My bubble house!

Well our house has been hoarded and is covered in tarps. Chris and Eric have started the stucco process. We have the foam insulation on and they have started filling in the holes with an acrylic compound of some sort. They have giant heaters that keep it from freezing and allow it to dry slowly. It's great for keeping the heat in! Inside our house they have started spraying the walls. The very pretty pink foam will keep us warm in future winters they have about a third of the house done now. The plumbing, gas, electrical and framing inspections happened this week and I'm happy to say that we passed :) I have to say that Gary our plumber did a fantastic job. Our utility room was quite the mess and he's hooked up the tankless water heater and added quite a few new water lines. It's now a piece of art!

Ahhh winter...

Today I'm very happy, our house is getting wrapped and the foam insulation is being applied to the exterior. That will go a long way to keeping our house a reasonable temperature. It's been awhile since I've posted so we have had quite a bit of progress. One day last week, we had three trades working at once. I loved it! There was definitely a hum of activity going on. Dave the electrician is busy wiring up the inside of the house and the trim has been installed around the windows by Larry who is adding trim around the doors today. I feel sorry for him as the roof has been dripping on him  from the recent snowfall. The eaves troughs will be added sometime in the next month. I really admire the workers they work in both the good and bad weather. I think I'll go upstairs and bring them all some cookies they certainly deserve it. Gary the plumber will be here tomorrow along with Denis to run the heating and cold air ducts. Like I said there is a lot to be happy and grateful for... friends, family and a renovation company that knows what they are doing. Well here is what many of you are waiting for... the progress pictures!

Lux Windows :)

Well it's getting colder now and I am grateful that our new Lux Windows are going in. Here's some new pictures of the progress...Here's Mike up on the roof...

This is Riely who belongs to one of the workers. He's so well behaved, never barks and loves to greet us!

This is the first of our two new bedroom windows... triple pane.. quiet and warm...can't wait!

Our new dining room windows... woo hoo!

And these are the windows for the great room.

New Skylight :)

Soon to be placed in the freshly cut holes will be a total of four skylights to help keep the house nice and bright

Framers... such an awsome group of guys

There is a great group of fellas working on my house right now. Don and I continually change our mind on where a wall is going and which wall the venting will go thru. They have been very patient with us. Here's Mike framing in our skylight, and another one of the back with the shingles all done!

A new back entrance!

Here's a picture of the new back entrance(left) and our new kitchen door(right). We've got the shingles on half the house now. It should be done soon, slowing us down is the location of the skylights. We really needed to have the new floor in to decide which truss it would be framed into. Do we want it here or here or there...so many decisions argh! Below is the view from the new dining room out to the laundry room, bathroom and garage.

Sky's the limit

I think this is the most amazing part of the renovation! Every time I leave my basement to check out the hammering or to catch a peak when the framers are on break I discover something new. The walls are going up in our great room now and you can see the ceiling will be quite high. The back entrance will be torn away tomorrow to allow them to put up straight walls... and give them something to hang the new trusses off of.

Woot... a new roof

The new roof is coming along now.. we have trusses on the main part of our house and they will start shingling tomorrow. Still to come are the new walls around the great room / main bathroom / laundry / garage.

Camping

 

The framer's cut holes in the sheeting and a series of tarp drain out if necessary... Hope it doesn't come to that. This is just like camping!

A view from above

This is a picture from the top of the house after the roof was taken off. You can see our neighbor to the north of us, they just finished their renovation. 

Is that a tarp?

Officially we have no roof over our heads, but that's not to bad as everything is very well protected with a series of tarps, it's a bit like camping here. Our giant bin is full past capacity and another one to come today! We ordered shingles today and they should be here Tuesday or Wednesday. Hard to believe they can build it up again so soon. Exciting times!  Here's the front of the house.

And here's the back entrance!

Our New Bedroom Door!

Sam our concrete man from The Remodelers took a water saw to the concrete and about 8 hours later the door slab landed in it's custom made hole. The slab was cut into a few pieces so it would lay flat. This picture is taken from the new bedroom window well. The concrete for the bedroom floor and the garage pad will be coming Wednesday... woo hoo!
Our trusses were delivered this week and the framers will begin removing the old roof on Wednesday... 

 
It's going to be a big week for our house and not minute too soon..check out the old roof.. Yikes!

Waiting Game

Sigh.. The waiting game is on.... The guys that do framing are anywhere from 2-4 away from starting our job. Worth the wait I think as our job isn't run of the mill with the vaulted ceiling etc. Really look forward to it starting. Meanwhile we are out picking windows and doors. Let the fun times begin!

Extra Stuff

Well here it is ... our basement bedroom, the foundation for our laundry room and extra bathroom and of course our garage.

Extra Stuff

We have a t-shirt, a jacket and a jerry can of gas. Hope the workers remember it's here - lol - I guess I will have to make some calls if they don't come back today.

 

Walls Alive!

So the amazing crew was in and now we have these incredible walls... in foreground is our new garage and in the background is our new basement bedroom. Above the bedroom we will have our laundry room and a guest bathroom.... No more calling dibs when we get home :)

Footings

New footings... These guys were quick!

A New Hole

Woo hoo! We had two great guys come over on Thursday thru Saturday and now we have a wonderful hole! You can just see where the bedroom door is in this picture and if you look close you can see a deeper spot near the door for the remains of the the cement after they cut it... No bodies found!

Demo Days

I find when you do a demo you uncover the most unusual history of the house. This must have been a fairly small home at one time I think the kitchen may have been exactly where we will be putting it again -lol! Here is a picture of the floor we found under the carpet in the bedroom! Yes it's true some people are lucky enough to find hardwood and we were "lucky" enough to find no two tiles alike!

The Demolition Phase

Well demolition is hard work! So many bins have come and gone that I'm loosing track of them. Dusting although a waste of time as it keeps coming back and unfortunately still has to be done. Working from home has been fantastic.. I see progress all the time, Look at all those bags of attic insulation!

Designing our Dream

Don and I have looked at many homes and have been renovating and I like to think perfecting what we do. Having said that there is always ways to improve! Paul is an architectural designer at the remodelers and it was him who came up with our kitchen design dilemma. I’m sure he’s done tons of plans, and his expertise has paid off... We had thought of keeping the kitchen where it was, but the area was really too small and with the basement stairs not moving there was not much we could do about that. Another option would have been to put our kitchen where the old living room was. The space was great, but having a kitchen in the front of the house just isn’t that great of an idea... Here’s what we were originally thinking:

Well we are closer to our dream a big thanks to Paul and the Remodelers for their experience and help!

In the beginning ...

We... Don and I (Karen) purchased our Brentwood bungalow in 1998. Renovations since then have included a new kitchen (1998), new hardwood in the entrance, halls and kitchen (1999), new hardwood in the family room (2005) raising the sunken family room floor (2010). This I will refer to as Phase I although in reality it was probably Phase X, but I do get dates and renovations confused as there have been way more than I'm willing to admit to! Why raise the family room floor you ask? Well we have been thinking (OMG) that we will get to that age...in the distant future.. where we don't want to go up and down stairs. OK there were only two stairs, but yes I can be a klutz and have done the occasional misstep! So Don raised the floor which created a interesting man cave where our family room used to be. This interesting man cave had our beautiful fireplace removed, and the patio doors which happened to be the only light source for that section of the house. Argh... I would have to live with this for the next unknown number of years as we planned our dream home.

Phase II

The roof... Well the hail damage took it's toll on our roof in 2009 and although we got an insurance claim to repair it, we knew we wanted to make changes to our house so we let it wait. Probably a bad decision that we didn't get to planning our renovation sooner, but I suppose life has a way of working out.... More about that later....OK - the roof...  First we bought a house design package to figure out the new floor plan we wanted. Next we bought a better house design package, because the first one really didn't do the trick and wouldn't design a new roof for us. Then in the spring rains we got this year our poor roof started to shed the remaining asphalt that existed on the curled up remnants of it's shingles. Our planing started in earnest! Hmm these do it yourself packages are great, but you really need some training to do it properly and no we didn't have any training! I started to look for a company in that would take the beautiful floor plan we created and turn it into something more substantial like a building permit. Well I started to google in earnest and came across a wonderful company The Remodelers. Well we did quite a bit of homework and decided that we would go with them to remodel our house! Time in our case is one of the biggest reasons for this decision. Don... who is a very handy and talented man, can and in some cases has done it all in the home renovation world. He could and would do it himself, but it would literally take us years to do. With the Remodelers our renovation will be about 6 months. Oh to have a home in one piece with no more renovations required, yes it was tempting. I guess what really tipped the scales for us and made us sign on the dotted line is the quality we saw and were assured would go into our home. So... this is where our adventure begins...