Gobble Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving!!  Even though we're not moved into our house quite yet (we originally thought we might be in by Thanksgiving), Ryan and I still have a lot to be thankful for.  We'll be spending the holiday with lots of family and friends, eating lots of turkey, watching some football, and enjoying a couple alcoholic beverages. 

We'll also be heading out to cut down Christmas trees with the Murray family tomorrow and heading up to Smicksburg, PA on Saturday to pick up the rest of our kitchen cabinets from our cabinet maker Enos Byler.  Should be a great long weekend and we hope the same for you!

The littlest bit of progress make us happy!

You have probably noticed our lack of posts.  That is mainly because there was not a lot of progress to report.  The weather is getting colder, which is slowing down the construction and the fact that we both have full time jobs isn't helping our progress.  Over the last couple weeks we have gotten a roof on our porch, which is very exciting!  Ryan and Michael used the ditch witch to dig trenches for our down spouts and place our underground electrical wire (which makes us the first house on Crystal Drive to have our electrical line run underground as opposed to string across the yard and attach to the house).  It's the little things that make us happy!

Our plumbers have been working very hard and are almost finished with running new PVC pipes throughout the house.  I never thought I would be in love with PVC, but it means that we're that much closer to me taking a shower in our new house, so I'm infatuated with PVC!   Our electrician, Doug, who is a good friend of Michael and Sherry's has started wiring the house.  After we pulled out all of the old wiring over the summer, Doug has his hands full! 

We still have a lot of work ahead of us....

The boards criss crossing along the front of the porch will be replaced by 10 white posts and railings!

I LOVE our porch!!

Ryan digging the trench for our down spouts

Michael operating the ditch witch

The ditch witch may get named as one of my favorite tools for the mere fact that it does the digging for you in half the time!

Our beautiful down spouts!

Our new windows!  Steve, our builder, installed the windows this week, so hopefully we'll stop getting leaves and acorns blowing into our house.

We have a porch!

On Saturday our concrete guys came and poured our front porch floor!  It took about 2 hours to pour it and 4 hours for the guys to make it look beautiful!  We can't wait until next week when our framers come back to frame the porch roof.

Hopefully the neighbors won't hate us too much as we started pouring concrete at 8am on Saturday!

Notice the amount of rebar used to reinforce the concrete.  PJ recommended we go commercial strength, so this porch is going anywhere anytime soon.  

The concrete crew starting to smooth out the stairs leading down to the driveway.

Starting to look like a porch!

It's so smooth after they level it

Ryan and Michael installed our bilco doors that will lead into the basement and provide us with a second exit (required by code).  After some paint and landscaping we hope they won't stick out as much :)

The finished project!

 

Finished steps.  We will also have steps coming off the front of the porch with a path to the street.

Just a little view of the woods a half a block from our house! 

Croix especially loves the woods!  Happy Fall!

It's starting to look like a house!

We apologize for the delay in updating our blog!  Life has been a little crazy, but our renovation still continues to move forward.  The framers finished framing the rooms on the second floor and moved around walls on the first floor.  When you walk in the house you get a feel for how everything will look when it's complete!  We wish you could see it in person, our pictures don't do it justice.

Michael dug our footers for our front porch last weekend and we experienced some heavy rain during the week.  Good thing Michael and I built a structure to house the trench, which kept it dry as bone!!  The guys came and poured the concrete footers on Friday. 

Ryan traveled the past two weeks for work and we met up in Atlanta last weekend for Jenn and Kevin's wedding!!

Congratulations Jenn and Kevin on your incredible day!!  We were so happy to be able to celebrate your special day and to see our Atlanta crew!!  We love you both!

A view of the back addition, which will be half kitchen/half living room.  The big windows will bring in plenty of light!

Standing in the kitchen, you can see the family room straight ahead and the vaulted ceilings in the addition.  You also might have noticed that we switched the direction of the stairs. 

A view of the kitchen/mud area.  The door that's covered with plywood in the middle of the picture is the door into the garage from the kitchen

View of the family room and the office to the right off of the family room

The master suite, his and her closets against the right wall

Another view of the master suite, looking at the entrance into the master bath

Master bath with our tub already placed in the deck!!  Our standing shower is to the right of the tub.

Bedroom #2 - We are planning on this being a nursery whenever the kids start coming (no that is not a hint, let's get the house done first)

Bedroom #3

Bath #2 on the second floor, laundry room is the room to the right of this picture  - Lindsay is super excited to have a second floor laundry room

View of the hallway standing in bedroom #3 at the end of the house

View of the stairs after they were flipped.  You now walk down to the basement from the front of the house and upstairs from the back of the house.

A view of what you see when you walk through the front door.  We removed part of the floor on the second floor, so you can you get the feel of a vaulted ceiling when we enter the house. 

Michael digging the trench for our porch footers.  He's getting really good at (and having just a little bit of fun) operating the diggers!

It took Michael and Lindsay 3 hours to build this rain structure around the house to protect the trench from the rain.  It was very intense and did its job!

Concrete being poured for the porch footer!  The porch will run along almost the entire length of the house and wrap around the north side of the house.  It should really add some character to the front of the house.

Trench for the porch foundation, THANK YOU Michael!

These 2 guys had the footers poured in under 30 minutes!  Impressive!

 

 

Our new roof!

The end of Labor Day weekend left us without a roof, as you could tell from our previous post.  Since we are replacing the ENTIRE roof, we were able to lift the roof a couple of feet and push the back wall of the house up so that we'll have 8 foot tall walls across the back of the second floor.  This allowed for additional square footage.  We also doubled the size of each of the three dormers along the front of the house.  It took our framing team a week and a half to frame our new roof.  The weather cooperated for the most part and we only had a couple nights of rain.  If you can imagine, the rain poured through the second floor, the first floor and down to the basement.  We had a bit of damage control inside the house, but the framers were not concerned.

Before and After - It is amazing how fast a roof can be replaced!!  Who knew?!

View from the back of the house.  You can see how we pushed up the wall along the back of the house to add square footage instead of maintaining the sloped roof along the back.  They still have to cut out our second floor windows because we ended up switching around the floor plan with the change in the roof.

Another view from the back of the house/garage (which is on the left hand side) 

A view from inside the back addition at the vaulted ceiling above the kitchen!

Another view from the back addition.  You can see the how the ceiling will be vaulted to give the room a nice open and airy feel.

One end of the second floor to the other end.  Obviously no interior walls have been framed. 

Another view of the second floor

Ryan looking out our hallway dormer

Our master bedroom...takes a little imagination to see it at this point

New roof and new floor, all in only 6 days!

We'll close with 2 points of big news:
1.  Lindsay recently got her dream job as a Nurse in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh!  After working extremely hard on her nursing education for the last 3 years (including prerequisites), Lindsay couldn't be happier to get a job working at a such a premier facility with a patient population that she is very passionate about.  She is extremely excited and will be starting in mid-October.

2.  Sadly, this week marks Ryan's last week of working on the house full time before he goes back to work at his regular job at Deloitte full time.  Working on the house all summer has been many things - fun, exhausting, frustrating, painful (I've never had so many bumps and bruises on a continuous basis) a big learning experience, and very rewarding.  Traveling all week and working on the house only on the weekends is going to be tough, but we'll make it happen.  Hoping to move in by Thanksgiving, but this whole 'real job' thing isn't helping things...