Lots going on at the house these days. The old stairs have been removed giving us a much clearer view of the space between the living room and new family room. The picture on the right was taken from the back of the house looking towards the front.). It's going to be great and it makes even our smallish living room feel huge! They will fill in the holes in the floor where the stairs were either today or tomorrow.
Work is also continuing on the brick foundation around the garage, as well as some brick repair on the front steps and around our second screen porch door (which replaced a rather useless window). There are pictures of both the new doors and the brick garage foundation in the construction pictures on the left. I am so glad that we are doing the brick foundation on the garage. It looks really striking and the garage will be very front and center in our new small backyard! The garage windows were the windows that were taken from the back of our old upstairs.
The workers are also doing what Jim Cole calls "punch list framing" which is where they work from the top to the bottom of the house getting all of the last bits of framing done and fixing things that were off by a little before. They are also installing the pocket door tracks which need to go in before drywall. Fortunately this work has not been affected by the rain because with the new roof, the house is dry.
Jim is also picking up our new basement windows today. We had replaced our old basement windows not long after we moved in because they were rotten and had termite damage. They were not Andersen so the new windows are also not Andersen, but (of course) the old company that made them is now out of business). The original installer (WindowsPlus) was able to find a similar window for us which should work fine. They are not right next to the existing windows so even if they are a little different, it won't be noticeable. They will also have the much darker brown trim which blends well with the brick. The only exception is our egress window which is Andersen and matches the other windows in the house.
We are a little past the half-way mark for construction (we started about on about January 22nd) which is hard to believe. The next steps is plumbing, HVAC, and electrical which will probably start either Friday or Monday. The plan is to start drywall in about 4 weeks, then floors (hardwood and tile), and then finish work. So far, we are still on track for moving back in the house in July even if it means that it's not completely done.
