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...

Bye bye roof!

It was a big Labor Day weekend at 50 Crystal Drive.  Last week as the framers were framing the garage addition they noticed a large part of our existing roof was sunken in.  After much deliberation, we decided it would be in our best interest to replace the entire existing roof.  It was perfect timing to decide to remove our roof over Labor Day weekend because Ryan's brother, PJ and our brother-in-law, Mike were coming in town.  We knew removing the roof wasn't going to be easy, but having them in town made the job much easier!

Michael rented an all terrain fork lift to assist with the roof removal.  His buddy Rick volunteered his time on Saturday and Sunday to operate the machine.  With Michael on top of the roof cutting up shingles, Ryan, PJ, and Mike in the house sawing the studs and jousts, and Rick operating the fork lift, the roof came off by day 3!!  These guys are amazing!!

The framers came on Saturday to finish up the garage addition.  Now that the roof is gone, the framers can come in this week and frame our new roof.  Hopefully the weather stays nice this week, mainly because we no longer have a roof!

The garage and additions all framed in

We started early Saturday morning on taking the old roof off with an all terrain fork lift

Michael got out his climbing gear to help with the roof removal

Mike and Ryan supervise as Rick pulls off a section of the roof

It wasn't long before we filled up the first dumpster with our roof

Michael in his climbing gear and brother in law Mike ready to work

PJ attaching the chain to the fork lift, while Michael lowers down the circular saw

PJ using the sledge hammer to loosen up the studs

Ryan pondering the meaning of life while wielding a chain binder

There goes the roof...maybe we should just turn this into a roof top deck

Father and sons

We went through 11 circular saw blades tearing off the roof.  The asphalt shingles dulled each blade in no time.

We cut up the pieces of roof, chained them to the fork lift, then watched as operator Rick took them away

 

The removal crew: Ryan, Michael, PJ and Mike

End of day 1

Stairway to heaven?

Michael operating the fork lift, after reading the manual of course!!

On Monday morning, after two and a half full days of work, we're almost done.  Seeing the second floor with no roof was really weird, can't wait to get it enclosed again.

This picture doesn't do justice to just how many pounds of shingles and wood we removed

Picture of us from our new roof top deck!

Ryan took a turn using the climbing gear on Monday while Michael operated the lift

Mike using the sawzall as tar and asphalt fell all over his face....we love you Mike!

Ryan cutting out one of the last sections of roof, also feeling very good to be almost done ripping the roof off

Before and After.  We filled an entire dumpster and had plenty left over that we'll need to put in another dumpster.  We definitely were not planning on taking off the roof when we started this project, but are really happy that we did it now that the roof is torn off.  The new roof will be sturdier and provide us with a good amount of additional room in the second floor.  The renovation continues to throw challenges at us, but we are having fun dealing with them and are so lucky that we have family and friends to help us get the job done!  We also have to say THANK YOU to the wives of our crew, Sherry, Meghan, and Keri for allowing us to steal away your husbands for the holiday weekend!!  It won't happen again ;)

Thanks again Michael, PJ, Mike, and Rick!!  You guys are the best!