We're back at it...

It's been awhile since we've added new pictures, but lots has been going on. We did a whole lot of finish work to the space above the garage in the spring. It got painted and mostly trimmed out. A friend of ours is living up there for a few months, so no pictures for now. We've also been working on other things as you can see. The house has got more siding up and also has been stained (at least more of it has, no thanks to me) Eben has been more willing to hire some hands to help around here and I am more than willing to hand over the paintbrush.


We've got the "new front" all stained, and have begun replacing all the windows in the old house. It's so great to get rid of the old aluminum frame windows. The kids have been watching and helping out and enjoying the process, espcially Zeb who is always willing to run out with his hammer to help out Daddy.

Can't you see that smile. Give the boy a power tool and he is so stoked.
The biggest undertaking of the summer has been the 8 ft extension of our living room space. Note the nice plywood wall that I had to live with while the demo of the old wall took place. Nice and aesthetically pleasing. Zeb was in heaven though with the ability to bang anything he liked.
So the old wall came down without a hitch, and more wood than you can ever imagine is now supporting what was once a 2 x 4 wall that had a very large untempered piece of glass in it. Thanks goodness that is now gone! I had a great plywood backdoor which I had to screw in and out every time we wanted to go outside. At least it kept out the bears!


The walls went up quickly. Eben never ceases to amaze me, orchestrating the building of about 4 custom homes all day and then coming home and working on our house in the evening and on the weekends. The guy has a lot of energy, thankfully!


And so here's what we have so far. A whole lot more living space and a soon to be amazing deck off of our master bedroom.
That window upstairs will soon be replaced by french doors. Eben and I are pretty excited about having a new deck up there. Good motivation, because there is still a lot of more work to be done.
And so the plywood wall came down and we are getting a feel for how great our new living space is going to be. Right now it's a tyvek tent, but it will soon have a built in dining nook, a couch, and well, just a lot of play space. (Maybe I shouldn't have put the word "soon" in there).
The ceiling of the new addition matches the old house with rafters and decking. It looks really nice.
I'm having fun planning our new kitchen and living room area, though who knows when all those plans will become a reality. It's just nice to see our house changing into something we have created. A lot of work though!

Let it snow!

Let it snow because we have heat and a mudroom! Hooray! We've got tons of snow and are loving it.


Here's the new mudroom which I love more and more each day. As you can see, it is being well used. We love our red cabinets, but hated the process of painting them. One coat of primer, 3 coats of red, one coat of black glazing and a clear coat later...they were done. Not an easy process.
It's amazing to have a place to put all our wet snowy clothes and boots, such a big change from the original house where there was nothing. And there's heated floors to dry the drips...what more could I want?
The stairs are finally done too!
Up, up we go to our new play room (for now at least) We still are working on paint and trim, but with the heat on, we love having some more space.
Eben finished the trim on the bathroom mirror this last weekend and we were able to put up the sconces. And so there it is for now.

And so it's been awhile.

We've been busy working on little things and though it doesn't look like much has changed from the pictures, we are finally enjoying some of our hard work. The siding on the front of the house is done and we have exterior lights, which is really great since where we live there are no street lights. Yes, I have not done any staining since about 5 months ago when I started, and yes, one day it will all be stained. People also often ask if we are going to reside the original house to match the new addition. Come on now...of course we are, just not a priority right now. The roofing for the mudroom is still not on, but the garage is all roofed. Soon all roofing will be done, at least that is the plan. And one of these days we will move that ugly white cabinet that belongs in the garage away from the front of the house. It's been there so long, I don't think we even see it anymore.
The entryway has a doorbell, which is cool, because we've never had one of those. We haven't told Elia about that yet, since Eben installed it last night. I just need to prepare myself for a solid 30 minutes of ringing I think. We are going to build stone steps up to the landing with those big square stones. Haven't quite finished designing that yet though.
What we love is that our new living space is now livable. Well, sort of. It was very livable until it got cold. It will be another couple of weeks before our furnace goes in and there is heat up there. We still have to finish staining the wood windows and doors, and also paint. We also have all the trim to finish...and the list goes on!
All windows and doors will soon be stained dark like this one, and it is pretty exciting to have a new bathroom.
I love that I can now park in the garage.
And that I have a new washer and dryer that is no longer right next to our living room. Even though there's lots of finishes to be done, it's so nice to enjoy some of our hard work. We just designed the mudroom furniture and have sent that to the cabinet guy. So in a few weeks our mudroom will be up and running. I am super excited about that! Just in time for winter.

Deadline is approaching!

So, my college friends and their families are headed here for a reunion in a couple of weeks. They will be staying with us, and so we need to have our new space above the garage livable. We've been working away and so here's where we are at...


Slate tile is all installed, and we are about 80% done grouting it. It looks really dusty in this picture.
Shower tile is done...I guess it just needs to be sealed. Boy was that a lot of work. Next time I am choosing LARGE tiles!
The bathroom floors are grouted and sealed! The electricians will be here tomorrow to switch power over to the new place and the plumber will be finishing things up this weekend! Hooray for progress!

Piece by piece...

So, it's been a busy summer around here. Eben is turning over his nearly 10,000 square foot home to his clients in a week, and we have been enjoying a summer of travel and visitors. So, our poor house is slowly coming along. We've been focusing on the inside for now. We've got some friends coming at the end of August for the weekend and have made that our deadline for having the place livable. Eben and I head upstairs a lot of nights after putting the kids to bed and work away. Oh the joys of a remodel!
Here's the shower which we are still working away on. I'm learning a lot as I go and am thankful for the tile we chose. Since it is not smooth and is more rugged looking, I don't have to be so perfect. Good thing, because I am far from expert at this. I just hope it stays on the wall!
Here's the bathroom vanity. Eben just installed the granite and the door hardware.
The wet bar area is pretty much done now too! I guess it still need the faucet and we are doing glass suspension shelves along that side wall.
Eb got some doors hung. We still need to stain them.
The glass door between the house and the mudroom is finally in. It really connects things and brings in a lot more light. This is the stain that all the wood trim and doors will have. We like the dark look.
So that's it for now. Hopefully in the next week we should finish our shower tile and maybe even the slate floors. Look out!

Elia's Ballet Graduation Class

Here are some videos of Elia's ballet graduation. The lily pads on the floor are their fairy houses. She loves ballet class and has a big show this Sunday where her class is buzzing bees.

Working on the finishes and the roof...

Here's a look at the roof. The eaves and the whole mudroom roof will be metal, as you can see. (The metal roofing is yet another free thing Eben has acquired) The rest of the roof will be comp.

We have been hard at work inside and outside these days. Here are the boxes of shower tile we'll be using. We were lucky enough to get it all for free. I really like it!
This is the bathroom vanity. We have some free granite which Eben has been hauling around for a couple years now. It will work for the counter here and in the wet bar area. We'll just have to have it cut and finished in a few places.
I've been working on the slate floors. You can't see the color very well here, but it's nice. It's not too hard and I feel like I am learning some of the tricks of laying it. I'm glad we got the 16's...it is going pretty quickly, but is rough on the hands!
Here's the wet bar cabinets (minus an upper one that isn't installed yet) The open shelves on the left we designed thinking that one day we might want to put a bar fridge in there. So, they can be removed if necessary.
The walls and ceiling have paint on them all ready. We will just be adding a couple accent walls and rerolling the walls when we are all done.