All of the windows have been installed!  We have one small snag that will be fixed next week, but it’s nothing major.  The window company sent us a window with regular glass for our upstairs bathroom and they will replace the sashes next week with obscure glass.  There isn’t really a view in or out of the window, so it probably doesn’t matter, but I will feel more secure knowing no one is going to see me stepping out of the shower unless they are standing on the roof looking through the sky light.  😉


Here are the updated photos from late yesterday and today:

New kitchen window.  I can’t tell you how much I love this.  It’s my new favorite window!

Let there be light!  Finally a usable window in the laundry room!

All new windows across the back.

The lower posts have been “stained” with a clear coat.  They are stunning.  I didn’t realize what a difference it would make and I couldn’t be happier.

The stonework started at the other side of the porch, so you can see what the bases of the columns are going to look like now.  Getting closer!!!

Finally, one more picture of the kiddo.  Still working on self-feeding.  He’s making a mess, but he loves it.  🙂  This was peach/squash yogurt with dinner.

Not much noticeably changed on the house on Friday, so I decided not to post an update.  In addition, Friday was the day I finally (nearly) cracked from all of this construction, so I thought a short hiatus might be a good idea.  The roofer kept climbing down and asking me questions I had no way of being able to answer…  Saturday, the roofer came and finished up both the “contract” work and a few extra repairs Todd authorized him to do.  The other crew were doing a lot of little finish work on the upstairs porch and it didn’t look all that exciting.  🙂  Today, however, they made progress even I can see.  They boxed in (with Hardie plank) a lot of the edges of the porch.  They did a LOT of caulking to seal things up.  They also started painting, which is very exciting.


Todd examining the porch progress Friday:

View of the house Friday afternoon:

Windows delivery (also Friday)!!!

Painted back of laundry room/garage this afternoon:

Painted back of house:

Windows!

More windows!  The installer should be here tomorrow morning (and last Wednesday, last Friday, and this morning).  I blame the General Contractor’s scheduling, not the windows guy.  I will just be glad when they get them installed.

Painted side and back of house:

Freshly painted side of garage:

Front of house end of Monday (with paint):

Close-up of the encased gable:

In Isaac news, Todd and I took him to the park on Sunday afternoon.  We ran into 2 families (who also didn’t come together) from National Instruments, a friend of mine from church, and a woman I used to go to music class with over the summer.  Rather impressive given the size of this fairly small park… 


Self-feeding with yogurt:

First attempt at spaghetti (we usually have smaller noodles): 

We like spaghetti!

I want to go in the attic to help Daddy rewire the ceiling fans!!!

Wow!  I didn’t post for a few days, so I went back to check what had happened since my last update.  The answer:  a LOT!!  I will let the pictures do the talking…  Apparently they are more efficient than I am…

Siding and new door into office:

Side of garage with new foam board:

Todd was working on the lighting, so he bought this little transformer.  I like to the think of the next 3 photos with the theme music to Jaws in my head (Duh-nuh):

Duh-nuh:

Duh-nuh, duh-nuh, duh-nuh…

Finished siding along the front:

…and along the side of the garage:

Primer!!!  Back of the garage:

Priming the back of the house and covering the overly-yellow siding:

Front of house primed and shutters removed around first-floor windows.  As you can see, they painted the old shutters without taking them down…  Lovely…

Street-level view earlier this week:

Primed area over garage (this is the side of the guest room):

Other side of the house, also primed:

Back of house fully-primed.  I apparently scared the foreman at this point with my picture-taking because he wanted to be sure I knew this was just primer:

Monday evening, a VERY welcome cold front literally blew in.  It ripped the tar paper off of the roof over Isaac’s room:

Ceiling on the upper floor – including Todd’s hatch to get to the electrical:

Installing the downstairs ceiling:

Roofers!!!  Oddly, I remember our house being re-roofed as a child and how abominably loud it seemed at the time.  With everything else we’ve had done to the house, it was quite peaceful to hear the constant rat-tat-tat-tat all day today as they installed the shingles…

Downstairs ceiling work:

Both ceilings and the siding/finishing work they’ve done on the front along the edge of the decking:

 Front of house at the end of the day today:

You can see the new roof!  They still need to come back (tomorrow?) to finish up a few things, but the bulk of the work is already complete.

Windows are due to be installed on Friday.  Tomorrow, John is coming to assemble the shutters.  They have really gotten quite a bit of work done this week and we are happy about that.  After much ado, Todd and I finally selected colors to paint the siding and the trim.  We *think* we have found the color for the ceilings, but we haven’t gotten a sample yet to make sure it will look like we think it should.  Hopefully we will be finishing up just in time for Halloween!

Quick update while the guys are on their lunch break and I can get to the computer with less noise.  They finished siding the master bedroom/closet side of the house yesterday.  The framing crew wrapped up.  The door to the porch from the master bedroom was installed.  The dumpster was also successfully picked up in the afternoon.


Siding – they have filled in the missing piece.  That was where the “scaffolding” was attached.  (It was a 2 x 6 suspended in a somewhat scary manner).

View of the front after framing was finished and siding was removed:

Things are looking up!

Sights you generally don’t want to see from inside your master bedroom:

Supervising Dad while he runs electricity to the porch:

New door into master bedroom:

New door #1:

This morning, they put the other door in and started putting foam board up across the front of the house.  Hopefully they will finish siding today.


Our contractor, John, on the ladder while he checks in:

Hole is cut for the second door (on the right):

There isn’t much to report from the framing crew.  The house looks essentially (exactly) the same as it did in the last photos.  They are working on all of the tedious odds’n’ends that seem to take forever.  They should be done this week, though.  The exciting changes are on the back of the house.  They finished the vast majority of the siding along the back yesterday.  They, too, are working on some of the minor finishing touches across the house this morning before moving on to the sides of the house.  They are also trying to level out the roof over the back porch some.  It’s about 3 inches low at the edge.  The same crew should also be installing the doors onto the porch today.

The trailer that was *supposed* to remove the dumpster yesterday.  The frame on the trailer broke.  Maybe the wood was wet from the rain?  Maybe the old siding weighed a lot?  I don’t know, but the dumpster is still here.  LOL

The mommies and our boys met at the park again yesterday.  The boys ran all over the place and we attempted to get a few pictures of them together.  As Stephanie pointed out, this was much easier when none of them could roll over or crawl.  🙂  Actually, it wasn’t all THAT easy before, but we like to pretend.


Cash, Isaac, and Henry on the purple dinosaur:

Isaac and Henry waiting for Cash to come back and play:

Isaac Walter – Tree Hugger:

Last night, Isaac had some black beans for dinner.  He had to have a bath immediately afterward.  But he really enjoyed his food!

Well, after almost nothing was done yesterday, we got off to a much better start this morning.  THANK GOODNESS!  I was up from 2:00-4:00 this morning fretting over our exposed attic.  Todd left a voice message for John last night that we were concerned, but it was pretty late and John didn’t return the call.  This morning, Todd went out to talk to Bob directly about the work and how long it was taking.  Apparently, Bob hurt his back yesterday, and he wasn’t able to directly supervise his crew.  They obviously need constant supervision.  Bob was concerned about our exposed attic, as well.  This morning, he shifted the priorities so that they sealed up the attic some before doing anything else.  I am so relieved!!!  🙂  He also brought in another foreman to help while he’s gone (to the hospital?  to Lowe’s?  I am not sure where).  This guy is supposed to be the person who trained Bob.  He’s GREAT.  There is no way he’s going to let 5 drops of rain slow down the progress!  He has the guys working together and they are moving so fast it’s unbelievable!  If he’d been here the whole time, our framing job would already be finished (I think). They have easily gotten more done this morning in just a few hours than they have on any other single day of work.  I am thrilled.  I am now optimistic that they might really finish this job.


You may or may not be able to tell that this is far more plywood than was up yesterday.  Trust me, though, it is.

Looking up from inside the office.

Men at work

Looking down the porch from the office window

Street-level view

On the back of the house, we had an issue.  I ran out to do some errands.  When I got home 45 minutes later, the water to the house was turned off.  Oops!  The foreman for the siding crew took me out and showed me where they had punctured the hot water line coning out of the old water heater and running up the laundry room wall.  He is now gone to Home Depot to get something to fix it.  While I am obviously less than thrilled that the pipe has been broken and I don’t have running water in my house, I am ecstatic at the way the situation was handled.  The foreman showed me the puncture, apologized, and explained how they were going to fix it, and when.  HOLY COW!!!  If the people in my corporate job had worked that way, I might never have quit to stay home with Isaac!!!  I seriously almost hugged the man.  LOL

With all of the construction going on outside, Isaac got busy with the Legos and did some building of his own this afternoon.


Concentrating on building on top of a piece with wheels:

Proud of his creations:

Todd and Isaac explored the deck of the new porch this evening.  I love this picture because it sort of looks like they are in a tree house.  🙂

Today, the framing crew left at 2:00 because they said it started to sprinkle.  I beg to differ, since I was standing outside at the time.  I was somewhat perturbed; Todd is downright annoyed.  Todd is probably going to talk to Bob, the framing leader, in the morning.  If he doesn’t have a chance to do it, I certainly will.  I also think we should talk to John, the general contractor, as well.  They literally placed 4 pieces of plywood today.  I think they are still going to finish this week, if they actually buckle down and try to do that.  Bob told John they’ll be done before the weekend.  I’m not holding my breath that they’ll be done tomorrow, though.  On the bright side, the nice thing about plywood (and drywall, for that matter) is that it comes in big enough sheets that you see progress pretty quickly.  They REALLY need to finish, though, because every forecast is predicting rain this weekend.


This was 1/4 of the work that got completed on the framing today…

The other side:

 Street-level view:

Looking up:

That’s the news for the front of the house.  On the *back* side of the house, a new crew arrived today to rip off the old siding.  These guys are fast.  I was impressed by how quickly the concrete team did their jobs and I think the siding guys will be the same way.  It’s amazing what a difference it makes when a crew really WANTS to work.  There is no slacking off in our backyard; I can tell you that for sure.  They arrived, got marching orders, and started in right away.  They’ve already removed half of the siding from the back of the house!  The other good news on this crew is that they will be the ones to put the roofing on, so once Bob’s group finally finishes, the roof should go on in no time flat.

Tomorrow, there should be someone arriving to frame out doors onto the porch and also to frame out the new window going into the laundry room.  I am UBER-excited about this!  How freakin’ cool to have new doors!!!  They will have blinds between the glass since they are going to be in the master bedroom and (soon-to-be) guest room.  🙂  I can’t wait to see them!


On to the “snips & snails” part of the blog:  I am apparently the non-cooking mother of our mommy group.  LOL  Yesterday, we took the boys to a park, which was great.  The boys had fun, the mommies sort-of got to chat, and Isaac slept well last night.  While we were there, one of the other mothers asked me what I feed Isaac as “quick” food.  I didn’t think anything of it until I was telling Todd about it last night.  He was laughing that people think I don’t cook…  🙂  I had to laugh because I really don’t cook (at least for Isaac) – I had some suggestions.  Isaac loves those little Dole fruit cups, the ones packed in “real juice.”  


Peaches!

Pears!