Garage Repair/Porch Addition

David has not only been working on the construction of our new house; he's also been working on quite a few other jobs over the past few months!  In this job, he worked with his friend Danny Barrett to repair a garage roof that was falling in and add a porch roof to an older home.

As you can see, part of the garage roof was already starting to fall in!

Scary!  This whole section of the roof had to come off and be rebuilt.

Here's a shot of the new framing.

Here's another view from the outside of the garage.

In addition, the homeowners wanted to add a porch roof.

Here's the porch roof as it was just framed.

Here's a picture where you can see the new porch roof along with the new garage roof. 
Later, the homeowners plan to add new siding to the entire house.  For now, they are happy that the garage ceiling is no longer about to fall on their heads! 

House Update: Sheetrock

Here are some pictures of the sheetrock after it was completed.

This is the dormer over the foyer.

Here's a closer look.  The sheetrock at the top of the arch is curved. 

Here is the fireplace (behind some scaffolding!) with a partial view of the french doors in the living room.

This is the back wall of the living room, with the french doors and arched window.

Here's the kitchen island.  (It's purple because that's a special sheetrock to use near water, since the sink will be in the island.)

Here's the tray ceiling in the master bedroom.

This is the bonus room.

Currently, most of the house is painted.  The heat pump has been installed, and the siding is up.  More pictures to come of those updates! 

The Attack of the Squirrel: A Florida Room Remodel

David recently completed a remodel of a Florida room at my grandparent's house.  The room was once actually an outside porch, but the previous homeowners enclosed it.  Unfortunately, whoever did the work didn't exactly do the most high quality job, and parts of the textured ceiling looked bad.

Also, a squirrel took up residence inside the wall.  The squirrel would run loudly through the wall at night.  Then the squirrel got brave, and actually dug a hole in the wall and would STICK ITS HEAD through the hole and look into the room.  That was the last straw for my grandma.  She decided something had to be done. 

This is the room from the outside.  It has four large sliding glass doors, one of which was shattered internally from an unfortunate incident with a rock and a lawn mover several years ago.  The squirrel would run across that cable and come in through a hole she had made in the boxing.

The whole end of the wall was torn out.  Inside, David found...... a squirrel skeleton..... and some baby squirrels.  David reframed the wall to have three windows instead of the four sliding doors.

The windows were installed, and the outside was wrapped and re-sided.

Here's the inside view.

New sheetrock went on the new wall.
My grandparents decided they were tired of the brick color showing, so they decided to paint the entire room, brick and all.  They chose this BRIGHT shade of pink.  :-)

We were a little scared of the color at first, but it actually goes well with the furniture, and my grandparents love it.  Also, the new end wall is MUCH better insulated than it was before, so the temperature stays a lot more stable.  They are really enjoying their new room!

House Update: Insulation

I know it has been a while since I've put up any pictures.  Things have been happening at the house, but the changes have been mostly inside the walls (wiring, plumbing, etc.) so the changes haven't been really obvious in pictures.  I was waiting around for a "big" change. 

Also, unfortunately the framer made some mistakes that caused the house not to pass inspection the first time.  He cut some serious corners with the housewrap, and left out some bracing that he certainly knew he needed.  When the house did not pass, he failed to show up to fix the problems.  David ended up fixing them all himself, which delayed us 2 weeks because he had to do the work on his own, while the framer could have done it quickly in one day with his crew.  We have yet to hear from this framer as to his explanation for not showing up to do the work, but it cost him his job of doing the siding in the future.  This framer has always done excellent work for David in the past, so we were shocked and extremely disappointed by his behavior.  Unfortunately, problems like this are all too common in the construction industry!  Luckily, David was able to fix all the problems and the house passed inspection easily the second time.

With the framing passed and the wiring/plumbing finished, it was time to start on the walls.  The insulation was completed last week, and we immediately started with sheetrock.  Right now, the sheetrock is up, and is being mudded.  I will put up pictures when they have finished the final coat of mud and it has been sanded. 

In the meantime, here are some pictures of the insultation stage:

Here's one insulated wall (the back of the laundry room, with the back of the electrical panel showing) with all the sheetrock mud just waiting for those walls to go up!

Part of the cathedral ceiling in the living room.

Part of the bonus room.....

.... and the other end of the bonus room.

In addition, David framed up the wall for the kitchen island....

... and sheetrock was delivered and stacked up all over the house! 

It looks a LOT different now!  More pictures of the completed sheetrock coming soon!!

House Update: Windows, wiring, plumbing, and hvac

We're now in the slow part of building.  Things are happening, but they are mostly inside the house and are not really obvious from the outside.

The windows are in now.



The back french door is in, but the transom above has not arrived yet.

This is the triple window in the breakfast area.

Most of the wiring is finished.  David and his friend Kevin did the wiring themselves.  Here you can see some of the recessed lights in the tray ceiling in the master bedroom.

One bathtub is in.

This will be a tile shower in the master bathroom.  David will do the tile.  We had a fixed shower head put in on the left, and a wand on the right.

The front door is in, but the sidelights have not arrived yet.

Most of the ductwork is in for the heating and air.  We used A&R to do the install.

That's it for now!  Lots of work has been done, even though it's not obvious from the road.  Soon we will be ready for insulation, and then sheetrock.  Thanks for stopping by!

House Update: Roofing is finished, dormers are on, plumbing started

The roof is now finished!  Before it was roofed, we had a major downpour every day.  Now that the house is in the dry, it probably won't rain for a month! :-)

There will be an arched window in that arched opening above the back porch....

..... and this is it!

Most of the house is now covered with house wrap.  It should be finished soon. 

As you can see, the 3 dormer windows are now up, too.

Here's a view of the front from the other side.

This is looking into the middle dormer from the inside.  It looks into the foyer.

Here's a closer view of the same thing.  The ceiling right above the window will be curved to match the arch.

This is the view from standing inside, looking out onto the back porch.  This is the same arched window from earlier, shown from the inside.  It looks into the living room.

The other major development is that the plumbing has been started.  This is part of the guest bathroom.

Here are the laundry room hookups.

More plumbing will be done later in the week.

That's it for now!  David has spent all day today setting some of the smaller windows.  Things are moving right along!  Thanks for visiting!

House update: Roofing has started, and stairs are in

The back of the house has now been shingled, and they are working their way around to the side.

Here's a closer view.  The color is called Williamsburg Gray.

The front of the roof has been covered with plywood, but they haven't started putting down the black tar paper yet.  The big open space down the middle is where one of the three dormers will go.  It will look into the foyer.

The other big accomplishment of the day is that the stairs are in.  They go up to the bonus room, which we are going to make into an office.

This is the view from the top of the stairs into the bonus room.  They got the floor down in it today, too.

Here's a close-up of the garage, with the bonus room window above.  Because of the way the house sits on the hill, it's a LONG way down from that window!  It's hard to tell from this picture, but when you are up there you are on eye level with the top part of the tree in the front yard.

Roofing should be completed this week!  Plumbing will also start tomorrow.  We lost a few days because of all the rain, but David is working hard to keep things moving along and stay on schedule.  We are still in the quickest stage of building.  Soon we will enter the stage where the more tedious work begins, like wiring, plumbing, floors, trim, etc.  That is when David is going to be REALLY busy, since he will be doing most of that work himself.  I'll keep updating when the big changes happen. 

Thanks for visiting!