House Updates

I know you'd rather see pictures of Joseph's 1st birthday, but you're going to have to wait until I sort through all of them... there are definitely a lot!

Anyway, work continues at a good pace at the house. They should be done with the framing today or tomorrow. This morning the new steel beam was hoisted into place, and they had managed to get the crookedness out of the floors/walls to about a 1/4 inch or so, which is way better than the couple of inches the house sloped before. I haven't been down to see the result (we have horrible weather, sleeting and freezing rain alternating with snow) but hope to tonight. According to the contractor, we ended up with a lot of cracking in the first floor space when they raised the floors, which was to be expected. Hopefully it can all be patched, and it will feel nice to not have the slopes throughout the back half of the house anymore!

 The picture above was taken at the top of the staircase looking south into the master bedroom and closets.

 This picture is Joe's closet, with the shower behind it.

 A view from the bathroom window looking north. Both of the new windows have been installed, and hopefully the new vents will be installed shortly, replacing the leaky gable vents on the north and south end of the house.

 We ended up deciding to take out the ceiling in the master bedroom. As you can see, there are only 2x4s holding the ceiling up, which isn't to code and would result in a sloping ceiling down the road. A definite budget buster, but overall will provide for  a nice look, since if we're going to re-frame the space, we decided to put in a tray ceiling with perimeter lighting. The ceiling height in this room is already less than 8' so we anticipate the new ceiling will make the space feel bigger. Here's hoping, at least!

 This is the west wall of the small bedroom at the top of the stairs. You can see all of the new floor joists installed, along with a few rows of roof supports and blocking to address the crazy unevenness in the roof.

This is the other side of the north bedroom. The framed in spaces with headers are for a bank of built in drawers on the left, and the small closet we'll have tucked behind the door. From here you can also see into the master bedroom, and the landing at the top of the stairs. They've removed the old treads and will be rebuilding the top portion of the staircase.

Electrical work is up next, and they should be insulating the space at the end of next week. I met with the contractor today who seems to think we're still on track to be finished by the end of March.... at least the space will be insulated and sheetrock hung by the time we return from California!