Work on the House Progresses

December 10th, 2007. Monday morning and work on the house is moving apace--there was a huge pallette of lumber delivered to the house before 7 am this morning. The block and brick foundation for the new bedroom, the new steps to the basement, and piers for the porch were all completed last week. Since it snowed last Wednesday/Thursday, and has continued to be overcast and wet the past few days, the backyard is now one big quagmire from the workmen tromping round. If the mud only stayed in the backyard I guess that would be okay, but it's gradually moving to the frontyard, being carried on the bottoms of shoes to the driveway and front walk (and a little inside the house) . The side yard near the street is clogged with piles of demolition debris and the varied flotsam of the construction trade. Pictures of the yard do not reveal the extent of the chaos. It's like the folks in New Orleans were saying after Hurricane Katrina...you have to personally witness the devastation to understand it. Well, our backyard isn't that bad, but you get the idea. The firm that we contracted to do the addition/renovation was the same that did our family room/kitchen/exterior about four years ago. The company is called Buildings Old and New, Inc. or simply BONI---which sounds amusing but they are really good and we were glad to be able to use them again. The remodeling industry in the greater Washington DC area is still red-hot, even though the housing market has slowed somewhat. Just getting a design/build firm to talk to is difficult and we were very happy with BONI on our last remodel. The owner and "chief" design/architect has a real flair for design and is frugal both in salvaging materials we can reuse and maintaining costs. And they work fast, something we'll appreciate even more once they've finshed and we've cleaned-up the yard.

Thursday 14, 2007. Hurricane BONI is still blowing. If only the weather had been like it was the past 10 months....dry.....instead of wet. But construction continues unabated and so does the mess. On a brighter note the framing has started. The floor and sides of the bedroom were in place last night when I took this picture from the backyard. The view from the street (the opposite side) will look like that shown in the scale drawing (see below).......eventually. According to our construction foreman, Jason, the framing for the bedroom and porch will be done by next week. There's a big winter storm predicted for tomorrow and I wish the roof were on when I get home tonight.....but it probably won't be in place yet. Work on the inside has also started, remodeling the old small downstairs bedroom into a walk-in closet and creating a new access for the existing bathroom. Removing the old lathe and plaster walls in these rooms has created another problem---dust. No matter the presence of dust containment, some dust still escapes to settle around the house and we spend a little time dusting and vacuuming every night, doing more house-cleaning in the past week than we normally do in a month. I'm not really complaining....we should house clean more regularly anyway.