Happy Weekend, Everyone! We’ve been MIA for about three weeks because there hasn’t been much going on [until the latter part of this week]!
The electricians came in between other jobs and finished up this week. You can see some pot lights (LED, yay!) in the ceiling rafters and some plug wires/boxes here and there. We had to seal the window/door holes up until the actual windows/doors arrived to keep moisture away from our electrical wires (hence the plywood over the windows).
Plumbing is taking FOR.EV.ER. I have no photos of the plumbing, but you probably don’t want to see those anyway. 😉 They were supposed to be finished yesterday… and then today… and, well, they’re still not finished. It’s mostly taking so much time due to a lack of showing up. I’ll keep you posted.
The Heating and A/C guys are coming in Tuesday to put in some vents and Thursday the roof is finally going on. The roof is the best news because we’re getting back-to-back storms (it seems) and beginning to have some leaking. Argh.
Uncle Jeff and “Uncle” Tommy came back up this week… and they’ve been working their magic already. Aaron has been helping out, too. Enjoy these pictures!
Windows went in!
Siding went on. Ah, the smell of cedar!
Before I share the most recent/impressive photos, I wanted to share something:
Everyone has aspects of home building that are extremely important to them. One of my huge topics of thought was windows. When walking through our historic neighborhood, I love the look of wood windows. In fact, our wood windows were a major reason why we bought our particular house. After living with them for over two years, plus realizing that restoration is literally 400% more expensive than new windows (for the damage level of our particular windows), we made the difficult decision to replace the original windows in the existing house (that will match the addition). Don’t worry, we have some plans for the original windows and the storm windows we labored over for months!
Based on property values in our neighborhood, we would never recoup the money spent on custom wood windows (not to mention the maintenance aspect of wood… “they don’t make ’em like they used to”). We compromised on a high quality vinyl with zero frills in basic white to blend in with the trim.
One of my compromises was that the new windows had to be inset into the house as far as possible so that the eye is drawn to the trim and not to the window itself.
The below picture speaks for itself, but I can tell you that it nearly brings tears to my eyes knowing that we have contractors that not only hear what we are saying, but are interested in keeping the historic “look” of the home to the utmost of their ability (without verbalizing that we’ve totally lost our marbles).
My friend, Mandi, gave me the biggest compliment today when she told me that the addition looks like it “was there all along”. We’ve put so much thought into keeping the look “original”, while still having modern conveniences. Knowing that our research/plans were not in vain means so much to me.
I’m so appreciative that we’ve had such a wonderful support group through calling/texting/e-mailing/blogging. You’ve blessed us so much!
We’ve bought some fun things/fixtures for the house that we can’t wait to show you all in a blog post soon!