Moving On Up...

Still kicking over here.

It has been a crazy time with the house, with the family, with life...

 I hope to get on here and truly write.

But it won't be tonight. I am fighting to stay awake. But I do want to update. And an easy update is a photo update. So, here is our progress as we move on up with our renovation.

January 15

We have "floor"!

 January 18...

We have walls!  Well, wall frames anyway.

Here is a bedroom.

 And another one...

And a bathroom

A corner of the "common area"

 

And a cute little dog exploring the scraps. She loves exploring up there.

We also came home to find our hallway entrance had changed which altered the door to what is now the girls' room and soon will be child 4's room.  Apparently this kind of stuff isn't as easy as just knocking a hole in the ceiling and building upstairs. All of that affects the downstairs too. 

January 21...

A hole cut in the roof.  And the framing of a future "dormer" window.

 We also came home that day to find a large hole in our hallway. Apparently the plumber had been working on tying the plumbing from downstairs to the plumbing for upstairs. A little sledgehammering was involved.

 Here is the window from the inside.  Unfortunately for us, about this time, the beautiful January weather we have had turned ugly and cold.  Nothing like a hole in the roof to add to the already "no heat" cold we were dealing with.  That plastic is nice but it doesn't keep out all of the cold.

 Oh, and a bathtub. Not in place yet but it is there and ready.

January 22.

The hallway hole (this is DOWNSTAIRS) is now fixed. Unfortunately my chore for the evening was to keep little feet out of the wet cement.

 And I managed for the most part. Except somehow (and I still don't know how) this little furry pup slipped past me and got one pawprint in.  I would love to have seen how she did it. I had it barricaded!

 Upstairs, the bath/shower was now in place.

 And the window area is more framed out. I think this was the night that we had FIERCE winds.  We woke up the next morning (still no heat) to find that the house was freezing. It was 39 degrees in the kitchen. I could see my breath as I made breakfast. We ended up eating curled up by the heater in our bedroom which was hovering around 50.

 This is in the common area. It started off to be a closet but we have since decided it will make a great seating area for the girls and their friends. So we are going to build it all the way down.

January 23.

And we have windows!  Woohoo!  Windows make a HUGE difference in house temperature, even without heat.  We just love the transformation on the back of our house.  (From the front, you would never know anything was going on except for the huge dumpster and port-a-potty in my driveway.

 Here is a window from the inside. We were very pleased with how it turned out. Really opens up the room.

We came home last Friday to find roofers. Our new windows are now "roofed".

 And the framing is mostly done. Here is a view of the common area. It isn't huge but it is more than we have right now. On the left side you can see the platform we plan on extending for a seating area.  The dark part in the back is the actual part of the attic we actually use. That is a door to get to it.  I am excited about that.

 Here is a view of Child 2's room.  That is her closet to the left.

 A view of the bathroom. It is actually larger than the one they have to all share downstairs.

 Here is one silly boy playing with ducts.

 Here is Child 3's room. Her closet is over to the side but you can't see it. It isn't quite as big as the other room's closet but we are going to add a little to it to help make that up.

 A look up to the common area from the landing...

 A look up to the landing from our front entrance.

 Here is the remainder of child 4's room. It will now be a small office.

 And here is the view from our living room.  To the left is the landing for the stairs. Under that is our storage closet.  Even the little part under the bottom steps will be storage. Woohoo!  To the right we will have some built in cabinets to hold our t.v.

That about catches me up on the progress thus far.  Sadly, since the framing is done, the fun stuff is also done. We won't see as many of the major changes now except for drywall.

But...

We have heat (as of tonight!).  Not very efficient yet because they aren't all the way done with it. But heat nonetheless.

And the work continues...

More soon,
Reba