Drying it in

When I last checked in on Day:1 (three days ago), they had ripped off the roof, framed in the new exterior walls, and added one truss. By the end of Day:2, they had turned their attention to how they were going to connect the new space with the old space. Some of these pics probably won't make a whole lot of sense but I'll try to explain the best that I can. Some I made notes on, some I didn't so just bear with me. I've included the "plans" so that you can orient yourself.
So this first photo is taken from the doorway of the original master (which will become a hallway opening and Jonas's room). You can see that they have removed the small closet that was there so that they can frame in the other end of the hall opening.

By the end of Day:2, the outside of the house looked something like this. The roof trusses were up and the sheathing was on it, and they had started adding the sheathing to the the walls. They were also beginning to frame in the new porch extension. I guess that seems like not a whole lot for an entire day's work, but there were many many things that had to be figured out and measured and planned for so that things could go on.

Day: 3 arrived and they started really framing the porch. Now I was out running errands so I missed this part. If I had been home I would have caught a little error that's showing here. I'll explain more about that later.
Some of you have asked how things are going living in the house while all of this is going on, and the answer to that is well, it's interesting. For example, they removed the ceiling and all of that jazz from the downstairs portion of the addition area which meant
that my dryer vent was removed. We have a lot of laundry here,
so after just a few days of construction things were getting pretty tight on the whole clothing thing so being as creative as we are, we engineered a solution to the problem of venting all that hot wet air into the construction area. With just a little well placed duct tape and a partially opened window, we vented the dryer. YAY, now we can have clean clothes again. The lack of laundry did leave me wearing a dress until all of my jeans were washed, but Joy said that I looked festive so I guess it wasn't all bad. :-p

Speaking of Joy, I was out running craft fair errands while they were framing the porch so when I came home and they were almost finished I noticed this glaring error. I guess you can't see it very well in this picture but I noticed it right away and immediately hated it. The porch did not go all the way to the corner of the house. They did it that way on purpose to allow for trim and gutters, but I wasn't having it and when the contractor saw it he was right there with me in the no, no, no, this can't happen, let's do this instead. I felt kinda bad but the guys were really good sports about it and quickly adjusted things
so that it did go all the way to the edge. 

Earlier that morning they had cut open the master and started framing. I had a little bit of a "Money Pit" moment when I was grabbing a few forgotten things from the master bath and I walked out of the door to see that the wall had been removed and I was staring at construction workers first thing in the morning. Hi guys! (Yes, I had clothes on.) So anyway this pic is obviously from later in the day and you can see the framing starting to take shape. The pic on the left is from the hallway in, and the pic on the right is from the new master out. I did think to label that one so that you can see what you're looking at. The door for the bathroom looks really small but it's only the angle, it's the same size as it was before. It's also going to be a pocket door so that changes things as well.

Speaking of the new master, here are some shots from within that area. The first one here is the front of the house which will be the bedroom part. It does look really narrow, but it's the same size as the one that we had before so we're used to it. We only go there to sleep and hide from the kids anyway so we don't need a ton of room. We do gain a little additional room due to the face that we now also get a hallway to the bathroom so I guess there's that. On the other end of this is the area that will be the closet and Henry's new office. If you look really closely you can see the stud that looks thicker than the others, that's where the wall will divide the two spaces. It also looks tiny but it is what it is. Our goal with the addition wasn't to have huge sprawling rooms, it was just to give everyone their own dedicated space. I know that some would say oh you have five bedrooms but they are all small, and that is correct. The master and Kinsley's room are the biggest (I'm sure we'll hear about that later) but even they aren't huge. The simple facts of the matter are that the footprint of the house is only so big and that expanding that footprint (which is an option that we previously considered) would have taken way more money than we wanted to

spend. Other facts about this are that we totally love our location and our neighborhood and even our crazy neighbors, so we didn't want to move. We actually did check into moving and let me tell you that a decent five bedroom house in any kind of decent location in Franklin is waaay more than we wanted to spend or than we will have invested in our house after all of this. Even a really crappy outdated house (like this one was when we bought it) was more to start than we have invested in ours so far so for all those who wondered, that's why we did what we did. Anyway, back to the addition.
By the end of Day: 3, here's where we are. The photo above shows that the hall closet (that little part jutting into the room) and all of the other interior walls up there have been framed. This closet will take the place of the one that we ripped down on the other side. No we couldn't leave it because it was in the way of where the bathroom door needed to be. (Refer back to the "plans" above if you're not sure.) They also added plywood over the hall opening to keep the cold air from rushing in.

There was a little additional framing done downstairs. It's kinda dark, but you can see that they have framed in a new closet for Colin's room as well as new walls on top of the lip left from the cement blocks that formed the garage. Previously there were walls on that lip, but they framed them in such an odd way that you couldn't hand shelves or anything on the wall so we ripped out the old ones and had them add these new ones. This will also allow us to have some hella thick insulation in there so no more temperature fluctuations when the sun goes down. We're also getting a tankless water heater so this closet area will make more sense.
So here we are on Day:4 and the outside of the house looks a little like this. They have boarded up the windows and wrapped the house in plastic to keep it dry. I've also posted a pic of the back of the house but it's not really very exciting. The roofers are due to be here this morning. The dumpster is full and I'm sure the contractor will make a call to have it swapped out because they still have to remove the siding and replace it with vinyl.  I'm not really sure when that's scheduled but I presume that it will not be until after the holidays. Aside from the roofers, I have no idea what's going to go on in the house today. We really liked our framers and were sad to see them go. They did great work, they were very polite, and they were fast. They didn't even mind our random questions and changes and gawking. Henry will be taking the kids to our parents's houses while he and I attend a craft fair this weekend. (That'll be another blog post all to itself I'm sure.) I'm a little nervous about it as I don't want to bring everything back home but I also don't want to sell out on the first day. Given those choices, I'd rather have the latter but in any case I hope that I do well enough to be invited back next year. So if you guys need something awesome to do this weekend, hit us up at the Centennial Craft Fair in Franklin. ~Kellie~