Half a weekend

Saturday was a bust so we did some appliance shopping and measured out our new kitchen. We're pretty much set on what appliances we're going to order and the layout of the kitchen.

Sunday we moved the broken up driveway to where the new patio will be. We'll fill in the dirt and smooth out the area in the coming weeks. We'll probably have a small foot or so retaining wall on the edge of the patio and maybe a step coming out of the french doors. The old asphalt will just help fill in the area before we compact the soil and prep for the patio. We still don't have the pavers or stone picked out, but we have a general idea of the patio layout. We also cleaned out the shed and built some shelves in the back to help keep it better organized.

Front porch

They started the framing for our front porch today. Its not much to look at now, but we're one step closer to start using the front door again.

We have a roof

This turned out to be a very productive construction day. The roof is coming along nicely. They're actually still working right now and I suspect they'll be going until dark.

The roof is not very steep so you can barely see it from the street or yard. I also threw in one more gratuitous view of our new doors plus the anatomy of a 1950's brick and masonry block exterior wall. I guess it must have been cheaper back then, but man that must have been a lot of work to build! It definitely looks like a lot of work to take down.

Doors installed

The patio doors were installed today. They installed them backwards, but at least they're installed. They're supposed to be outswing doors so they'll flip them around so the doors open to the outside. Simple fix. They look great though.

The pocket for the steel beam is ready to go for the kitchen, but they're starting on the roofing to knock as much of that out as they can today and tomorrow. The steel beam isn't needed at the moment since we have two temporary walls in its place.

More windows

All of the new windows were installed. Now we finally have a little more space in the house since they were taking up a big portion of the dining room and basement. All of our windows are from Home Depot and we're very impressed with them for the price. We saved a ton of money going with all vinyl and they look great. Plus there's only a few things they're intended to do and so far they all seem to be doing it just as well as the ones triple the price.

They still have to put in the two french doors, but they wanted to get the beam installed in the new addition and finish taking down the old exterior wall. Its a beautiful day here in Arlington to get some work done.

Window Time

The house is starting to take shape. The windows are going in upstairs and in the new addition. Roof and front porch should be under way by the weekend. We had some more rain this week, but the next 2 days look nice so hopefully big changes by the weekend.

We ordered the siding yesterday so that might take a couple weeks to get here, but we have plenty to do around the house to keep us busy. We ended up going with Certainteed Main Street double 5 inch clapboard vinyl siding in Flagstone color. Its a little gray-blue/slate looking so not the dark gray we wanted exactly, but a good looking color. Can't wait to see it on the house.

Busy weekend, Part Two

One of the old and drafty windows that we replaced on Saturday...

And the other old and drafty window that was also replaced...

And this is Mouse, one of the particularly unhelpful cats.  The two windows that we replaced this weekend were in the second bedroom, a.k.a. the kitty room.  Mouse likes to spend her time like this...

As you might imagine, it's very warm and comfortable under the covers on the bed.  In order to replace the windows, however, we had to move the bed out of their bedroom.  The cats did not approve of this development in the least and expressed their displeasure by breaking out of their room last night and running (loudly) around the house in the wee hours of the morning.  The message has been received and we will work on finishing the interior trim and returning their bedroom to its normal state tonight or tomorrow.  There can be no peace without happy cats.