We heart Hardie board

The installation of our Hardie siding was a long and brutal process.  I would never rewind and do that again.  Saying that, I would never rewind and do anything over again.  Once is just plenty.  Now that it's over I am in love with our siding.  The color turned out fantastic.  Now, we just need to paint the existing brick a shade lighter to finish it off.  Oh, and of course recreate a yard because ours is nonexistent.  I'm surprised our neighbors haven't complained about our mud pit.

Michael, Ryan and Steve installed the heater in our garage.  Now we have heat in all areas of the house, which makes our working conditions much more pleasant.  We also got our garage door installed!!  Now, we just need a driveway :)

The back of our house with all of the new siding...looks great doesn't it?

Another view of the back of the house, we'll have a patio out here eventually

Our siding contractor (not to be named here, but if you want to know who not to use we'll tell you in person) was a nightmare to deal with, but he eventually got the job done (with copious supervision) and it ended up looking quite good.

We will be painting the brick a similar shade as the siding, probably one shade lighter though.  You can also see our new garage door here.

 

Our house from the front - finally starting to shape up and look like a real house again!

We're busy painting the interior now with lots of help.  Sherry and our future brother in law Steve have both helped out a ton with the painting.  Ryan also spent a good 20 hours painting last weekend, so we're at the point where we're getting close to be done with painting.  Stay tuned for pictures soon.

It's 2011 and the construction continues....

We hope everyone had a fabulous holiday.  Ours was filled with celebrating, eating, and of course working on the house.  It has been so long since our last update and that is primarily because the progress that we have made hasn't been very exciting and also because as the weather gets colder there is not much progress to report.  Especially when snow and freezing rain is in our forecast.  Who knew the winter in Pittsburgh would make for difficult remodeling conditions?!

Since our last update we have shingles on the roof, pillars on the porch, plumbing throughout the house, electric, heating/cooling, insulation and drywall on the second floor and the start of some siding on the exterior.  It has definitely been a challenge for us to sit back and wait for our sub contractors to find the time and motivation to work on our house.  Our patience is wearing thin and we want to complete this project more than ever, so we continue to do the projects we can handle ourselves and encourage the subs to get their part done.

A little glimpse of our December!

Ryan and Michael installing our pillars for the front porch

We hired an insulation team to insulate the second floor.  It was definitely worth having someone else install the insulation after we removed all of the previous insulation from the old house.

A view of the pillars after installation.  We still need to install the white ballisters in between each pillar. 

Remember all of that brick we took down from the back of the house??  Well, we were able to reuse it around the garage and we had enough to patch up areas around the house where the brick had fallen off in the midst of all the demolition.  We plan to paint the existing brick a shad lighter than the fiber cement siding (stay tuned for pics of the siding).

A view of the garage with all of the windows installed.  We were able to reuse the old windows from the back of the house.

The stairway to the second floor covered with DRYWALL!

The master bedroom with the drywall installed!!  It is so crazy to see the second floor with WALLS!!

Master bath - the green drywall is meant to resist humidity (i.e. shower steam) and the grey dry wall is cement board for tile

Another view of the master bath with drywall

The middle bedroom

A view of the hallway with walls!!

The third bedroom on the end

Another view of the third bedroom

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!