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!!