Construction…

Construction progresses. This is one of my favorite changes to the house -- there used to be a flat wall under the stairs, enclosing the foyer, so that you had to turn right to go into the front room to get to the rest of that floor. We punched through under the stairs, so you can walk directly back through, past powder room and pantry to the kitchen and mudroom. And as you can see below, there are windows in the mudroom, so from the very front of the house, you can see light pouring in from the very back. Love it. If you walk forward, you can see the view through mudroom more clearly. Those big openings will be filled with double windows, with a mullion (?) between them. It should match the other double windows in the house. Another thing I love is how beautiful the wood is not that it's been stripped. The window trims have come out so lovely, and this pocket door was completely encased in white paint. Tragic! It's all clean and fresh now, looking as new as if it were just built, ready to stain. They've framed out the division between the family room and the kitchen. From this view, you can see the sliding glass doors to the back porch. I doubt sliding doors are period-appropriate, but it's a small room, and a small porch -- I think we need them, to make the furniture workable. You can also see the framing between the two rooms; the kitchen will be to the left in this photo. And this is the view if you were standing in the kitchen, near the island, looking into the family room. It's a small room -- we spent a while trying to find a good configuration that would let us put a tv between those two windows and watch comfortably -- and then we gave up. It'd just be so crowded -- I think maybe we're going to have two loveseats facing each other instead, possibly with a big cushioned ottoman between them (or two cubes, that can be pulled to the sides for extra seating?). Kevin and I would rather we were watching less tv anyway, so we're now planning to have a tv down in the unfinished basement (if we really want to watch as a family, we can go down there and slump on the grotty furniture), and one in our bedroom (mostly for when someone is sick). The rest of the time, I think we'll be reasonably happy watching tv on our laptops; that's what I do a lot of the time now anyway, since we watch different shows, and I like to watch while I'm cleaning the house. Hooray for Hulu. When you go upstairs, you can see that they've taken up the floorboards in the library. We're saving the old floors, but there isn't nearly enough of that wood for the whole house, between additions and damaged portions. So the plan is to take up what's usable from the second floor, and hopefully have enough to do the entire first floor in the original wood floors, antique (aka v. old) wide-plank pine. I think we're still not quite sure what we're doing on the second floor; there are a few options, including more wide-plank pine (but not the antique salvaged ones, because they are beyond our price range, sadly). The kids' floor will be something durable -- carpet tiles or some such. Salvaged floors, waiting to be cleaned and re-installed downstairs. Here the guys have built our bedroom east wall, and are getting ready to put it up. And the wall is up! From the outside, we have the mudroom on the ground floor (with a transom above the exterior door), the kitchen extension on the first floor (a tiny seating area, plus stairs, mostly), all covered in plywood or something like it. Not sure what, exactly. And they've taken the roof off the back of the house to attach new frame to it so that it can accomadate Roof walkways (eep -- the blue plastic is to protect from rain), and framed out the master bedroom, hallway, and closet/laundry. Next is the master bath, which will go over the extension. Then they'll go up, to frame the kids' rooms on the third floor. And here's some salvaged brick -- I asked them to save what they could from the internal chimneys they were taking down, and I'm hoping to reuse it in the garden, for parterre vegetable beds. Aka a potager parterre.