New siding

Our siding arrived first thing this morning. It's overcast here today so it's a little hard to see the color. It's kind of bluish gray. The color is flagstone by Certainteed in their Mainstreet line. Our corners and window trim are all white. Hopefully we'll see it go up next week. And sometime in the next few months we'll be painting the brick to match.

Midweek weekend

No window in the shower anymore, but at least the tile got to stay

You just can't get any more flush than that... really

If I had a before pic this would be more dramatic... but take my word for it - this wall was mostly dark green and black

I took today and tomorrow off to burn some vacation time and make use of the beautiful weather here in Arlington. The crew finished the beam install and took down the rest of the rear wall. Good news - when they removed the wall it didn't damage our only bathroom interior. You can see in the first pic that the wire lathe is untouched. On the other side of that is the bathtub tile. The window came out so we have a semi-outdoor shower now, but hopefully we've seen the last of freezing temps! The black piece at the bottom of the wall is actually our bathtub. You can see that it sits directly on the joists with no floor under it. from the basement you can see the whole tub. And now from the basement you can see the new dining room... not for long, though. When people say "they don't build things like they used to" I think... no... no they don't. These days we actually put floors in the house before we put shit on them. And we don't build walls 10 inches thick of brick and block with a 1/2" space for little pieces of wood nailing strips and no insulation. These days, things are built BETTER. Sorry old timers.

My projects for the day were spreading some bug-be-gone to start killing off the ants, crickets, grubs, etc that seem to outnumber our grass by the millions. This was step one of getting our lawn back. Next step is weed killer everywhere then scrape everything up. After that we'll throw down some new seed and fertilizer and by summer we should have a proper lawn. I also cut off half of the brick ledges on the old windows. An angle grinder with a diamond blade chewed right through the bricks. They are flush and ready for our picture frame trim. Using the diamond blade was a complete mess and I was covered in brick dust. Not my favorite thing to do, but it'll make the trim look nicer and make installing it a little bit easier.

Last thing I did was to power wash the side of the house that's in the shade the most. It was covered in mildew and moss. I should have taken a before because that power washer ate through everything and the brick looks great. Ready to paint in a few weeks after the rest of the house is power washed. This was equally messy as I was covered in mud and moss as well as being pretty well soaked. At least the weather was nice.

Not sure what tomorrow will bring, but our siding is being delivered on Friday so stay tuned to see some pics of the color we picked out.

UPDATE - Here's the before pic of the left side of our house covered in crud -  Gross

Big beam

The beam to hold up the new addition went in today. It did not look easy! No idea how much it weighed, but my guess is 800 pounds or so.

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.