Construction done!

In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been documenting the construction we just finished around the end of the year. If you want, you can step back one entry, or check it out from the beginning.

 

So, I’d count our construction mostly complete in December. There were a few things still on the punchlist, and some accountant-type stuff left to do, but we’re moving in and taking back our space.

 

I still need to get better pictures, but here’s what we got so far.

 

Garage:

 

 

Room:

 

 

Before and after!

 

 

We’re still doing stuff, so I might have more updates later!

 

 

Construction junction

I’m running out of "construction" titles. If you’re confused, check out the last installment, or start at the beginning.

 

By now, we’re in the middle of November, and we’re ready to finish this thing. First, we took the opportunity to change our entryway from a pale gray ceramic tile to a striking slate-look porcelain. We did this ourselves.

 

 

The sheetrock guy taped, textured, and primed the walls:

 

 

And we painted them ourselves.

 

 

As a part of this project, we chose to recarpet the whole house. The old carpets were the cheap "upgraded" stuff that came with the house 12 years ago. We picked out some fancy new space-age corn carpet or something. But first, we had to move all of our stuff out and rip up the old carpets. We really decluttered, donating a ton of stuff to Salvation Army and throwing a bunch away. It was also really strange living on bare floors for a couple of days.

 

 

The carpet guys came and laid down pads and carpet, and we’re done.

 

So that’s where we were at by mid-December. Furniture’s in, but we haven’t yet unpacked all the boxes.

 

Move on to see the final pictures.

 

Bet you thought this would be about construction…

And you’re right! ;)  If you missed what’s going on, step back, or start at the beginning.

 

It’s mid-October now. It seems like things are slowing down a bit, and we’re not seeing the guys as often. Still, we make progress.

 

Insulation goes in upstairs.

 

 

 

Sheetrock is loaded (doesn’t that look a little close to the car?!??).

 

 

Sheetrock goes up.

 

 

Insulation goes in downstairs, and we get a new garage door.

 

 

So…. in case you’re wondering, we got a new garage door because we widened the door opening, so it’d be easier to drive in and out. That just caused a heap of trouble. How? Let me tell you.

 

The third bay of the garage is a lean-to. That is, it’s tacked on to the side of the house, and isn’t part of its main structure. That’s how they easily did two- and three-car garages in this neighborhood: build the main house, then tack on an extra bay. Anyway, that didn’t matter to our inspector. When we widened the door, the inspector told our contractor that he had to reinforce the structure on the main walls of the rest of the house, even though they weren’t being touched by the construction, even though we had a couple of neighbors who widened theirs and didn’t have to do that. That cost us extra, for engineering, labor, and materials. We had a few choice names for the inspector after that.

 

Anyway, some sheetrock for the garage:

 

 

That little outcropping there is the fireplace and ductwork. There are some very specific rules about where you can put your direct vent exhaust pipe, and that’s where it ended up. It terminates over the deck on the other side of the wall.

 

Next up, walls and flooring!

 

Construction continues

The remodel is moving along as we move into October. Structure is done (go here to see the last entry, and here to start over), time to finish out the inside.

 

The electricians were by and did the electrical rough-in.

 

 

This is the upstairs bathroom. The new room extends past it, so the window was removed. Also, they had to move our skylight because of the slope of the new roof.

 

 

We did the painting ourselves to save a little money.

 

 

The garage gets its first visitor…

 

 

What it looks like looking down at the new part:

 

 

Gutters go on, and it’s starting to look like a real house.

 

 

Oh… see that satellite dish on the pergola? Yeah. That used to be on the corner of the house, but the guys moved it to a handmade "sled" for the duration of the project. We adjusted the dish by poking the sled with a stick. :D

 

Next, more inside stuff.

 

More construction

Just a few blog posts chronicling our remodel. We’re on to the roof now. This is about mid-September. To check out the last installment, go here. To start at the beginning, go here.

 

After finishing framing, they just threw a tarp over it.

 

 

Of course, we wanted something more substantial, so they added boards and tar paper.

 

 

And finally, the roof.

 

 

This is the upstairs room before the wall was broken through, from the closet area:

 

 

Siding and windows are in.

 

 

And the wall is down.

 

 

You can see where the closet in the old room was, too. This is being replaced by a walk-in in the new section.

 

 

It feels almost done, but there’s a lot left to do!

 

Onward to some inside stuff.

 

Construction time again

(Yay obscure Depeche Mode reference)

 

Construction is ongoing. To go back to the start, go here.

 

It’s early September. The foundation is laid, and it’s time for framing. It went up pretty quick, too. We went to work one day and came home to this:

 

 

At the same time, we had them raise the ceiling in the existing third bay of the garage, to make room for lifts. The mess of wires carry cable and power to the rest of the house and were exposed when they tore out the ceiling.

 

 

Incidentally, this is about the time that our contractor nearly killed himself. He was pulling out some roofing over the existing garage, and, when it gave way, he fell headfirst off the scaffold, resulting in a concussion and broken shoulder blade. Tough guy, though… after healing up some he was back on the job.

 

Up goes the second floor:

 

 

House wrap and siding:

 

 

Roof trusses:

 

 

And we’re ready for a roof.

 

 

At this point, the exterior wall of the upstairs bedroom is still intact. That’ll be removed after the structure is closed in.

 

Next: roofing.

 

Construction time

My, time flies. I haven’t updated in a heck of a long time. The only exciting thing to report is the remodel we’ve been doing on our house.

 

I intended to post progress and pictures as the work went on, but one week turned into two, two into a month, and finally here we are, 6 months later, with the project complete and no posts about it! (Lest you think this was a 6-month project, it wasn’t. It was a 2-month project that took 5 months; more if you count all the time it took to actually start construction. It shouldn’t be a surprise; that’s how remodels go, I guess.)

 

So, here’s the story. I’ll break it up into multiple posts just to keep things organized. :)

 

We’d been thinking about adding on to the house for years, laying it out in our backyard, dreaming, and not really doing much about it. Earlier this year, we decided it was time to pull the trigger. Starting with the basic cookie-cutter 4 bedroom house we’ve lived in for 12 years, we chose to add a bay to the 3 car garage (for the hubby’s toys) and extend one of the bedrooms above it (for my toys). This adds about 300 sq ft to the garage, and another 300 sq ft living space upstairs. Not too shabby!

 

We started this process in March, drawing it up, finding a contractor, and finally securing financing. That took a long time, and we broke ground in August. Here’s the first step of construction: excavating the area behind the garage. The new bay is to be built behind the existing 3rd bay of our garage.

 

 

Incidentally, during they process they found our water main. With the backhoe. Oops!

 

After the area was prepped, the foundation was poured.

 

 

Then, when that was done, they poured the floor of the garage and a little patio to run along the side of the garage. Apparently business was slow for the pumping company so they brought out this great big boom truck just for us. It was really weird seeing the boom arching over the house to make the pour.

 

 

The weather was great for most of this, but a storm rolled in while the cement was curing. Since the new bay is below grade (to accommodate a 10 ft ceiling while leaving the upstairs floor at the same level), we were left with a nice little pool. The new garage floor collected about 2 inches of water in a day or two.

 

 

Hubby sucked that all out with a wet-dry vac to avoid delaying framing. The vac was just a little 5-gallon. We figured there were about 300 gallons, so yeah. Fun times.

 

Next up, framing!

 

Finally.

So, my husband took a week off in late July to build a deck. A week, ha! He got most of the framing done that week (which was the hardest part anyway), leaving the rest to be finished on the evenings and weekends through August. He did most of the cutting and nailing, I did most of the staining. Thems a lot of wood. We still need to put some trim on, but I’m calling it done. Behold!

 

 

I really like the wrap-around steps. Really leaves it open to the yard. Now we just need to get some furniture. Unfortunately, summer’s almost out, and patio furniture is getting hard to find. But hey, at least we have a beautiful deck!

Bye bye blue

I took a week vacation with my husband two weeks ago. If you can call it a vacation. We took time off not to lounge around in the sun, but to toil and slave away painting our house. (Got a tan either way!) We returned to work last week, but we still had some trim to do. Finished that, on the front at least, and today I took some pictures.

 

We’d gotten a letter from the association that we needed to paint our trim, and we thought we might as well just change the color of the whole house. The blue it’s been for the last ten years since it was built has been, let’s just say, suboptimal. It was one of those colors that looked good on the little paint card you get and, well, way too blue when it’s all over the house. Now it’s dark gray with light gray trim ("Dark Ash" and "Pewter Mug" as Behr calls them).

 

So, here’s our house. Bye bye blue!

 

Front: before

 

Front: after

 

Detail: before

 

Detail: after

 

Note the new fixture. I can’t believe we didn’t change it before now. The old one was gross. We actually have some trim items and touchup to do in the back, but it’s mostly done. What a relief. It’s tons better now, no?

 

Edit: For those of you thinking I was saying bye bye to the blue in my hair, no, it’s still there! That blue is good. Baby puke blue all over the house is not. Sorry for the scare!