To Top it Off

The roofing got done just before the blizzard hit this past weekend.  Well done.

Actually, not done.  You see, not all of the house is there yet.  The eight-foot portion on the south side and the garage have not even been excavated as yet.  This was done to retain access to the back yard for all that was going on back there.  Once the septic system has been reassembled, they can start on all that: excavation, forms, pour, top, frame, and sheathe.  Then they can do the rest of the roof.

We have asked the builder to redo the roof on our shed in matching tile.  It will be a good aesthetic and there was a squirrel hole developing in the shed roof anyhow.

 

A Motion from the Floor

From the first floor, to be specific, and from the basement.

Work started slowly, while the builder did other things, but from the first of the year or so, things have been moving quickly.  We now have a basement in the back and a crawlspace across part of the front.  On these, our living room, dining room, kitchen, and bedroom are framed and mostly sheathed.  The interior of the first floor is mostly gutted and some of the new portions are framed out.

Next to come, roofing tiles are going up.  Not sure quite where they will go from there.

But there are parts of the septic system that need to go back into the ground, then another crawlspace can be dug on the side for the eight foot extension that leads to the garage.  This extension will house a laundry and pantry.

Once they have it all closed in, they can break through the old exterior and the real fun will begin.

So, progress, I suppose.

 

How it Began

How did we get into this whole renovation thing?  Not too hard to figure out.  Like so many of you, the house was too small.

Built twenty-five years ago, the house is a Cape Cod, 24X40, so about 1000 sf on the first floor, 500 sf upstairs, and the basement was finished around fifteen years ago, adding another 1000 sf, though it really doesn’t seem like it.  But it really comes down to usability.  For instance, the living room, with a brick wall fireplace on one whole wall, low windows, and archways in bad places, is extremely tight with just five people.  The kitchen is a small L-shaped thing with a triangular pantry closet and there is really only one place to stand in it to get things done and, of course, not enough storage, so we keep bulk supplies in the basement, where they really are not convenient.  Upstairs bedrooms, well, it is a Cape, so most of the walls only come up to shoulder height or lower.

So, when we came back from Missouri in 2007, we came up with a plan.  Well, blueprints too, but that is not what I meant.  Our master plan was simple: 1) sell the house in Missouri to help finance the construction, 2) buy a small-ish house in a neighboring hamlet to live in during renovation and allow the boys to go to a better school district, and 3) renovate the house.  This was, of course, the summer of 2007 – you remember what happened next.

Skip ahead a few months, we had a house in Missouri that we were not going to sell anytime soon and were looking into renting out, we had the temporary house, and we had our house with no possible way to finance a renovation.  Fine.  Fate smiled at Destiny and all that.  It was pretty much all we could do to keep up with three house payments.

But we did have plans drawn up – actually the winter before we came home.  This was a good plan for the time, with two boys entering high school.  We got a larger Master upstairs, plus something the architect dubbed a media room and a Master Bath.  Even a small balcony to sit on.  Larger living room, larger kitchen (now to be eat-in), a separate dining room, a bedroom to replace the one that was to become the dining room, and – blessed event – a garage!

I am sure we would have been comfortable in that house.  A pity we never got to build it.  Instead, we spent over five years scraping by, for the most part, renting the houses when we could.  Instead, the house fell deeper into a state of disrepair, because I only have rudimentary home repair skills and why fix something you are planning to replace soon?  Instead, we lived in a holding pattern, waiting for the world to change.

We now have a very different set of plans, based on the boys becoming young men and soon to be starting their own independent lives.  Also, we wanted something closer to single-story living, to help us through our golden years, which may still be a couple of decades off – hopefully – but we sure do not want to do another renovation then.

In a later edition: the long terrible tale of how our current house plans evolved.  Warning: that story contains viscous high-pressure salesmen.

 

A Breather

We are in the new (old) house.  Moved on Wednesday.  Still boxes everywhere and no idea where lots of things got to.  My Kindle managed to get packed somewhere – the packers were packing anything that didn’t move, except the food.  Luckily, I found a copy of “Time Enough for Love” lying around, so I am rereading that until I find the Kindle, which I have not been able to do, because…

I had to get back to work after numerous days off.  Then, after work on Saturday, we went to a costume party.  In Forest Hills.  To those not on Long Island, this is the one part of Queens that does not look like Archie Bunker would live there.  A very nice colony of brick homes that may be a hundred years old by the looks of them.  Then on Sunday, we went to a birthday party.  For a two-year-old.  In Connecticut.  That pretty much killed the day.

So, today was our first day in about a week and a half without some official thing to do.  We mostly did some stuff around the house and went to Costco to get things we need.

But now we have things we must do.  Tomorrow.  The Building Department, in a fit of governance, has decided that, by building out the back of the house, to pool in our back yard will become a pool in our side yard, and this requires, well, requirements.  Simply put, we will need a variance, which we are assured we will get, after jumping through significant hoops and paying significant dollars.  More on this later.

Meanwhile, I am just hoping to rest up, get some of my energy back, and get this house in order while getting a few last items out of the other house.  Construction will start soon, supposedly.

Haven’t heard from the bank in a while.

And So it Begins

There are men outside my house right now, tearing down two trees of somewhat fond memories.  One dog is cowering in his pen amidst the sound of buzzsaws, while the other, conveniently, lies next to me on the floor in this room that just happens to be farthest from the destruction.

Why are these trees coming down?  Because we are renovating.  After years of false starts, we are finally started on the journey.  I will later, as time permits, give a synopsis of the last year or two that took us to this point.  For right now, there are numerous short-term deadlines, many of which have to be done so that the foundations can be poured before the freeze and the El Nino snowstorms.

Sunday, we take the dogs up the island to a two-week boot-camp with a professional dog trainer, where they will be joined by their cousin (sort of) Ollie.  This will be good for them and us, but it will most especially get them out of the way for…

Moving, a week from Wednesday.  We are moving just next door, to the house Mrs. Vanguard grew up in, where we will spend the coming months as this house is majorly gutted and rebuilt.  We still have a lot of stuff to get ready and having the dogs out from under will be better for them and give us much more flexibility.

The project, in a nutshell, is to build out on the first floor in three directions and also add a garage.  We will gain a new master suite, first-floor laundry and pantry, a new kitchen, nook, and dining room, and a usable-sized living room.  It is all an experiment in single-story living, which should help us immensely during our golden years.  More later.

For now, I have to make sure the younger dog hasn’t hung himself in frustration, then take some promised pictures of the destruction.

Should be a fun couple of weeks.