Almost a Month In

Sorry, no kid pictures on this one. It cracks me up though that I had visions of a separate blog for the house when I can't even keep my kid's blog up.

So these were taken on May 5, about a month into the project. We ran away to G'parents Ohio for the weekend because we were so worried about what it would be like when they did the 'demo'. That is, when they removed the back wall of the dining room and basement and ultimately the master bedroom back wall. We were so worried that we stayed down the street with neighbors who had an apt. in their basement on Sunday and Monday nights only to have NOTHING done with demo, yet we had packed up ourselves and the kids and trotted down the street. Big Waste of Time.

We were not disappointed when we returned from Ohio--the DR wall was gone and part of the basement wall was gone. Turns out instead of a jackhammer, they use a drill of some sort--Den has one--so maybe he could have done this project? :) Well, maybe if he had taken a year off of work. The foreman really pours over the drawings to try and stay one step ahead of the workers. Interesting to watch them work.

Anyway, when we got home, this was what we found. Den's computer has the pictures of the kids at g'parents Ohio. Surprisingly, we didn't see anyone (any friends) on the trip, as it was pretty quick, but the kids had a great time with the g'parents.

The top two photos are the 'main' level of the house with the 16+ foot tall wall supporting the back of our house. This picture is of said wall and a micro-lam--some kind of replacment for a steel beam or something that is supposed to be really strong--at least we hope.
16 foot tall wall and the back of our dining room. Based on construction stories from everyone else, we were prepared for the worst, but these guys are so conscientious that we had almost no dust in the house. They put in a temporary wall, cover it with plywood, then fill in the gaps with insulation and then on top of that put up plastic. The back of our house has survived many a rain storm open to the breezes.

This is a section of the basement wall. The good news is our house is REALLY solid. There is a layer of brick, then of block. But interspersed with the block are bricks and the foreman said that usually you just see a brick every now and then turned in, but with ours it was throughout the whole wall. They were able to remove the brick and they block wall would remain. It really did kill me to be taking all this away, but the house is going to be great when it's done.

This is a close up of one of the beams holding up the back of our house...more on those later.