The finish work continues, with changes big and small all over the place.

Sheetrock is complete, including the wall over the tub in the downstairs bathroom

and the next step is putting a skimcoat of plaster over most of the new walls. Upstairs, they sprayed on a coating of plaster, and then ran trowels over every inch to give it a smoother, hand-applied look.

Here’s Hyla’s room with the new plaster:

We’ll be priming/painting the whole thing eventually.

The same treatment was done to the upstairs hallway, the guestroom, and our new room.

Downstairs, they decided to put the plaster on by hand rather than using the spray method. This is probably because it’s too difficult to cover and protect all the beams in the downstairs room. It might also be because they have to use the trowels anyway to get the right effect.

In the kitchen, one of the heat vents was moved so it’ll be under the baking table rather than in front of it

and then they were ready to varnish the kitchen floors!

This is the view from the old living room, into the kitchen:

and other view from the new living room, into the kitchen/dining room:

When they’re done with the plastering, they will sand all the existing downstairs floors and then apply a new coat of varnish over everything, so we’ll have a pretty consistent look. They’ve even matched the color of the new boards very well to most of the existing floor.

As you might be able to see in that last shot, the appliances have been delivered:

as have the kitchen cupboards. Now that the first coat of varnish is down in the kitchen, they can install the cupboards. They’ll put the next coat of varnish on after the cupboards are installed.

In the new living room, the replacement beam is up in the end wall, and it looks perfect:

Another detail: where possible, we’re reusing old doors from the house for the new rooms. In most cases, the old doors were odd sizes and, since the new door frames are standard sizes, the carpenters have done a great job of resizing the doors by adding or removing wood to make the doors fit perfectly. Here’s an example of a door that was made a little taller:

On our way in to the house, Michael noted the curve of the new clapboards at the corner of the front of the house:

Just a reminder that, as much as we’re doing to this house, it’ll still be our funky, uneven farmhouse.

Michael here.

Things are going to really start happening now, seems like. The kitchen cupboards were delivered today, appliances get delivered tomorrow, and the wood stoves should show up in the next week or so. The water’s hooked up but not turned on, the phone lines should be hooked up by the end of the week (same number as before, the plan is anyway), and the idea is still to be able to start moving things in around Feb. 1, we shall see.

Lots of last large details are starting to come together. The doors are up and done except for one small detail. Our news doors close completely, and close easily, and even lock, will wonders never cease.

The front of the house is tipped back from vertical now that it’s on a level foundation. That means the door, which is thick and very heavy, wants to open rather a lot– you can just let it go, and it opens itself– not strong enough to knock over someone standing just inside, but undeniably, the door opens itself. Another quirk for the house, a new one. The tilt isn’t nearly as severe as it appears in the above picture, luckily. The perspective is off in this shot, giving the door an odd familiarity that I realize is an echo of my sister Sara’s favorite old painting, Ivan Albright’s surrealist “That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do”.

Here’s the front door from inside:

The braces are still natural because for some inexplicable reason the maker forgot to plug the screwholes before they shipped it out. We called them and had plugs sent, I don’t think they ever showed up but the McKernon guys cut some plugs and set them and sanded them for us, which was nice. So we still have to stain the braces and varnish them but there’s no hurry for that.

Here’s the back door, which is also a 9-day wonder to us because it “closes” and “latches”, we feel like we’ll be living in a palace.

and

The pine floors are down in both the ell

and the kitchen/dining area

and

But have yet to be polyurethaned, that will be soon, has to be soon, I guess.

See that lonely innocent-looking vent way off in the middle distance? That’s where the kitchen cupboards will be and that vent is right where the baking table will be inset between two cupboards, and this is the first thing in the whole darn project that we just had to go to the guys and say “Sorry this isn’t going to work, it needs to change”. There’s been plenty of give and take before various things did (or didn’t) get done, but this is the first time we’ve had to say “nope” about something that was already over and done with. The change isn’t trivial, as it means trashing a good sized swath of tongue-and-groove flooring and redoing it, but we both agreed that we didn’t want to be standing on a register right in the prime cooking area, and who wants hot air blowing straight up at you while you cook, wafting your hair while you try to measure sugar.

The guys understood but also were worried about getting heat to that part of the house, in spite of our assurances that the house is going to be way warmer than it was. Everyone kind of came up with the idea at the same time of simply moving the vent closer to the wall, so it’d be directly under the baking table (which has an open-slatted bottom). So they still have to pull a fair amount of floor and redo it, but it means that now the vent will be hidden, but still there supplying heat.

One word about the floors, they used traditional square-head nails, which we didn’t expect and were very happy to see, it looks very nice.

A lot of doors have been rearranged, mostly stripped, and reused; even in cases where doors have gone back in their original locations they’ve been planed and trued and rehung. The door in the spare room upstairs (which used to open up to nothing, in the ell (was in fact nailed shut), and which is now a closet) has been given a new lease on life due to a really sweet trim job:

Other doors have been treated as nicely. In a couple cases doors have been widened with additional pine (who knew you could widen doors?) to fit a given jamb. We’ll be painting the doors oursleves, down the line.

The porch ceiling is finished, with beadboard, more pieces of wood in orderly rows.

and

Window trim is nearly all in place.

Note that the roof rack is still on the car not from the trip to Michigan for Christmas, but from Cape Cod, back before the October Rains started. For folks not local, October was the rainiest on record and the house, which was quite open then, took a beating, and a fair amount of water damage (picture glass globe ceiling fixtures with lightbulbs still in but filled with brackish water, like neglected fishbowls). McKernon ended up replacing the ceilings in two of the upstairs rooms, and most of one of the downstairs rooms, because of damage. This came in under the original contract, so we got some new ceililngs for free. On the other hand the old ones were plaster and the new ones are wallboard, we’d rather have kept the plaster but these are new and smooth, so it’s all about trade-offs.

For all the horrors of the October rains, December and January have been near-record warm and snow free. Stinks for everyone but us (skiing and skating have been nonexistent) but we’ll take it because it makes work so much easier. We haven’t even had to have the driveway plowed, and have been able to get into the containers as needed without shovelling, and it’s only been below zero twice I think and nowhere near the -20’s we usually get; I don’t think there hasn’t been a day that hasn’t got to at least 15 degrees, and often more like 35 or even 40. Amazing luck, so far. We’ll see how things go, it’s unlikely to last but that’s ok even if it means moving stuff back in during what might turn out to be the only real cold snap of the whole winter.

The end beam in the ell– when they put it back together someone must have thought it was going to be hidden because they bolted up a really ugly piece of lumber, it’s the horizontal piece right above the window:

the cosmetic fix is to take one of the leftover beams, cut it into a “L” shape, and fix that over the ugly but structually-supporting member, and will look nice. That should be done pretty soon too (geez we’re running out of “pretty soon”, it all seems so weird). Here’s the one that’s going in place:

Aha, it’s starting to drizzle. Rain at 10.00 on a January night in Vermont, see what I mean?

So I guess for now that leaves the floor in the new bedroom. We went for a “midnight” blue stain that turned out to be completely different from the swatch, which was obviously more grey than blue, there’s no grey at all in the Real Thing. That and the fact that the floor is knotty pine (which meant that the stain took thinly except on the knots, and so ended up very unevernly coated), it looked kind of shockingly odd:

We talked about what to do, maybe go with paint instead, or try to sand it down and start over with something else. In the end the color grew on us though, but the thin and uneven nature of the color still looked like heck, so we opted to have the guys put on a 2nd heavy coat of the same stain, we had to pay for the extra hours that took, but we think its going to look good. Not what we had in mind, but we think it’ll look pretty cool once it’s down and polyurethaned.

And anyway, it’s going to be a heck of a lot better than the ell in its old state, or for that matter how we live now. We thank our lucky stars for the rental, it’s worked out great, but 3 people + 3 animals + 5 months + 1 main room = ENOUGH.

This is kind of particularly messy with all the christmas/hanukkah presents still laying around, but it’s a fair representation of how things get around here if we don’t keep on top of cleaning. Anyone who knows Rebecca’s (and for that matter my) love of orderliness can imagine how ready we are for this to finally be done. See that in the back right corner? That’s a big beach umbrella and its anchor tube. As a rule we don’t store that in our main living area.

It’s time and it’ll happen quickly enough. Hold onto your bandwidth everybody because the next three or four weeks are going to see a lot of big changes, biggest since the move itself, and we’ll be bloggin’ it all.

Up until recently, the house has been very cold (the heater’s not hooked up yet). Betweeen the cold and the move itself, we thought we could escape the dreaded cluster fly invasion for a year (maybe the flies couldn’t find the house?).

Last week, though, in an effort to completely dry out the walls to make them ready for plaster, Robert et al brought in some huge propane heaters. The place is uncomfortably hot, for us anyway. The flies appear to love it:

Guess it’s back to spraying next fall.

Those of you who are just plain not interested in laundry chutes might want to skip this entry completely. Those of you willing to slog through it will find a treat or two in the following images.

Personally, I find the whole laundry chute very exciting because a) I’ve never had one before, b) I like the idea of not having to lug all the dirty laundry to the basement, c) it’s one of the few bright ideas we’ve had during this whole renovation process, and d) Hyla and I can’t wait to try tossing some stuffed animals down it to see what the ride’s like.

Enough. To the pictures.

In the basement, this is what the exit of the chute looks like today:

This exit is made of metal. Judging by the color, we think if may even be a scrap from our metal standing seam roof (Michael tells me that it’s actually probably a bit of flashing). We assume this will be boxed in by wood to finish if off.

Just upstairs, this is the view from the floor in the first-floor bathroom:

and the beginning of the chase that will surround the chute in that same bathroom:

Upstairs, the chute begins in the hallway closet. It’s a beautifully made box, with a lift-off lid on the top. Treat #1 for those of you who stuck with this entry is this: Hyla’s photo of the chute in the closet:

Sure, it’s a bit fuzzier than my usual picture, but I think it gives you the idea. That white board propped up on the top (on the left side of the box) is the lift-off lid. It’s a nice, straight shot from here to the basement.

My favorite part of the whole chute is this:

A little door that Charlie crafted for us in the upstairs bathroom. Open this door to drop wet towels into the chute that’s in the neighboring closet. I love the convenience of this, and I love the look of that little door. Perfectly matched to the style of the house.

And, finally, treat #2 (which really has nothing to do with laundry chutes): Hyla in the house, in her new pink jacket:

Yesterday, many of the interior doors went up, including the ones in the bathrooms and closets. Where possible, we’re reusing existing doors (from the old pantry, bathroom, closets, etc.), so, at the end of this, we’ll have a bunch of old doors that need hardware and a lick of paint, but at least we’ll have some privacy.

Here’s Hyla, all excited about the door to the new downstairs bathroom:

Note the clearance between the door and the frame for the soaking tub in the left corner of the picture. Just enough.

And here’s the closet door for that crazily-tipped closet in the mudroom:

It looks better to me now that the sheetrock is up and the door is in, but, then again, the front wall of the house looks scarily off-kilter now.

Speaking of entrances and exits, they’ve finally cut the holes for the laundry chute! The chute will go from the closet next to the upstairs bathroom, down through the downstairs bathroom, and into the basement.

Here’s a (dark and fuzzy) picture of the hole in the upstairs closet floor:

and the same hole where it enters the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom:

The chute will be made of a round, plastic tube, surrounded by a wooden “chase” (which I imagine will look like a wooden box around the whole thing, with an opening on each floor through which we can shove dirty laundry).

As for chases, the house will have several of those, including this one in the new bedroom, which will house the stove pipe coming up from the small woodstove that will be installed in the living room below it:

One big result of moving the house is that the front door is no longer one step away from the ground. We didn’t leave much in the budget to deal with this situation, partially because no one really knew how much of an issue it would be after the final grading was done.

Now we know. It’s going to take probably around four steps to get us from the first floor down to the ground.

For now, McKernon is building us a simple landing and set of stairs that will match the look of the deck/porch on the back. It’s one of the things we plan to work on more when we get to “phase 2” of the project.

Here’s a view of the beginning of that landing:

Hyla thinks we should have a slide instead.

Also last week, our new front and back doors were delivered and installed.

Here’s one of our McKernon friends installing the new back door:

The front door is a simple plank door*. The kind of door I’ve always wanted. The back door is also simple and has a window in it just like the old one that used to be there (the one you had to wrestle to open).

The new doors are beautiful — and the new hardware is about a thousand fold improvement over what we had before.

Unfortunately, they arrived unfinished (as we expected), and it was pouring out the day the doors were installed. A quick conversation with the doors’ maker convinced us to take them back down and finish them before they soaked up too much water and warped.

So, we lugged these (very heavy) doors to the rental house and then stained and varnished them.

* In an odd moment of coincidence, Hyla and I were reading Little House on the Prairie last night and we read the chapters where Pa builds their new house on the prairie, including a plank door that looks just about identical to our new door, except ours has metal hinges and a metal lock/latch.

Happy New Year to all!

We’re back from our holiday travels and rest, and we couldn’t wait to see what happened while we were away. What happened is the guys went to town on the sheetrock and we have what looks like will be some beautiful new walls (and ceilings) all over the place.

It’s hard to get a good view of the new mudroom/bathroom walls because there’s not that much room to back up and take a picture before you hit the door, but here’s what the angled wall of mudroom and bathroom looks like, from just inside the front door:

In that picture, you can see the doorway to the bathroom, and you can see the new sheetrock between the ceiling beams in the entry way. They did a beautiful job covering all the new plumbing installed in the ceiling for the upstairs bathroom (which is just above the downstairs bathroom, handily enough).

Upstairs, the new bedroom (in the ell) is completely sheetrocked, and mostly taped. When they’re finished with this room and the others, the next step will be a coating of plaster on all of the new walls.

Between the minor cracks from the house move and the water damage from drenching October rains (before the roof was put back on), many of the upstairs walls and ceilings were somewhat damaged. As of today, most of that damage is repaired with new sheetrock (which will also be covered with plaster). At it happens, these repairs also fix some of the old plaster that was soft or cracked. Although we love the old plaster, the new walls are going to look much better.

Here’s how the repairs look in the guestroom:

and in our old bedroom (Hyla’s new room):

I would show you how beautiful the upstairs hallway walls and ceiling look, too, but I just couldn’t get a good angle on it for a photo. Trust me. They look much better.

The real magic, though, is downstairs in the kitchen where we had those rotted beams. Between the new (old) beams, the new structural work, and the sheetrock, you can hardly tell that anything was the matter; things are looking so cleaned up and smooth.

Here’s the new ceiling at the entry to the addition:

In that picture, you can see the new “dropped” ceiling in the kitchen in the left side of the picture. It drops all of about 3 inches below the new beam. Could it look better? I don’t think so.

Here’s a picture of the entire dropped ceiling in the kitchen:

That’s the extent of it. Looks beautiful to me.

The dropped ceiling will be over the refrigerator (which will be up against the small wall on the right side of this picture), the wall oven, and some countertop. I wonder if anyone would even notice the change in the ceiling unless we pointed it out to them?

As you can see from this view of the kitchen (taken from the front wall of the house, in what used to be the living room/woodstove room), the entire floor of the kitchen has been taken up:

They floor needed to be replaced here anyway because of the mix of floor materials and levels in this area (remember, it used to be part kitchen, part bathroom, and party pantry, all with different floors), so they’ve apparently decided to rip up everything, strengthen the supports, and shim it while they’re at it. A level floor in the kitchen? Imagine that.

The new flooring in this room will be pine planks that somewhat match the old floor, but not completely. That’s fine with us since the old floor is pretty much a patchwork of different woods and colors (and directions) anyway. The new floor in the kitchen will extend into the ell, so we’ll at least have that much consistency.

Finally, in the basement, “Hyla’s Story in a Nutshell” got the sheetrock treatment, too:

While they were at it, the guys were kind enough to make a little framed doorway for her and install an outlet inside it so we can give her some light. Hyla’s already mentally decorating, in pink, of course.

Well, the house is now finally hooked up to power. The first sign was the power line strung from the pole across the street to the new pole on our property:

The next sign was the microwave oven the guys brought to the house so that they can (finally) have a warm meal.

And the last sign was the string of work lights on each floor.

With the power, the guys can be more comfortable, the furnace can be hooked up and started (after the oil tank is delivered, that is), and the whole place can start to feel more like a livable house, even if it’s still in quite a state of chaos.

Another big step to making the whole place more comfortable for everyone is insulation. Hyla was the first to notice the Pink Panther logo on the insulation packages:

Here’s what the new living room looks like with its insulation installed:

And here’s the cozy new bedroom:

With all that real insulation in the walls and ceiling, this could be the warmest, coziest room in the house (the old part of the house has minimal insulation and the upstairs, with no heat vents, has always been a bit, um, chilly, in the dead of winter). Add the heat we get from the wood stove pipe that will be going through the room and we might even get to sleep with the windows open all winter long.

The last kitchen window was finally installed this week, too:

This gives us a nicely lit corner in the kitchen, as well as a handy pass-through for serving drinks and snacks to those hanging out on the porch.

Also in the kitchen, work continues on the ceiling structure. Here you can see part of the support structure (which will be hidden by the dropped ceiling) to hold up the new beam:

Since the kitchen is being made of two previously existing rooms (the bathroom and laundry room), the floors were of all sorts of materials and heights/thicknesses. To smooth things out a bit, we’re having the existing floors of the kitchen area removed, and they will be replaced with new pine flooring (probably wide pine). Here’s what the area looks like with the just the sub flooring visible:

The old slate tile that used to be under the kitchen sink was also removed (when the sink and it’s old cupboard were removed) and that, too, will be new pine flooring that will continue into the kitchen. Aside from those two areas, we plan to leave all of the downstairs flooring as it was (with some patching in some areas, as needed).

The next step after the insulation is to put up the sheetrock. Some of this work began last week and I expect much more will be done in the new rooms this week.

Here’s the sheetrock in the new shower:

And in the office:

To continue the “sealing up” process, the little windows in the basement (over the laundry and workshop areas) have been installed:

These are more for ventilation than anything. They don’t provide much light and aren’t reachable by lowly people like me, but they’re there just in case we need them.

The utility portion of the basement (where the electric panel, oil tank, furnace, water heater, etc.) will go doesn’t have any windows. We had planned for windows here, but after the house was moved to the new spot, the grade just wouldn’t allow for windows.

Now that we have electricity, though, the area isn’t in the dark:

And Stewart says they will install some simple fans/vents so that we can get fresh air in the area when we need it.

Outside, the septic tank has finally been hooked up (I guess we were waiting for the power to be available for the final connections to be made) and has been covered by dirt so that it won’t freeze:

And McKernon has removed its portable trailer (which contained tools and the generator) so you can now see the entire front of the house, including it’s new clapboards):

To be able to move the trailer away, the guys needed to be able to have onsite electricity (check!) and to be able to store their tools in the house. This week, the new front and back doors should be installed, along with locks, so that tools and anything else in the house are safe.

The combination of electricity, insulation, walls, and doors is starting to make this feel like a “real” house, snug and ready to keep the elements out. There’s still a lot to finish, but here’s what the ol’ place looked like as of December 15. Not bad.

The guys have been busy finishing up all sorts of things inside and out to get ready for putting up insulation and wallboard (which will be finished with a coat of plaster).

As of Friday the 9^th, the roof is done, but the day it was completed, we got a load of snow so I don’t have a picture to show you. I’ll take a picture when the current snow melts or slides off.

On the deck, the railing along the far side complete:

There will be a shorter section of railing along the near side as well, and then stairs from the deck down to the yard.

While we were admiring the deck, we noticed that the supports look a little funny:

This is because the pilings were put in and concrete poured when the ground was very soggy from some significant rain. We’ve been assured that the pilings are very large underground and that, while this looks funny, it’s perfectly safe. Still, Stewart says they can probably do something to make it look better.

The porch now holds most of the remaining posts and beams from the ell deconstruction:

We’ll look these over with Stewart and Robert to select the best ones for the mantel behind the ell woodstove and the pieces that will frame the doorway between the ell and the main house. Our plan is to keep and reuse as much of the old ell as we can.

Inside, work continued on the plumbing, as shown in this shot of the plumbing for the sink in the downstairs bathroom:

By far the biggest inside project, though, is the reconstruction of the section of the kitchen ceiling that had to be fixed because of the rotted beams.

The rotten ends of the beams have now been cut away and a new (old) beam from another house has been installed across the ends of the original beams:

As you can see, the new beam is similar to the ones we have, but not exactly. The color and size are a bit different, and it’s smoother. It’s close enough – and much better than putting a dropped ceiling over the whole kitchen. There will be a small portion of dropped ceiling to cover the support structure between the new beam and the wall (from the beam to the right, as you look at the above picture).

We also had to figure out a way to support the ceiling/floor in the spot where the chimney used to be. In this case, the original beams were cut away at some point to install the chimney. The wall for the old pantry used to support the ceiling, but now that’s gone and the area is a hallway between the main house and the ell.

Here’s a picture of what the hole in the ceiling looked like last week:

Now we have a new beam that matches the new one in the kitchen (just a few feet away):

In the rest of the kitchen, framing is in place to support the new sheetrock that will cover the spaces between the beams in the ceiling. This will match the rest of the ceiling in the downstairs of the main house.