Laurie's World

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

I went down and got some pictures…It is raining out at the moment, so I have not gone out to get a shot of the back…That may have to wait

So I asked them to board up the openings (windows etc) for the weekend due to the rain and wind we were expecting…(and that did actually arrive!) so it looks a little different…

And here is proof that Jackie still exists…she is standing right under where the 2 windows are above the corner "sink"

The roof trusses are almost complete…The company that Drew got the trusses from (Woodinville Lumber) shorted the package by one truss, so they could not finish the hip on the BBQ porch area, but that will get finished next week. They were however able to get most up and plywood up there to support the tarp in the rain (YEAH!!)

Rachael and Jackie’s dormers are taking shape…they have floors and walls…They did not cut the openings into their rooms yet as it would have been a major source of leaks over the weekend

This is Jackie’s…

And this is Rachael’s…

They have cut out more of the walls and the ceiling…the space is feeling very open right now…all that is left on the wall that used to be between the kitchen and the dining room is the pocket door and some plumbing

I am standing in the old dining room looking into the old eating nook here in this pix below. Where those windows are now will be the french doors opening onto the patio…Hard to believe that piece of black Celotex you can see in the photo used to be the outside of the house

For anyone who is interested…check out May 15th and 16th…I put the pictures that belong there in to show how they got to where they are today.

I have lots to show you about what happened here on Friday…but I will post that later today after I get the pictures ready

Just a side note for my morning…Back on the 14th when I said I thought the guys did not come until 9am because they would not want to disturb us in the house so early…I was clearly wrong bcz they were here at 6:56am this morning and had no qualms about starting up their power tools.

I gave this the

I will update again tonight…Rachael has a floor in her dormer already this morning

I give this the

There will be a dumpster (from the Hungry Buzzard–isn’t that clever??) arriving today sometime between 7 and 11…this is good bcz the MOUNTAIN of debris in the yard is turning into a mountain range (aren’t I witty??)

I am so sorry that I have not posted anything of any value in several days…I know i am going to lose my faithful following if I do not keep you entertained

(The broken heart was Jackie’s idea)

On a fluke, I got my camera to work and so I snapped some pictures to show y’all what it looks like today. I do have some pictures of all the shoring etc that was up for the last few days and I will put those into their spots when I figure out how to get them off Vicki’s camera (that she so kindly lent me in my time of need).

So there has been a lot of demo (to say the least). The steel beam is in and unfortunately I missed the install of that (Troy and I both did as we were not home when the crane came to lift it up onto its supports). But nonetheless it was up there when we came home Tuesday night. They are working frantically on getting the roof up and sheeted now as it is supposed to rain here on Saturday and Sunday (FIGURES)

They have started to install the roof trusses over the kitchen…

And the shoring is out now that the steel beam is completlely installed. So far so good on it doing it doing its job…the 2nd story is staying outIt sue helps make the space feel wide open…

The steel beam is completely flush with the ceiling, so there will be no way to know it is in there once the ceiling is redrywalled. They cut the drywall way back to get good access to the area. They told me they used 38 bolts to attach the beam…sounds reasonable!!! Soon all the ceiling will be gone, but they are only demo’ing as much as they need to as they go along…