Here is the east side of the house. Most of the vinyl siding has been
torn off. We've decided on having a pre-stained cement fiber siding
(like hardie board) "Old Cherry" is the stain color and will look like
real wood when it's done.

Here is the north side of the house. I've put in the new windows
in the upstairs except for one. We took off the rock wall on the
main level. Just some mortar and chicken wire remain. The $40
pool has been great for the girls in this 108 degree weather we've
had.


West side of the house. I left one window out so that we can
have the drywall slipped through the opening right into the
upstairs. The windows for the main floor will be in tomorrow
so I'll start installing those this week.



Southwest corner. You can see the french door in on the main floor
and the new windows up above. I was able to get the tyvex wrap in
because I had all three of the old windows out at the same time. I'll
bring the tyvex up to the other windows and then tape it off around
the window. We took the railing off the deck in order to slide the french
door into place.


This is the grand entrance! Well, it will look grand one day. :)
All the flooring that you see was once outside decking. It had a steep slope. So I took out the old entry door and took up the flooring so I could flatten the floor joists. I found some wood root and the two main supports were not sitting on solid foundation. So I've poured some concrete to get a good footing for a couple new posts. I'll replace the rotten wood with treated wood. A double entry door will go back in. We went with a Ebony stain so that it stands out from the stained siding.



Here is a close up of the flooring of the entrance. The plywood on the far left wall will come down and will just be open into the family room. The entry is 10'x10' that will be slate tile. The porch flooring will also be the same slate tile.


Here is the ultimate sliding french door that was talked about so much. I put a 14' LVL (laminated vaneer lumber) beam across the top in order to support that span. It was a three day project getting that in place! Craziness!

Here are the three fiberglass doors that will go in the kitchen, mudroom

and basement. They will be painted a brown color. I'll be installing them

here in the next couple weeks.

Ashlyn's room. We decided to have the walls sprayed with

foam insulation versus putting in fiberglass. It will give us 6.9 R's per inch. So

fiberglass for example will give us 13 R's. Sprayed in insulation foam will give

us 20.7 R's. We will recoupe the the extra cost in a matter of a couple years

in energy savings.

As you can tell , more drywall has been removed from the ceiling. Because we decided to use the foam insulation it made sense that we spray the sloped part of the ceiling to maximize the R value for the amount of space we have with the 2x6 joists. We'll get 34.5 R's versus 21 R's with the fiberglass.

In Ashlyn's room and both bathrooms, they had lathe-n-plaster under the drywall on the ceiling. It was a total mess after we ripped it all down. I then pulled all the insulation from the attic. Just when we thought we were moving forward we had to take a step backward. :)

The girls bathroom. The plumbing is done and we got the

cast iron tub installed. Boy that tub was heavy! We have 4"

can lights in the bathrooms and kitchen.

Here is the master bath. The water closet is on the left. The

double vanity will go against the wall on the right. The walk-in

closet is directly behind that.

Water closet in upper center. The shower on the left there.

Master room. The floor is finally flattened! AAAhhhhh yes! I was so glad to get that done. You see a portion of flooring on the right that was existing wood floor. Since there is no sub-floor under that we're going to use it as sub-floor. Well that's it for now. August will be crunch time as I line up the roofers, siders, drywallers, insulators. I will be rushing to get the windows and doors in so others can start their work. One thing I'm finding out is how unreliable contractors are around here. I'm glad my life does not depend on their word. LOL. For example, a roofer was supposed to come here at 3 o'clock today to give me a bid to put the new roof on. It's way past 3 and I haven't seen him yet. I had a guy take a look at doing the insulation. He came out here and told me , " I will call you this saturday and give you a price." That was three weeks ago!!!! It challanges me to not be like that with my customers. I must stay in communication with my customers and follow through with what I say I'm going to do. Okay, I'm really done here now. :) Blessings to you all!

The Welvaerts