The Plumber Is McDreamy (or is that McDrainy??)

The plumber came out today--yep, SUNDAY--and reconnected all the drains. He also ran a new vent pipe through the new porch roof, and cut out all the old piping we don't need. He must have wanted to take out his frustrations at the Vikings' loss this afternoon. By the way, this photo is taken where the crawlspace used to be. I think I'll need some before and after shots on here pretty soon.

This is some of the old piping he removed. Most of the copper is from the hot-water heat, which had to be taken out to reinforce the floors. It'll be replaced with PEX, which is cheaper, better, and easier to install. It's soooo 21st century! The other water pipes were galvanized, which gets crusty and clogged after fifty years, so I'll be interested to see how much better our water pressure will be. Mike's happy because copper brings in good money at the metal recycler, and he has almost a truckload!

Porch

All the porch walls are up, and the first roof rafter is on. I took this one out of the second-floor window. That's Dad in the driveway, being impressed.
This is what it looked like Tuesday afternoon.
The inside of the porch. That's the bathroom and sewing room windows looking out to...a wall. The stairs will go down straight ahead. The back door is behind the tarp. We still can't get it open.
This is what it looked like this morning. I stopped by after I dropped the boys at school. This was probably the driest part of the day; it's been pouring rain since 8:30. The carpenters are still working, though. They're reinforcing the dining and living room floors so they don't bounce. Nice and dry in the basement! The electricians were out doing their thing. They installed the main panel and the meter, but we won't have power to the house until the power company gets around to coming out and moving the line. Could be tomorrow, could be next week, who knows? It's the power company, they'll show when they feel like it.

Floor!

The cement mixer managed to miss every tree in the yard -- hooray!

Oooh, so pretty!

I took this one from the second-story window, looking down where the stairs will be. I wanted to get a photo before they got the roof on. It's a looong way down!

First day of kindergarten today! What a big kid!

We are ready for a floor. I was kinda hopin' they'd pour it today -- oh, well, there's always tomorrow, my friend.

More Progress

We have walls! The door will be here, and a window will be on the west side. The roofline will be fixed/added on Tues., weather permitting. Actually, baby permitting, since the lead carpenter's wife is due any minute.
The peak of the old porch roof will come off, and a shed roof will cover the whole thing.

I added this photo so you could see the size of some of the rocks they pulled out of the basement. This is what our house had been sitting on. It gives a whole new picture of "fieldstone". Can you imagine trying to farm around these suckers? Secondly, I think I'll need a draft horse to move them. (Of course we'll save them, we have FS*, remember??)
The floor is ready for the plumber to install the radiant heat on Monday. He'll put down a layer of foam insulation, then lay the tubing. With any luck, they'll pour the floor in the afternoon. Crossing my fingers!

*FS = Farm Syndrome: n. a state of mind in which anything and everything is deemed worthy of saving, regardless of its usefulness, value, or duplication. Usually associated with depression-era farmers and their descendants. Ex. "I'll save this dull, broken saw, even though we already have 12 in the garage, because you never know...."

Woo-hoo! Part 2

We got inside the house today! Woo-hoo! This is one of the worst cracks we found, but this is where the chimney runs thru the wall, so that was expected.
The kitchen wall is in the worst shape. The plaster has completely separated from the wall, and there are several long diagonal cracks running all the way thru it. This is what happens when your house goes from nowhere-close-to-level to level. The back door, also in this wall, DOES NOT OPEN. They took the doorknob out, then they pulled all the hinge pins out, and it still doesn't budge. We came in through the front door, which never used to close right before, and now works like a dream. Go figure.
This is the former door to the basement. It's out of square in two directions, and doesn't completely close. Almost every door in the house has this problem now. Apparently the floor is now square, and all the doors are now wrong. The door to the downstairs bedroom doesn't open at all. It's not a huge deal, and actually makes us glad we did the big project, because the house was shifting all that time, and we didn't know it.
This is as far as the boys' bedroom door will close. It's scraping the top of the frame, and then gets stuck. The windows I tried seemed to work fine, but I won't be surprised if some of them are out of whack.
Other than the door thing, the only cracks in the walls were just paint cracks. Wherever the drywall had been taped, the paint cracked. Easy fix. All the pictures and stuff is still on the walls, nothing broken. Yay!

Woo-hoo! Part 1

The carpenters started on the back porch today. They think they'll get it framed out before the weekend, but the roofline will have to wait until next week. Still no stairs -- I think that's waiting on the basement floor being poured, which is waiting on the plumber installing the radiant floor heat pipes, and he's waiting on the floor being cleaned up and graded by the concrete dudes, who showed up this afternoon. Got all that?



The new porch will be enclosed, and run all the way to the edge of the existing north wall. We're losing the bathroom window and the crummy sewing room window, yay! It'll also be heated, which is a vast improvement over the old porch, and there'll be an overhang over the door. So exciting!



The front yard is back to being a yard, albeit a bumpy, rocky one. The contractor was Not Happy with whoever sprayed the black waterproofing stuff on the foundation, because they went Much Too High, and now they have to re-grade the dirt higher to cover it up. He said at least it'll have very, very good drainage!