Day 33

The past few days have seen a lot of demolition! The boys have been working to completely gut the kitchen. As you can see by the before picture below, the kitchen is a mess. It needs new appliances, flooring, cabinets, paint, light fixtures, etc... We also decided to take out a wall in between the existing kitchen and breakfast area. This will really open things up and allow us to have either an island or bar.

 

 

 

This is a view from the breakfast area into the kitchen.

 

This is a view from the other side of the kitchen into the breakfast area. As you can see, there is a huge window in the kitchen area. We will have to replace it, but will put back another large window. It has a great view of the farm.

 Another view from the breakfast area. The cut out that you see was an opening allowing you to see into the other room.

One other interesting thing that I want to be sure to document is that when they were ripping out the wall in between the 2 rooms, they found some dead birds. It looks like they had fallen from the attic in between the studs and got stuck. Gross! They have also found several dead mice. Fun fun! The good news was that they all had been there for so long that they did not stink, but still, that is nasty!

 

 

Did I mention the house needed some work? :-) 

Day 31

Over the past week or so, Ben has been working at the house to demo the addition on the back of the house. The addition is just a large room that the old owners used at a rec room of sorts. As I mentioned in one of the other blog postings, we have decided to remove the addition and create a large covered patio in its place.

 

Here are the before pictures. The first picture is from the back of the house and the second picture is from the side. If you look at the roof in the second picture, you will notice the huge swag.

 

 

 

After taking out all of the paneling on the ceiling and most of the walls, it is obvious that the addition is in bad shape. We will likely have to rip off the entire thing and rebuild before we can put the new roof on. 

 

This is the view looking out the back door. The tree on the left (that is blocking the view) is coming out. I know we will really enjoy this outdoor space. I am going to try and take a picture of the farm that we back up to, it really is so pretty.



 

 

This is my favorite part! When the old homeowners added on the addition, they made the fireplace opening be on both sides. The other side is in the living room. We will have to put new weatherproof locked doors on it, but we are going to be able to keep the existing surround and have an outdoor fireplace! 

They have been working on ripping out the kitchen all day today, so hopefully I will get a post up about that soon.

 

Day 22

I am happy to report that all the major tree work has been completed at the house! It took the guys about a week to rip out all of the current landscaping and take down several big trees, but we are so happy with the results. As I mentioned in the previous post, it really makes the house seem so much larger.

 

 

There was one giant locust tree that has been the biggest tree project to tackle. The tree was around 3 feet in diameter and was actually growing into the side of the shed next to the house. I hated to lose all the shade that the tree provided, but it was just too big and overgrown. When your gutter starts to bend because a tree is growing into it, you probably should remove the tree :)

 

This picture gives a good idea of just how large the tree was. That is a brick propped up next to it for size comparison. It was huge!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other big project that has started is the porch and sidewalk renovations. The front porch was not initially packed well and is therefore sinking. The good news is that this problem is not causing any foundation or structural issues, but the bad news is that it needs to be completely ripped out and re poured correctly. They have been working hard to jackhammer up the brick layer on the porch. Once the brick layer is up, they will jackhammer up all of the remaining concrete and re pour. We are not sure yet if we will go back over it with a stamped concrete or maybe even put new brick back down.

 

 

 

 

The path from the driveway to the front door also needed a lot of work. The path was initially a poured concrete that they put brick on top of. Over time the brick has not been maintained and fallen apart. Ben spent Friday working to pull up the entire sidewalk. We will replace it with whatever material we decide to re do the porch with.

 

 

Today Ben was working at the house and continuing to clean out the addition on the back. The addition has to be completely cleaned out and ready for demolition before we can put a new roof on. He was cleaning out the bar area and discovered that at some point, the addition was the home to some sort of animal. Apparently whatever was living there enjoyed eating, because they left behind a corn cob, m&m boxes and a bag of pistachios!

 

Day 17

After a few weeks and several tree estimates, the trees started to come down yesterday! It is really incredible what a difference it has made already. The previous owners did not maintain any of the landscaping, so it is a huge task to get it to a point where we are happy with it.

I was at work all day so Ben was sending me videos and pictures throughout the day to update me about the progress. 

They were able to get most of the old landscaping out yesterday and are going to be working on some of the bigger trees today.

 

 

 

I am so happy with the way it looks already!