Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Happy Birthday to Me

Today, I had a birthday. One of the ones that ends with a “0”

And demolition started on my house. It was awesome.

As my IRL friends have heard me saying for months, this is the last big planned renovation that we want to do on my kid-hood home. Back porch will be demolished (roof stays), we’re putting on a big ‘ol deck and we’re taking what used to be the formal dining room and making it the new “family room” or TV room.

It’ll be great when it’s done. I’ll try to document as much as I can here, but I’m out of town for the first two weeks of June (eek!) so I’ll do the best I can. Meanwhile …

Here is what the back of the house looked like before we started anything. It’s the layout I always remember, although apparently the stairs were re-done when I was a kid.

before_exterior.jpg


Some interior shots of the enclosed back porch …

beforeSwall.jpg

beforeNwall.jpg

beforehouse.jpg

My parents insist that they used the back porch all the time. I remember my mom sleeping out there occasionally when I was a kid, before the house was air-conditioned and it was the hottest part of the summer. Personally, I always felt like when it was warm enough to use the back porch, there was so little air circulation out there that it was stifling on the porch.

We’re gonna fix that.

For the first day of demolition, I’d say we really only had one surprise. Ants in the far wall, center post. Yuck-o.

0524intfarwall.jpg

Beyond that, it was just kind of cool to watch the back porch melt away. Demo is loud, but it’s fast. A lot got done today.

0524stairs.jpg


The stairs were one of the first bits to be altered.

0524stairs.jpg


If you look at the ground in this next picture, you can see that the AC unit is already gone. This pic was taken at lunchtime.

0524intNwall.jpg


And a look at the outside, also at the lunch break.

0524extNside.jpg


So that was pretty much it from opening day. I’ll try to update periodically, but I’m also planning to put lots of pictures HERE, on my Flickr account.

4 comments:

Donna Lee said...

Happy Yesterday Birthday to you! I love the smell of construction. All that new wood smells as good as unused yarn.

I was much more restrained at MDSW. It was my first year and was very spur of the moment on Saturday. We did buy some of that honey, though. Cranberry and Snowberry (not sure what kind of berry that is but the honey is delicious).

Sarah said...

A belated happy birthday! (Not sure what rock I was under yesterday that made me miss it!)

Nice to see that the big project has begun. I take it you worked out all the permit difficulties?

Jenn said...

Happy belated birthday! Enjoy the demo, it is fun! Hopefully the ants are the last surprise you'll have!

elementalfibers said...

Oh, happy belated birthday!!
Best of luck with the construction project! At least you can keep using your house, pretty much.