DAY 25 - Time Bandits!

Remember that old movie called Time Bandits? It's one of my all time favorite movies!

Anyway, in the movie the main character is a boy named Kevin. At one point he is in his bed at night when his wardrobe bursts open and a Knight on a horse jumps out and then rides through his bedroom wall. Except the wall was no longer there and his bedroom opened directly into a forest!

This is the feeling I got when I got home last night to find the wall between the family room and the new addition gone. It's weird to stand in the new addition and look towards the family room. It's like you're staring into another world.

Here is a picture looking the other way.

So yes, the wall is out and we now have a huge family room area. The new addition is a step up so gives a nice separation to the two areas while still being one. They also removed the windows in our living room and powder room that would have been looking directly into the new addition.



A couple of interesting things that took place. Prior to removing the wall, they really sealed up the family room with plastic. Looked like a scene out of a disaster movie about plagues.


The other thing that happened is that we had our first large injury of the project. The other day, when they were insulating the first floor and getting ready to lay down the subfloor, Papa Brown went to go into the new room. He mistook some sort of paper covering for the subfloor and stepped on it and fell through between two of the floor joists. He's got a lot of scrapes and scratches as well as some big bruises (we can't show you wear as this is a family blog). He's also hurting a little bit (okay, a lot).


Going forward, when it's our turn to start the work he's just going to point where things go and we'll do the work.

So, today they will move upstairs to the bathroom and bedroom. They'll be removing the window in the bathroom that would be looking into the new master bathroom as well as removing the window in the master bedroom and framing in a door. They'll also close off the last portion of the second floor and put in the new window. Once that's done, the new addition will be fully enclosed. Next week they'll only be working on the outside (finish roofing, siding, gutters, etc...). Then at some point they will clean up the yard, put down top-soil and seed it.

DAY 24 - FLOOR!! WE HAVE A FLOOR!!

Big day! The sub-floor on the first floor was insulated and installed. We now have a floor.


They were going to knock out the wall separating the existing family room and the new room, however we had another leak. Again, it was due to a gap between the house and the existing family room. As you know, the existing family room was an addition to the house. When the siding was removed, it left a small gap and this is how water was getting in. Apparently when they started roofing on Tuesday, they started in the middle of the day and knocked off early due to the heat. Nobody checked the weather report and they thought there was only a chance of rain for Wednesday. They were correct in that there was a chance...an 80% chance! Well, they did quickly resolve the problem, and it was very minor but with the rain they didn't want to take out the wall between the additions.


So they got the floor down instead and will be taking the wall out today. Tomorrow I believe they'll take out the bedroom window and part of the wall to frame in a new door as well as remove the windows in the 1st floor powder room and the one in the living room.

The plumbers finished up and installed all the pipes, completed the shower and put on an outdoor spigot. Once we are done with the inside (next couple of months), they'll come back out and set the toilet and sinks for us.

DAY 23 - PLUMBING!

Plumbing has started. A lot of work was done yesterday and the plumbers didn't leave until 9pm. They arrived again this morning around 7am and had to run a few lines and would be done. The inspector should arrive later today to sign off on it. The plumbers will return again when it's time to set the fixtures and will take care of that for us.




Say goodbye to this wall. They are supposedly taking it out today!




Stay tuned for more flooding issues as I just had a call from Alexis (7:45am) and there is some more leaking.

DAY 22 - Continued

Here are pictures from the work done on Monday. See my previous DAY 20 post for further information.

DAY 22 - AIR!! GLORIOUS, WONDEROUS AIR!!

The A/C is back! After two weeks or so without it, it has been hooked back up, recharged and is running well! Granted the weather's actually been pretty decent the last few weeks temperature-wise, it it a bit muggy in the house. This will really help, especially seeing as today it's suppossed to get up into the upper 80's.

Other work done: the sliding glass door is in and a portion of the new siding has been put on. It's really starting to take shape.

Other work NOT done: once again the plumber did not show. He better be there today as we really want to start putting the basement back together.

Sorry for lack of pictures...I forgot the memory card from the camera. Will try and update later today or tomorrow at the latest.

Day 20-21

Not a lot of work over the weekend. Kristen's dad (with a little bit of help from me) ran the electric for the A/C unit. The plan is today to have both the plumber and the A/C guy get the ducts run and pipes put in. We've got our fingers crossed as these two guys are somewhat delaying our job as other jobs they've been working on have had issues. If we're lucky, they'll have it all done by Wednesday and we can start putting the basement back in order. Alexis and Courtney also helped out by getting down in the crawlspace and cleaning it up. They were a great help!

DAY 18

Not much was done yesterday. The plumber and a/c guys did not show (they said they'd show either Thursday or today) so there couldn't be much done. Still raining so that is slowing down work on the roof. A little bit of gutter work was done and not really worth a picture.

The plumber and a/c are suppossed to be there today. They're going to be tripping over each other I think, but hopefully will be able to get it done today.

DAY 17

Not much of a post today. Seems the plumber did not show up so the rest of the crew couldn't do much. They were able to set one of the new windows. They then put the drywall up on the second floor for us so we'd be ready to begin.


The crew won't be able to do much until the plumber and a/c guys run their stuff. They also can't do much with the roof as it's been raining here.

Guess it was a good thing we had the water issues when we did. This morning, around 3-3:30am, we had a massive storm go through and it dumped over an inch of rain in the span of a few hours. We'd have had real mess with this one.

DAY 16

The issue with the flooding has been temporarily resolved. It rained again yesterday evening and there were no issues. Here is what was rigged to fix it for now.


Hopefully once the outside is done and all the new gutters are on then we won't have any issues.

Other work done yesterday involved framing of the vanity's and the closet that will be in the new bathroom.


The also insulated behind and set the shower in place.


An interesting aside...When I got home I found out the garage door would not close. It was rubbing towards the bottom of one rail and wouldn't close. After 1/2 hour and taking a bunch of things apart, I have Alexis to thank for figuring it out. She said "dad, the door doesn't look straight". I took a close look at the entire door. Turns out that when they took the shower out of the garage, they had to unhook the garage door from the motor. They then had to push it all the way up as it would have a little bit of an overhang in the front when it open. The first roller on each side of the door actually should be in a separate track from the rest. When they pushed it back, one of the rollers came off that track and ended up on the other track. This put the door at an angle and wouldn't close. Quick fix and all is working now.

THANKS TO ALEXIS!

DAY 15 - DISASTER STRIKES AGAIN!

The day started out uneventful. The roof was "completed" and tied into the existing roof. Tyvek was wrapped where the flooding issues from Friday happened and in preparation of the new siding going on.


Then around 5pm it started to rain again. Somewhat heavy. No leaking in the family room so that issue appears to be solved (though we are still waiting to hear from the builder on what he's going to do). Later that night, around 8pm I went down to the basement. Here's what I found.



Water came in this window and flowed down the wall.




Here's where I think the culprit is. This small portion of the existing roof had the gutter removed. Water looks to have run down this slope....



...then the water pooled in this spot....



...went through the vent that we were required by the municipality to put in...



...and straight into the window.



It's an old window and not sealed very well. When it was a window well, we never had any issues with it, but since they've removed the well and done some work, well... you get the picture. We also needed to move the fridge and freezer we have down there so the plumber can get to work, so guess this just made us do it sooner.

Water leaked into a couple of rugs/carpet remnants we had down. Hung those up to dry and we'll see if they can be saved. Checked this morning and the de-humidifier and fan we had running all night seemed to soak up a lot of it.

Don't know what the builder will do (or even if he's willing to) since nothing got damaged. However, this is twice now and they are calling for rain just about every day this week. He better do something.

SMALL UPDATE - SHOWER

Third times the charm! We chose a shower and had to have it special ordered due to the door we wanted for it. The first two showers were damaged by the trucking company. The store we ordered it from (Beacon Supply) was very accomodating and kept us informed of the issues. They hired a new trucking company to pick it up and low and behold the third shower arrived undamaged! It is now taking up a large portion of the garage.

DISASTER STRIKES!!!

DISASTER!! As you know from the previous post, the roof was framed. Friday night Kristen and I were going to a friends house for happy hour. Her parents had come over to watch the girls for the evening. It decided to rain that night.

About 6:30 or so, Kristen's parents arrived. We talked for a bit and then we got ready to leave. Just then some heavy rain came. Next thing we know, the roof is leaking in the family room!!! We knew this couldn't be from the family room roof as we had just replaced the roof about 2 years ago.

So in the rain/thunderstorm, Kristen's dad and I ran up the ladder onto the roof of the family room to find the problem. We found it. Turns out that the builders had removed the gutter from the second floor of the house. No problem as the shingles overhanged by and inch or two so that the water would run off and drip onto the roof of the family room and then into the gutter.

HOWEVER...where the new addition met up with the roof of the existing house, the builders had cut a portion of the shingles flush with the back of the house. The water was running off the roof and straight down the side of the house. This then went right behind the flashing on the roof of the family room and allowed it to drip directly under the roof, through the insulation and through the ceiling of the family room.

As you can see, we were able to rig a tarp and some paper to redirect the flow and this seemed to fix the issue. However, we now have brown spots on the ceiling. Will keep everyone updated on what the builder has to say about that.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Don't forget you can click on the pictures to enlarge. Definitely do this on the last picture to see exactly where the water was running down.

DAY 12

The roof was framed on Friday. Tied it into the existing roof and framed. Did not put the roof on.



EDITORS NOTE: Do not let your kids read the next bit!! On a side note, the removed a roof vent and it was clogged with a birds nest and some baby birds. Birds were so young they didn't even have feathers. They placed the vent on the ground. I've not checked it so don't know the situation, but I think we all can guess. Sad day. We are NOT telling the girls about it. I think the same will happen when they remove the other vent.

Day 11

This window will be pulled out and the wall enlarged to insert a door and it will become the new entrance to the master bath.
Second floor, which is the new master bathroom, was framed yesterday. They did not start the roof yet as they need to remove some shingles from the existing roof in order to tie in the new roof and there were possible showers last night and they didn't want to leave the roof open. Still calling for showers today so don't know what they are going to do.
Looking in the pictures you can see there are two square roof vents on the existing roof. I'm hoping they can pop those and clear out the bird nests that are in each.

Speaking of showers, our new shower should be delivered today. This is the third one they will have tried to deliver so hopefully "third time's the charm" as they say. The first two were dented by the delivery company and had to be returned.

Day 10

First Floor was framed yesterday. Today (Thursday) the second floor should be framed and then on Friday the roof should be put on.