Porch: Demolition Complete & Brick Harvesting

The demolition on our porch is now complete and we’re quickly moving into the next phase. Let’s hope the weather holds for the week so we can get concrete poured and the masonry work can be finished, so we can get to the fun stuff. 

As we did in our renovation, we are reusing brick wherever possible. Our hope is that we can match the brick on the front half of the porch – basically patching in the front where the porch extends an additional three and a half feet beyond it’s current footprint.  The bricks are coming from the north end of the porch which will be covered by new masonry shortly. The workers are harvesting bricks from the side wherever possible so they can be reused. We even still had a few bricks leftover from our renovation which may or may not be used. We will likely have to do a new section of brick behind the fence line. It shouldn’t be noticeable because there won’t be any sightlines with the new and old brick showing in the same plane.

You may be wondering why we are extending the screen porch only 3.5 feet. That’s the most we could do under our existing zoning and we did not want to have to get a variance. We are going to be so close to the line that we are required by the County to get another survey done to ensure that our foundation does not extend too close to our neighbor’s property.  Our lot is only 7000 square feet (not a bad size for Arlington actually) so we have to maximize every inch!!

I have to say that the sun streaming into our living room is shocking. It’s amazing how much light a porch can block out and how dark it has made our living room.  We hope that replacing our shed roof with a peaked roof will help more sun to shine through. The skylight should also help but will not likely make as much of an impact inside as it will on the porch.

This picture gives you a little bit of an idea of how much darker it was before - notice I had every light on.

I’m already looking for a few new pieces of porch furniture to supplement what we already have.  I really want an indoor/outdoor feeling. I'm sure the curtains are going to go back up. I'm hoping I'll be able to use the same panels and rods I had before but fortunately all of them are from Ikea and still available so if i need to add to them, it won't be a problem.  Finding a table of the right dimensions may prove the trickiest part.  You can follow my shopping process on Pinterest!

Porch: Demolition

Demolition started yesterday. It was pretty awesome to come home to work and see this...

When we saw this corner, we knew we were doing the right thing by ripping this off and replacing it with something more solid. I'm not an expert but that looks like termite and water damage.

I find demolition so satisfying even if I'm not the one with the sledgehammer. Even watching other people do demolition is satisfying because the progress is so quick.  Of course, it's even better when it's outside and doesn't effect your daily life... and it's 80 degrees. In March. Yes, I love this weird winter and you will never hear me complain.

House Photos!

I have added a new page for house pictures.  I will add more over the next few days, so keep checking back.

Oh the dust!

We have now been back in our house for 6 months and are still thrilled with the results. I still think it has been a great investment. The last week has made us thankful that we did not live in our house during the construction!

A few days before Christmas, we got almost 2 feet of snow, and then on Christmas Day it was 50 degrees and it rained - a lot! We had water in the OLD part of our basement. Our new basement was dry (except for where the water from the old basement dribbled in) because of a drain system and sump pump installed when we did the addition. This has been an on-and-off problem for several years although we have never identified the exact cause - probably coming through the floor. So, when talking to Jim Cole, our builder, about some small outstanding items to fix, we asked him about the floor. He suggested a drain system which involved jack-hammering a trench along 2 walls of our old basement, putting in a sump pump, and piping it to the outside. We basically hired him on the spot (again) to fix that. Our thinking was that if we are going to finish the new part of our basement, then we don't ever want to have to worry about water leaking in.

The project has taken a little over a week, and is pretty much done except for hooking up the pump. I feel peace of mind already! Hopefully we won't have to make any more long-distance emergency phone calls to our neighbors for fear of our basement being flooded!

Once again, we confirmed that we made the right decision to move out during the renovation. Even this small project has created such a crazy amount of dust in our house (despite loads of plastic barriers), that we are anxious for it to be finished.

I'll post pictures shortly, along with some final pictures of the renovation (not sure if I did that ever).

So close, yet...

Although we had been planning for about 2 months to move back to our house on Wednesday, we are now delayed until Monday. Unfortunately we have to be out of our rental on Friday so we have to send our stuff to storage for the weekend and we have to go stay at some friends' house in Alexandria. It's a bummer and a pain but there's not much we can do. Although we should probably have seen this coming, it was very disappointing to get the news from our builder only 4 days before our move date. All-in-all, 4 days delay isn't all that bad but it does require a lot of extra work, and a little bit of scrambling, on our parts. Hopefully it all works out as planned.

On the bright side, the new floors looks great and the finishing is coming along. The final coat of poly goes on tomorrow morning and then a flurry of work should begin on Wednesday including the driveway and digging the trench for the new larger water line which was required by the County for houses with 3 or more bathrooms. The plumbing and electrical fixtures will be set later this week and the stairs from the driveway to the backyard will be completed as well. We're hoping that the house will be essentially finished when we move in on Mondy and that there will be very few things left to do after Monday. We hope.

The home stretch...

Just 7 days until we move back in and it's full steam ahead at our house. Although some things seem to be taking forever (master bathroom tile and painting), generally we are pleased with the progress. The new railings are up on the back porch and they look really good. I'm so glad our architect convinced me not to do wood because it would look to heavy and would detract from the house. The railing also matches the original railings on our house perfectly.

So far, I am happy with the interior paint color choices. We opted for a no VOC paint (Duron Genesis) in an eggshell finish on the walls and semi-gloss on the woodwork. With 2 kids, I need washability!

The floors will be sanded and one coat of varnish will go on Friday and then the rest will be done over the weekend and be finished as early as possible on Sunday. On Monday, the floors will be covered with paper and everyone will be on their best behavior while they finish electrical, plumbing and painting.

The countertops go in tomorrow. I finally decided on Absolute Black granite with a honed finish. I loved the look of soapstone but the maintenance is a killer and there is a high risk of staining. The granite I found at International Marble in Arlington has something like 30 coats of sealer on it and supposedly you never have to seal it again. They gave me a great price and are also doing our bathroom vanity with a sink at a great price. Needless to say I am really excited about tomorrow's installation!! I'll post pictures when they're done.

Loads of new pictures posted on the left.

Insulation and.... Drywall!

We have completed our mechanical inspections and will start insulation tomorrow. That will probably take 2 days and we'll get our insulation/close-in inspection on Wednesday. Our builder will be stocking drywall on Wednesday so they can begin on Thursday!! Needless to say, we're incredibly excited about drywall because it feels like the top of a peak and then we're just on the downhill! Drywall will take about a week according to our builder.

After drywall comes the floors which will probably take several days since there is a lot of patching and matching to do. The floors aren't finished until after the painting and trimwork is done though. We have picked out tile for our master bathroom and laundry room. The rest of the house will be hardwood to match our existing floors.

On the outside, a considerable amount of work has been done on grading the backyard and installing drain pipes for the gutters (not yet installed). We have also had a drywell dug which we are now wondering if it's not deep enough since the water doesn't drain. Keep in mind though, we have clay soil so the bottom of the drywell is like a rock! Our contractor added a drainage ditch behind the garage to help handle some of the drywell run-off. Hopefully all of this will help the water issues in our yard although I don't think it will be entirely well-drained even after all this. There are just too many places for the water to come from and flow into our yard.

On the menu for this week...

Well, another week of rain ahead but fortunately most of the work that needs to be done is inside stuff. Plumbing is underway and HVAC will likely start this week as well. Electrical will be the last trade when the other two are done or close to done.

Siding has started on the garage but only a few pieces. I am really happy with my color choice. It looks great with the brick and the sandtone trim.

We have about 10 weeks left until we move back in. I think we're both a little skeptical that the house will be substantially done in 10 weeks but we're hopeful.

Window trim and finishing up framing

The exterior window trim is going up this week in preparation for siding later this week or early next week. There are some other exterior details which need to be dealt with before siding so I am thinking that will more likely happen next week. The plumbing starts Thursday or Friday this week, followed by electrical and HVAC. Our contractor does not like to have multiple subs in at the same time if he can help it. It makes it harder to control the work being done. He also likes to have framing either complete or nearly complete before any mechanical subs start their work. He believes that it's better to have the framers out of the way of the way so the mechanical stuff goes more quickly.

The remaining masonry work has also been completed including the new garage which looks fantastic now with windows and the roof. The door will be ordered soon and the siding will go on there first so we can use the garage again to store our stuff (and get it out of our poor neighbor's garage!). Jim Cole thinks it looks like a little cottage! I'm glad that it looks good since it will be a focal point of our new backyard.

We have also been considering how to deal with the run-off in the backyard. The increased roof area and decreased drainage area pose a major problem. Most houses on our street have these same issues so we aren't alone. The main solution seems to be a drywell in the dampest corner of the yard. That will probably be the solution for us as well. The drywell will be located in the back corner of our yard in front of the garage. We are also going to install a rain barrel behind the garage to catch the gutter water from the garage roof so we can use that for watering plants in the yard.

More demolition, brick work, and framing...

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.

Windows and Doors and STAIRS!

There has been a lot of progress in the past couple of days. We have now have all of the windows installed (except the basement windows which are not from Andersen). Everything looks great and we are pleased with the choices so far. The door hardware looks really good and was well worth the additional cost. I highly recommend doing that to anyone ordering Andersen doors. The new doors to the screen porch have not yet been installed. The major push behind getting the windows in was to get the house ready for siding next week.

Perhaps even more exciting for me (9 months pregnant) is that we have stairs from the basement to the attic. I can now easily walk around on the new part of the second floor which makes the whole thing seem more real. We can also walk freely between the old and new parts of the house.

Work has also continued on the brick foundation. The door from the driveway has a brick foundation about 1/3 of the way up the sides (see the construction picture slideshow on the left side of the page). The garage now also has windows and the brick foundation on the garage has also begun. The brick needs to be completed before the siding can go on the garage.

There were a lot of workers on the site today but it was refreshing to see a flurry of activity after so many days of rain in the past month. Hopefully May will be a little drier!

Renovation: Painting already?

We were pretty surprised when our contractor called on Sunday to see if we had picked out a trim color - especially since we don't even have siding or windows up yet! Turns out, Jim wanted to get the high parts of the trim painted (soffits and fascia mostly) while he still had temporary scaffolding up and before the pre-painted HardiPlank goes up next week. Obviously he wants to avoid any drips on the new siding which seems like a pretty good idea to me considering the warranty on the siding! I thought this was a good tip to pass along to other people considering an addition (or just residing) because it may save you some time and money later.

Fortunately we did know the color that we wanted because we wanted to match the exterior color of our Andersen sandtone windows. The salesman, James, at The WindowSmith was able to give the color match information to Jim so he could get the paint and the trim was painted yesterday! You can see that the color is more muted and gray than our existing trim color, which will all be painted later on.

Windows are going in today and tomorrow, and hopefully the stairs tomorrow or Thursday. Of course the forecast is rain for the rest of the week so hopefully lots of progress is made today!

Kitchen Cabinets Ordered!

The kitchen cabinets have been ordered! We went with Kingswood Kitchens out of Danbury, CT. Their cabinets are beautiful and reasonably priced. I wanted inset doors and drawer fronts so this was the best way to do that. We chose the Newport style. Although I never met the kitchen designer in person, we talked several times and exchanged countless emails. We sent careful measurements for the roughed in kitchen (no drywall obviously), as well as our choices for the appliances. Generally the ideas for the design were mine and not the designer's so all of the blame will be on me for any misjudgments!

My one major dilemma in the kitchen design was where to put the microwave. I want to use a stove hood without a microwave so then I needed to find another place for a microwave. I did not want it on the countertop. I liked the look of having the microwave in the island (hidden!) but the thought of my kids playing with the buttons constantly and having to lean over every time I used it was enough to make me keep looking. Finally I saw a picture in an ad for a kitchen designer while in Florida and I got the idea to have it built it in to an upper cabinet. So, now we are getting a cabinet which is a few inches deeper than the other cabinets but it's next to the fridge, and the microwave will be in that cabinet. Plus, if it breaks or we want to upgrade it (or get rid of it all together) we could modify that cabinet for another purpose.

The other thing we wanted was to have very few lower cabinets, and to have drawers instead. I also wanted at least one tall, skinny cabinet for things like large cutting boards, cookie sheets, cooling racks, etc. I am also really excited about the pull-out trash can which should make cleaning up loads easier than our current step can. We also found room for a tall pantry which will make storing food much easier than our old kitchen which had one not very large cabinet for all of our food.

Now we wait about 8 weeks for delivery... Fortunately there is plenty of stuff to do in the house before then!

Renovation: Breaking through between old and new

The laborers are working on breaking through the brick walls between the old and new parts of the house. There will be 4 openings between the old and new, and one doorway in the basement. We'll finally be able to see if our efforts to make a relatively seamless transition between the two parts will work.

The picture above is the doorway between the living room and family room in the addition. The stairs are our existing stairs which will likely be removed later this week when the new stairs go in.

The plan for the week is to put in windows and doors in the first half of the week and then stairs at the later end of the week. After that, the weather won't be as much of a factor which will be a relief. Of course, it's 90 degrees here today so we cannot complain!

New Roof!

We finally have new shingles (Certainteed Independence in Charcoal Black) thanks to hard work over the mostly dry weekend by our builder and the roofing contractor. Here are some before and after pictures to give you an idea of just how much of a difference new shingles make! (And, yes, it's raining again today.)

Before

After

Next step is finishing part of the back of the roof which did not get done before it started raining on Sunday, and then windows and doors later this week.

We are finalizing our kitchen plans through Kingswood and then we'll be waiting about 2 months for those to come in. Fortunately there is plenty of work to finish before that point. Still 2 months puts us in mid-June so well before our (hopefully) late July finish date.

I am also looking at exterior shutters for the front of the house which is proving to be harder than I anticipated because I want shutters which are wider than standard shutters so they actually look like they could close (as shutters should). I also want something which is no maintenance but don't want to spend an absolute fortune since I want them to be black (a basic color).

Some progress (and sun)

Finally we have a stretch of sunny days so work is moving along on the roof. We're hoping the roof will be completely framed and covered in plywood today. They are also working on the garage - putting up exterior drywall on 2 sides as required by Arlington County code for garages close to the property line. There are a couple of new pictures in the slide show on the right, including one with the garage partially drywalled.

Today I am making some changes to our original electrical plans. I have already seen a few things that I would like to change and we may explore adding a few recessed lights in our existing living room so that it looks more consistent with the rest of the house. I don't feel that it's necessary in the dining room (where we are reusing our old chandelier) or in the spare bedrooms but the living room should feel more consistent.

Rain, rain, go away...

Although we lucked out with beautiful weather on Friday despite the forecast for rain, it looks like we have 2 days of straight rain ahead of us tomorrow and Wednesday. Let's hope the weatherman is very wrong. Despite the drought conditions in late February and early March, April has certainly lived up to its "April Showers" reputation! I think we have already had about 6 days of rain and it's only the 12th! Just our luck.

Our builder Jim says he needs one more day to get the roof tied in so he can put down tar paper and then the shingles can go on. The roof has been about an 8 work day process so far. Longer than I expected it to be (but what do I know). We were hoping for shingles this week but that may slip until next week unless a miracle occurs. Jim says the roof is the most complicated part - particularly the tying in to the existing roof and attic and obviously it's important to get the roof on correctly so there isn't much point in rushing!

He also does not want to put the windows in until the roof is on because he believes there is too much risk of breakage - too much throwing of stuff off the roof and pulling stuff up to the roof. The windows are waiting patiently in the living room and dining room of our house.

But, other work still continues with the design aspects. We are finalizing our stairwell plans (balusters, newel posts, and handrails), as well as the design of the stairs as they come down into the kitchen. We are meeting with our architect Kaye in the morning before work to look at some final details before the plans go to the "stair guy" to be built. They are built offsite and then installed onsite. There's about a 2+ week turnaround.

We are also finalizing our kitchen cabinet plans. We are using Kingswood Kitchens (Princess line). They have beautiful, high quality cabinets and we are very excited to see the end product. The turn around time is 6-7 weeks so we need to get our order in this week in order to be ready for install by late May.

Once that order is in, we'll likely turn to finalizing the electrical plan which will have some minor changes from the original - mostly adding or moving lights and switches. It's so much easier to picture where you want things to be when you can walk through the rooms and put your hand up to where you instinctively think there should be a switch. So far, it looks likes we'll be able to keep our existing electrical panel which is good, but we'll probably end up adding a sub panel for his wood shop which can be turned off and locked as a safety precaution whenever he's not using it.

Roof is going on!

After about 5 work days of rain, the roof is going onto the house. It really gives us a good idea for the size and shape of the addition and it looks great! They actually went up all in one day which is really amazing. The back part of the roof (shown here) is made with manufactured trusses, but the part that ties into the house is stick built. The manufactured part goes on quickly, but it is the bulk of the roof so that's good.

There is still work to be done on the stairwell between the 2nd floor and the attic, so that will entail additional work in order to tie it into the rest of the roof and the existing room. The actual stairwell is built by a special subcontractor who specializes in stairs. I would expect (although I have not confirmed) that he will be on the site next week. He has already been here to do measuring. We don't really know much about the process so we aren't sure how much of the work is done offsite and how much is done on site. We'll soon see! I'll be really happy to have the stairs so I can get up to the second floor much more easily!!!

Jim expects the windows and doors to be delivered on Thursday (so long as the distributor receives them tomorrow from Andersen), but they probably won't be installed for a few days.

As for other addition, the baby is due in about 5.5 weeks... and we are soooo happy we are not living in our disaster of a house!

Siding Decisions - finally!!

Progress continues pretty quickly on the framing at our house. The decisions are coming fast and furious now. We have finally settled on Hardie plank siding (fiber cement board) in cedar mill, 6" visible width in timber bark. We decided to go with a darker color to stay in the same dark shade of our brick and also to provide a good contrast with our trim which is a medium tan color. I didn't want anything which was close in color to the trim because the windows wouldn't stand out as much. Hardie has a 15 year warranty on its pre-painted siding so we want to like this color for a long time to come. It took me about 3 weeks to come to a final decision although I had been considering the possibilities for the past few months. I do have some concerns about it being a tiny bit too dark but I really like the pictures I have seen of it used on other houses. It's also a change from the medium tan that I almost always choose for everything!

The next round of decisions involve the kitchen cabinets... more on that to come.

Walls are up!

The walls for the first and second floor are pretty much up. It looks great and we are really excited to see the progress. Next is the stairwell and roof trusses, then windows and doors, and the breakthrough between the old and new house. Jim Cole hopes to have the house "dried in" by the end of next week which means a lot of work next week but there should be lots of progress to show off. Lots of new pictures in the slideshow on the right.