandy wine tomato from our garden. A gift from the heavens. Nothing like a fresh sliced tomato to make our hearts go a-pitter-patter. DELICIOUS! Most of our garden was sacrificed last weekend due to construction preparation, so we have pickled all of the beets, pulled all of the sweet candy onions and yanked most of the tomato plants.

Look for update from the stone removal on the front of the house tomorrow :o)