5 Days...

It's been very rainy here for the past week, it seems. But still, work is going on at the house. I stopped by on my lunch break today because I hadn't been down there to talk with the contractors since Tuesday, my last day off. After work, I managed to take a few pictures.

Walking in, I customarily turned to my right to see the back yard more clearly. Nothing has really been done here, but the contractors gently encouraged the back door on what was the screened-in porch to give up the fight. And this gave a more cohesive view out of the back of the house.
Also see how the wall on the left bumps out about two feet? Then bumps out again? That's the original layout of this wall, I chose to use it to my advantage in moving the bedroom wall out in the kitchen, where this will not be noticeable, once its all sheet-rocked.

This picture seems a little dark, but the flash was on. A weird play of natural light verses the flash happens in the great room, as it is now. You can make out the outline (the dark wood) of the doorway into the kitchen, where through it, you can see the outline of the back door (new wood) in the kitchen. See how this will beckon you outside?

Just to the right of the doorways, you can see the side profile of the wall they moved out into the kitchen from the bedroom. This wall is fully in the kitchen--- it is behind the bump out I mentioned earlier. The other new wall you see to the right is the one with the doorways to the bathroom and utility rooms off of the dining area, the first bump out.

I had to squirrel across the exposed floor joists again in the kitchen to get this shot. It's a front on view of the moved bedroom wall, the old one behind it having been removed today.

Looking down, you can see the joists reattached to what was the bowed out wall, but I was trying to show just how much they jacked up the house and leveled it here...

I didn't have a measuring tape but found one of the contractor's cups to place on the 4x4 along the bottom. This was the P.O.'s previous attempt to acknowledge the problem of the unattached joists and bowed out wall. But this angle still isn't right.

Knowing how big the cup is, you can maybe better estimate the difference in where the floor was and where it is now. But maybe not. The cup is sitting on the level where the joists use to rest. And now they have been lifted almost an entire Styrofoam cup. Not the best tool to use, but I had to use what I had and I'm not MacGyver.

Back to the walls, then. This is the other side of the bedroom wall. These are small rooms with high ceilings, but its hard to capture them in pictures. The space in person seems bigger.

They did a lot of smaller things today, in addition to jacking up and leveling the opposite side of the house, too. For instance, they replaced the 4x4 that was in this corner with an old one, taken from another wall that was removed.

They also began rebuilding this wall in the bathroom/laundry area. Not big exciting changes to most, but a small succession of big deals to me.

I stayed there in the quiet house for a long time after I took these pictures, contemplating the new spaces, what they would look like finished, and what my life would be like living here. I spent a lot of time looking out back into the yard, watching it rain and just as much time imagining the bathroom, utility room, closet, and kitchen areas. I kind of figured out where appliances would go and along what walls the furniture would fit in other rooms. I envisioned a new back porch on the house and a fence in the backyard. I played around with where I wanted light fixtures...

It was very peaceful today, to me. I was able to touch the progress, to stand in the spaces that I had only imagined two years ago when the house was two apartments. It was all so real to me, so tangible, so within reach and nearer to completion. It was all very satisfying and I felt like everything so far, all the waiting and worrying and budgeting, has been worth it. Today, for the first time, standing in the sawdust, I saw not my house, but my home.