Laurie's World

So it has been a few days since I updated y’all…but there has been some action around here!

The windows were delivered on Tuesday June 12th YEAH! Oddly enough 25 windows does not look like as many as I thought it would. I had them put them in the garage (which made me popular with the young pup who had to haul them from the street up to the garage (BUT what do I care??). They had the most ginormous truck that they figured they should not pull up onto the driveway…Not my problem–but given the punks we had in the ‘hood over the weekend that broke into all the cars…I was NOT going to have my windows sitting outside. I am not that interested in tempting fate!

The guys came on Wednesday to start the tear off of the siding…by the end of the day, some rather unpleasant information became apparent. Our house has suffered the much dreaded impact of the defective LP siding…the plywood (and floor joists on one) are rotting! It is down at the bottom of the chimneys on both sides…For the most part the Celotex (foam like sheet insulation) that is between the siding and the plywood has actually been a savior in terms of keeping the rotten siding from infecting the plywood. BUT the chimneys were not Celotexed…therefore direct contact…Therefore rotten.

Here are some pictures…So a couple things come to mind as I ponder this situation. One is, thank goodness we decided to reside the whole house…as if we had just gone up to the chimneys (logical break point had we decided to just side the addition), we would not have discovered this and it would have been much much worse. The other is that folks with LP siding (ie my neighbors) really need to look into the condition of their siding to see if they have similar problems. I refuse to believe that we are the most unlucky people on the planet and that we are the only ones with this problem…possible, but highly unlikely!The siding in some places is just crumbling as they remove it…

This is the East side of the house (street side)–it has the rotted through the joists on this side–nothing that time and money can’t fix though

This is the West side of the house–just need to replace the plywood…it has not gone further than that…

Thursday was more stripping (SIDING!)I did go pick up the hood liner and blower parts from Fredericks warehouse for the ventilation for over the range. I also worked Lowes over for a good price on the dishwasher I wanted…they price match the best deal I find, plus they have a rebate for free delivery and installation, PLUS I was able to use scrips cards that I bought from Rachael’s gym, so I got another 4% back–WAHOO! Aren’t I doing a GREAT job of saving money on this reno–Troy–no comments please if you are reading this!

So I wake up Friday morning–Today–to pouring rain! Hmmm–we will see what these siding guys are made of today! OK…They are going to do windows they tell me–sounds GREAT! I am excited to have LIGHT…They start in the corner..my favourite corner

This looks so easy–I could do this!!

And here is the “sunroom”…

All this done by 9:45am and then they were gone…in wait until sunnier (or at least less wet) days.

Oh Yeah…and the tax assessor came by to “assess” how much “value” we are adding (SIGH)

Hmmm…Ok three updates…the first, mostly because I am looking for sympathy…H2O off again all day today! Now that it is back on, the kids are weirded out about the water being green (why green?? you ask??–dunno–it has something to do with the new pipes)

Secondly, Javier discovered my real name…oh well…it was fun while it lasted!!

and

for those who have been wondering…my foot is almost betterThis last update is mostly for my Mommy

Well…such sad news…Lizard (formerly known to his human owners as Billy Joe John Bing Mack Rob (or something like that)…has run away.

Diane…I sincerely hope also, that you do not wake up one morning to be staring into his face either…Jackie told me what your comments were when he escaped

Monday was a day off around here and Tuesday was mostly about invisible (to me anyway) work. The roofing supply company came by to pick up the extra material off the roof (which is nice–as now it looks like it is finished–other than the roofer needs to come back to take the supply braces off). Called the cabinet company to make my changes to the cabinet design–YIKES! That made me popular!! Went through the big old ToDo list that we created over the weekend with Drew. Oh yeah…we have another Andrew on site…So that has really encouraged me to get with the "Drew" and "Andrew" thing! So Andrew…is the packer/chief shop vaccer I think…must be the lowest guy on the totem poleBut he seems happy enough…

I was supposed to be getting the container back on Tuesday to (re)move Marjorie (that is what we have named our pile of garbage–that seems to have taken on a life of its own–SIGH). But it would appear that Thursday is the day now…Andrew is going to be the chief dumpster loader too…so he needs to save up his energy for that! I should get a pix of that pile…IT IS MASSIVE! and blue (tarp)

Javier was here for most of the day on Tues…water was off…so that was fun (sarcasm intended)…but he got the master bath plumbing rerouted, water installed to the corner sink as well as the Viking fridge…maybe the pot filler tap too…I have to check on that though…He says he will be here on Wed from 8-8…must be tired of us alreadyHe calls me Rachael…which is kinda funny…but I have not corrected him as I have always wanted to know what it would be like to be Rachael (and this may be the closest I ever get)

They took out the pony wall at the front door…which oddly enough, I waffled on over the weekend…BUT I am so glad i did it! WOW!

Here are some pictures from Wed am…several guys here…Andrew, Doug, Drew, Guy X (dunno his name)…Lets call him pony tail guy maybe…

Small plug for life cerealWe have been eating a little cereal these days

Here is Jackie’s room with all the edges cleaned up around the dormer and the floor is built up…

Shop vac boy did a good job eh?

Here is Doug finishing up the framing for the closet extension and the mudroom area…

Small glimpse of Javier here…tying in the venting for the plumbing

Here is the "wall" between the old dining room and the living room…see our little makeshift kitchen…NICE EH??

This is the pass through to the family room…this has been done since last week when I was gone, but i forgot to put up a picture of it. Doesn’t look like much, but it is hard to get a gopod picture as i can not get back far enought to make it look right

My sincere apologies to my loyal fans who have been checking in daily only to be disappointed to see no new blog entries. It is NOT that things have not been happening…it has merely been a result of my inability to manage my time effectively enough to get an entry done. So now I will post all the activity…including pictures that I took up until Sat June 2nd…

My adventures at Camp Casey pale in comparison to what was going on here (Thanks to Mr. Troy for doing such a great job of running the show while I was gone) The walls and cabinets in the kitchen are totally gone and all the beam work is complete…they have started to frame in the mud room area and framed in the wall between the living room and (old) dining room.

On Sat, there was a big crew here and the major accomplishments were that they worked on the dormers in the girl’s rooms and got the front entry moved out and completely framed in. Most of the other stuff they were working on is not big visability stuff (like hangers and strapping etc). I am amazed at the front entry though. That makes even more of a difference than i thought it would. The front of the house is SO different! The pictures do not even really capture it…

Here are how the dormers have been knocked out…Jackie first and then Rachael’s room

Rachael’s dormer has not been completely cut out yet…but I thought this picture of Doug perched up there was good…so I threw it in. I will get one of Racahel’s finished product posted soon.

Javier (the plumber) was here on Sat also…got the corner sink and dishwasher venting and waste done as well as the small fridge water plumbing done. He worked a bunch on the crawl space work also…Won’t be back until Tuesday now…He thinks he will work Tues, Wed and Thurs to get all the plumbing done and ready for inspection on Friday.

Got Jeff and his pal coming on the next two weekends to do the electrical…WAHOO! Note to self to remember to pull those permits…

The highlight of the day however was…(now this is a little reward for those of you who have read through this whole thing)…Dion found a lizard (or some such thing) on Friday and it has become the mascot among the neighborhod children for this Reno. Jackie and her friends have created a nice home, as naturalized as possible, and have spent the entire day (SAT) playing with it…it is probably scared to death…and heaven forbid it be a boy as he has a bright pink rubbermaid tub as its home…

Bye Bye walls…They demo’d more in the kitchen today…took out the wall completely that had the micro/oven on it as well as the cabinets…it has been open for a while now, with just the framing left there…but we are officially open now…

They are demoing the last of the wood flooring, and working on the dormers, they finished framing out the entrance and building the roof over the porch so it can be roofed…I have lost track of everything that they have done here today.

Jeff has been here also and is getting all the heating extended and switched around…

This is what the roof looks like also…The only part left for it is the ridge cap and the bit over the porch…and to return all the extra shingles (they need to bring the same conveyor belt back to get it all down that they used to get it up there…)

Troy and I spent Saturday and Sunday removing the oak hardwood flooring on the main floor…we started in the dining room and that is as far as we got on Saturday…Sunday we started in on the kitchen…I stepped on a nail quite early (like in the first five minutes), but carried on anyway…’cuz I am tough like that!

We ended up with 2 huge piles of wood strips full of nails in the kitchen…my plan is to have the kids haul it all out to the fire pit so we can burn it. Sounds mean doesn’t it!!

I have offered to any neighbors that would like some strips to replace any of their flooring that may have been damaged etc over the years…but it became clear to me that it was going to take me considerably more time to remove this floor if I was to be trying to remove it without damaging it…so I stopped trying too hard and just went for it…there are still lots of pieces actually, and I have 2 neighbors who would like some…so that is good! I am so happy to recycle as much of this house as I can…

By the evening…it was painfully clear that my foot is now infected…swollen and red…extremely sore…Blah blah blah…but it did not stop me from attending the evening festivities at Vicki’s

Not to worry (especially you Mom)…I awoke this morning with my foot feeling much better…it takes more than a little flooring cleat to take this good strong canadian girl downIt is still sore and swollen and red, but much better which says to me that I am winning the war…the body is an amazing thing! I can walk and everything and in fact was able to get a whole bunch of weeding in the yard done…So the armchair doctor (that is me) says I am good to go…

Here are some pictures of my worker bees…

It took these five young industrious children about 45 minutes to do what would have taken me all day…so I owe them!

No really…I do owe them…(money talks!)

We got about half the flooring out…so there will be more work, for any young interested parties!!

I am going to Camp Casey with Rachael on Wednesday am and we will not be back until Friday night…so if I do not get a post up tomorrow, they you won’t hear from me again until the weekend. I will try to remember to get a photo of our GORGEOUS new roof in the morning and post it so you can see…It looks amazing (to me anyway–and all the neighbors that have called and come by to weigh in). We are very happy…It did rain here on Saturday night and we had major leaking…but that is to be expected when you have a heavy rain and open holes in the roof…no harm no foul though.

Friday May25th…The day of the roof!!

Drew, Doug and crew showed up at 6:57am today. They have an inspection scheduled for today and they are not ready

So they have lots to do…they are getting the shear inspection as well as roof nail inspection (a King County special inspection)

The 3 windows from the old kitchen eating area are going, going,gone…Got some good action shots of the guys…

They worked fast and furious and the inspection went great…all good!!

So basically, all the exterior framing is done and signed off…

So once the inpector came and went…these guys cleaned up and took off and left the roofers to do their thing! Which was WOW! They finished up with the tear off…

They had to tear off the old roof over the porch to redo it…

The only thing still standing that looks familiar about this yard is my flowers in the front yard!

This is what the house looks like from the side now…You can see our covered BBQ porch area. We are planning on planting some fast growing privacy trees aslong this side once the reno is complete…

The next thing to happen was the delivery of the roofing materials…I had no idea how this was going to happen, but as it happens…very cool! They have this conveyer belt that they flip over from the back of their truck and they just send each bundle up one at a time…it took over 3 hours to put all this up there…

So they got it all up there and said…See you tomorrow at 8am

So things went underground todayWell, undercrawl really!

Jeff and his helper, Brandon, got working on the gas…we have to upgrade the size of all the gas lines in the house to accomodate the "new load". Our old cooktop was electric and we are also running another gas line out to the BBQ patio for the smoker, so we needed more gas (apparently).

So no photos of that as I thought it may seem "stalker like" to follow them down into the crawl space and take pictues of what they were doing.

BUT…I do have photos of the work that was done on the roof…Drew’s roofing crew was here today…6 guys, and they got the whole back of the house stripped, sheeted and papered…in less than 4 hours! WOW! They will be back today to do the front (and sides)…as you can see our little dormers have roofs now…

Other than working on the roof (the plan was to get as much sheeted as possible), they took out the inside wall that used to have the patio door in it. It sure opens up that space!! BUT they had to cover the window openings, so that feels weird now and makes the room seem smaller than it does with windows.

Below is what it looks like…

Sorry yesterday’s post was not up…I forgot to hit "publish"—thankfully I had saved it…so it is up there now…

So today was a WOW!! day…It poured rain all yesterday–and I mean POURED…and I got up this morning and guess what?? It was still raining

I went down to take Brooklyn to the bus stop this morning and I ran into Drew at the turn off by the bus stop…he said something about maybe just having the guys load up the dumpster and that would be all due to the weather. I suggested doing the rest of the interior demo…well, he thought that was a great idea and he came right down and got them going on that…So I did take some pictures before they got here and this is what it looked like this morning…

See…nice and clean….

A few walls here and there….

My biggest problem was a few leaks…

Then Shazam!! I am glad I was here to see it this time…the first bit of demo happened when I was not here, I just came home and it was all cleaned up and who was to know how it all went down. I have a much better idea now!

Check out my NEW Pendant lightingMaybe I could save Troy some money and recylcle these…Hahahaha

Doug and Dion were trying to hide from my camera…but I caught them a couple of times here and there…

No more drywall on the ceilings…no more drywall on the walls…no more pantry, no more oven…

And here is the view from the front door…hard to see how GREAT it is through the plastic–but the goal was to have a view all the way through the house from the front to the back when you come in the front door…So I am really excited with how this is turning out…

We have a gas/HVAC guy (JEFF) coming to start this week…we have to get our gas meter upgraded…but he has lots to do before that is required. We are NOT having the company I spoke of before (Troy Services) do our plumbing/electricity etc…they ended up being overpriced and a little bit unreliable (late and no show)…so we moved onto some folks that Drew has recommended….We will see how it goes i guess. A drywaller came by around supper time today (Bryan) to work up a quote for replacing and repairing the drywall…he will need to come back in a week or so to get better measurements…A plumber and an electrician that Drew knows are coming by tomorrow and Wednesday respectively to give us bids…

Drew thinks they are still going to be done here by Friday…we will see I guess