Day 2 with the Flu Contractor

Since the weather was beautiful outside today, and no chance of rain in sight, I hardly expected to see the guys working on my house. I thought that last Friday was just because they had been rained out of their other jobs. And they would start, for real, in another week as the Flu Contractor stated. It turns out, I was happily mistaken.

After running a few errands downtown (and spotting some simple antique stained glass windows for sale in my price range--- mental note, mind you), I drove by my house to see if any any work was going on. I stopped in, met two of the guys I didn't meet Friday, and we discussed the placement of doors and the layout of the bathroom and utility room. But more on that, later. First, pictures!

Some of these came out dark. I'm not sure if my camera settings are wonky or if it was just that bright in the house, because there was a lot of daylight coming in with, what, the back wall of the house being open. This is the view from my front door. You can click it to make the picture more easily viewable.

A picture of the bathroom and its new floor substructure. A closet for the little bedroom will go in here, as well as the utility room. The space in the hallway behind will go into these rooms as well.

We're standing at the kitchen doorway, looking out into the backyard. The kitchen doorway and the backdoor of the house will be lined up sort of like this, so that when you walk into the Great Room, you can see straight out to the backyard. It's a visual trick to make the space seem larger. This has been a plan of mine all along, but not until today could you really see it. Of course, in the future, the backyard will beckon you outside, but that's a project for later.

I'm out on the gangplank over the floor joists admiring the new sill and beginnings of the new back wall in the kitchen. The Contractors will bulk up this wall once they build in the doorways, right now the studs are for weight support, only. Also, you may notice the slant in the wall. The whole back of the house will be jacked up and leveled once they reattach the bowed wall and finish the sill repair and replacement.

Same place on the gangplank, looking into the closet off the master bedroom. You can see daylight where they had to remove the siding in order to tear out the old sills and replace them.

Further back, standing in the Dining Area of the Great Room, looking at the kitchen wall that separates these areas. You see the doorway which will remain in place, open and cased. I'm contemplating having an opening in the wall to the left of the doorway as well, a little higher than counter height, and not a true bar. Just an open, cased window, with the sink below it on the opposite side... Just a thought. I don't want the space too open, and I want a break in room color that only walls can give, for the kitchen. But I want the two rooms to speak to one another and flow.

In the master bedroom now, looking at the replaced sills and new floor structure. That's going to be one big closet area. Again, the studs are just there to hold weight. We talked about door placement here, too. It will be cheated to the left, off center, with enough room left so that shelves can be on all walls, maximizing the storage space.

I'm out in the backyard, now, looking back towards the house. What is left of this whole screened-in porch will be demoed. It was an add-on, anyway. I want to put one back eventually, but won't have the money right away. But look at the view. See the double windows at the front of the house? The front door is just to the left of them, on a side wall. This is what I was talking about earlier, with having clean and clear sight lines.

This is part of the junk pile. Since I don't have a dumpster at the moment, I'm having them pile up debris. Click on this to see the extent of the rot and termite damage to the sills and other lumber that were the walls.

Here, I'm situated about where the back door will be in the kitchen. I guess this was my blog post theme of the day. Ignore the wire hanging down precariously. See the stud wall immediately in front of us? This is the wall I'm thinking about adding the open window pass through between the kitchen and Great Room, in addition to the open doorway.

I spoke with the contractors for a while about door placement, so from here they can finish the walls to where we talked about putting the doors. Also, with their expertise, we mapped out the layout of the bathroom and the utility room, and decided that these will in fact be two smaller rooms in the big bathroom area, both having doors in the dining area. The bathroom door will swing in and the utility room door will swing out. I'm thinking maybe frosted glass multi-paned french doors here, mimicking a set but opening into two different rooms. These will let in light, address privacy matters, and look a little dressier than standard doors. I saw some pine interior doors at Lowe's that I found to be reasonably priced, even if I have to frost the glass myself. The contractors are also going to leave enough space around all the doors in the house for wide trim, if it's in the budget down the road.

So that's the end of the second day. Much more will happen tomorrow. I'm very excited about the progress so far. Hopefully they'll be done by the end of this week. Next will be getting my demo contractor back in to finish work, clean up, and start framing the non-load bearing walls. Maybe even installing the new windows. Then I'll be setting up appointments with the air conditioner guy, the plumber, and the electrician.

I guess I'll have to schedule an inspection by City Hall, though, too.

But first I'll have to get the house secure again, by getting demo contractor in to replace siding and... oh. Hmm, I guess I need to buy a back door.