in which the porch is finished (a long time ago)

You may remember, or not, that last year we were working on our downstairs back porch.  It's been quite a while, so here's a refresher:

This is what it looked June, 2010 (and, for that matter, when we bought the house):

(will someone please feed that skinny skinny puppy?!)

Then came mid-July, 2010.

The rollaway dumpster has come and gone, and Jeff and I have reduced the porch to this:

(why yes, that is dirt.  no basement under the porches.)

Leveling and making the floor took so much time.

Here is the porch in September 2010:

(for the record, I hate lag-bolts.  those suckers are hard. to. turn.  

...even with a socket wrench modified to be 2 feet long.

Make Leverage your Friend.)

A month later, the insulation guy has come, we've installed the subfloor and the ceiling and the extra structural supports (don't even ask) and things are starting to look put together:

November = windows!!

(and snow, apparently.  not ready for that again.)

In One Weekend in December, 

Jeff and I both attended a Christmas party and installed a floor.  It was big fun.

(and though we threatened to do both in one night, that didn't happen.)

Oh, yeah, it looks like the sheetrock guy came, too.  Jeff, although he can do it just fine, hates sheetrocking - and is totally willing to pay someone to do in a day what would take him a month.
(I wholeheartedly agree...)

Then followed lots of other installations:  we lugged in the freshly sandblasted and repainted radiator and hooked that up to the piping Jeff plumbed through the basement wall, installed wall racks, finished wooden sills, baseboard and trim, lightening, etc.  phew.

~~~

This Very Weekend,  I finished hemming the second IKEA curtain for the South window, and we're finally calling things finished.

Actually, we've been calling it finished for some 8 months now or so, but the porch is now settled in and well and happily used.

I have to say, this is one of my favorite places in the house just for its user-friendliness and order and SPACE, and the fact we use it more than once, every single day.  We went from using the 4x4' vestibule between the door and the kitchen for shoes/boots/coats in the winter, to now having a full room, and it's spectacular.

Someday soon I'll show you the Last Place Left to remodel...  you'll see why it's last, but I'm just as excited to do it as any other place we've done.

doors and floors

 before

~

during

(was weird to have the installer in the house
but behind the "lead-paint shield" -ha-..
he's in the kitchen with me, but not...)

~

after

~

before then after:

~
and the floor...

it would have taken one long day, but we split it into two,

leveling the floor and laying tile (snapping tile?) one day,
then grouting the next afternoon,

since I found my all day meeting that day was truncated to a half.

Now, for the next week, until the grout is stain-proof, we walk around the front to get to the attached garage in the back.  There's a huge mess of drippy snowy coats and shoes by the front door (since we're not set up for coats/shoes/boots/hats/gloves out there), laundry and dishes are piling up, the girls have spent more time than usual playing legos and elaborate games in their closets (?!), Christmas decorations are still in the basement...but,

the. floor. is. in.

phew.

Hope your week includes a sense of accomplishment, too!

are you bearing with me?

paint on the walls, paint on the window trim, paint on the doors,
paint on the ceiling, paint on the door frames, paint on the dog
(how did he get paint on his chest, and no where else?!)...

Good thing this is low-VOC or we'd be fumigated out of our home.

wednesday (or tonight): bring tile in from garage to warm up for 24 hours
thursday: door install (not by us - it's someone else's fault if they're not installed correctly, thank you.)
thursday evening: electrical finish (by Jeff.  he's not scared of electricity like I am.)
friday: tile install (yes, by us.  supposedly it's Easy.  we'll see about that.)
next week: tile cures (we'll be using the front door for a week), trim finish
then: install trim and radiator (heat, heat, heat!)...
finishing with the best part: moving everything out there!

(I can't wait to blog about yarn and sewing and the home and the girls and the dog again someday.  Someday!!)

thanks for sticking around!

what is this normal of which you speak?

It does truly seem (to us, as well as to readers of this blog) that this home project is an all-consuming thing.

and it is.  pretty much all our "extra" time, energy, and thoughts go to those 70-some square feet stuck on the side of our house... and I'm so tired of it.

More really does go on around here, I have to remind myself..  the girls amaze me.  Here's a random sampling of the girls' days from the past fortnight or so:

- made a "newspaper"
- read tons of books and magazines (-K)
- spun paper shapes and colors on top of a gyroscope to see what different things would look like
- did puzzles ("I'll put all the states in order from biggest to smallest!" - g)
- played games
- played games on the computer
- practiced the piano
- made cranberry sauce all by herself, but wouldn't eat it, not surprisingly ("tastes like licking the top of a 9-volt battery" - K)
- played outside
- designed and ran a "store" (-g, w/ help from K)
- helped make pie(s)
- helped clean and pick up
- watched a robot race
- watched a mini 3-D printer running
- watched adults having fun with machines and building and crafting
- played at the gym child care
- watched some of "Emma"
- planned and created some of their own art projects
- .....


okay, okay.  Lists are helpful, now I feel better.

We're SO close to the end of the porch project; I feel like the next couple weeks I'm just going to hold my breath and push through, then that will be it and we'll be free!  Oh yeah.  and this holiday thing.

On to December and all the chaos there-in!

in which strong men install lovely windows

They were there when I came back from walking the dog in the morning...

at noon things looked like this.

and it's educational!

The installers were finished by evening, this is the next morning...

this big center window makes me so excited... 

I can't wait to sit out there on the porch and watch the girls outside

(me in the warm, they in the cold!)

not only are the windows lovely from inside and out, with them and a small space heater out on the porch, then temp holds steady at 50 degrees overnight!  (aren't insulation and thermal windows awesome?!)

now to teach the children that the outside no longer equals the porch, and they can't leave that outside back door open like we used to!

tiny steps - east porch

Things really are still moving along ...

(I think I say that a lot about this project.  I feel I'm being a bit defensive.)

This window won't be white for long - it's primed for the green exterior paint all our windows are painted on the outside (behind the storm windows).

Jeff's been spending evenings (long evenings) in the basement. 
...such tedious work for such little things, but it has to be done - stripping window parts for re-painting and such. 

There's long term scheduling beginning to be set - windows and soon doors and walls..  the end is in sight, but the terrain is very flat...  one foot in front of the other, and we'll keep moving forward!

I'll be leaving the stripping to you - east porch day 97

While we wait for the (new) window guy to come for measuring, lots of little things are going on in our back porch.

Jeff spent all last Saturday stripping this window trim, which we didn't do with our very first home project, 9 years ago: the kitchen.

I cleaned a ceiling fan, and baked, and did lots of dishes.  We chatted through the plastic.

The double hung windows themselves (originals to the house) are at Beisswengers, awaiting re-glazing.  Re-glazing windows (like drywalling walls) is something that Jeff's done before, and does a good job, but we've long ago decided that the money spent for the professional to do it is well worth the time saved by not having to do it ourselves.

The stripper we use for the windows and the trim is wonderful, no VOCs, no horrible smell - called Smart Strip.  This, although expensive ("you get what you...") is wonderful wonderful stuff, we highly recommend it.


~~ the weather has been so beautiful this week, we're trying to get out as much as possible.  I've spent a lot of time in the garden, so hopefully I'll have a nice little tour of our fall garden soon!

over our heads - east porch day 88

Whilst installing this, Jeff would have been very happy had I decided we didn't need lights on the ceiling.  Since he already had the boxes up for them, he decided the pain of cutting very precise circles would just have to be done.

Now imagine this light blue (haint blue, as all good porch ceilings should be) and add a couple schoolhouse lights...  getting there!

how 'bout I just close my eyes and point.

Some days, there are just too many decisions to make.

 ("but what classes do you really want to take most?")

(and I think I'm going with dark.)

oooh! foamy!! - east porch day 77

I heard the air compressors start up in the big white truck, that I didn't notice parked next to our house until then.  ...which only means one thing!  Insulation!!

SO VERY EXCITING!  All that's left now?!

Floor, Ceiling, and Walls!!  That's it!  

(wait.  and windows, but we're not doing those ;)

You see the ceiling on the floor there.  Hopefully it will be where it belongs, about 9 feet higher and all flat-like, in about 36 hours... assuming the girls behave so Jeff can install it whilst I'm at an all day meeting...!!

Hope you have an exciting weekend, too!

stalled - east porch day 75

So we've run into a little... issue, here.

Actually I feel worse for Jason the insulation guy than us, I mean, it is his livelihood and all.  We're just waiting to finish a porch.  Jason's insulation machine broke down when he was here last week.  He was all set up, started to go.  A bit later there was a knock at the door, with him profusely apologetic about having to be finished for the day, and longer, so he could get the problem fixed.

Tomorrow will be a week, we're still waiting to hear from him.  (He did warn it would be this long.)

So we wait.  Jeff did some electrical and caulking and cleaning up on Saturday, but we're all starting to get a little stir-crazy to keep going with this.

The biggest part of my crazy?

This:

(No, not the messy kitchen, although that's a big part of it.)

That window on the left looks out into the porch, and into the backyard.  Right now, we can't see a thing out the back (our main yard area).  Okay, I could take the plastic down, but then he'd (or Jeff'd) need to put it back before they start again, so I'm just living with it.  ...so annoying to not be able to see out there, and not get any light from it.


On the good news - Jeff talked with another window installer last night, who said he was only 4-6 weeks out.  So that's awesome, if we plan on going with them (decision to be made upon getting quote).  Plus they could do window and door, which would save us the step of finding a door installer.  I'm ready to go pick out the floor, and learn how to put it in!

and so it goes, with having chunks of your house under construction...!