On the Level

Things are proceeding, with the occasional rain delay. One of the big challenges was to get the floor of the existing house leveled out a bit. This seems to have taken some wrestling over a good amount of time, but it was clearly necessary to make a proper transition from the existing house to the new addition. Some new footings under the existing house will help. The photos of the new and old foundations will always be there to remind us of the discrepancy in robustness, but we don’t want to think of it as we walk through the house every day and feel the bouncing of the floors!

There was a lot of other bad framing in the existing house that the contractor could not ignore (not being one to cover up something that is substandard). How many times have we heard ourselves say, “That’s what you got for $2,000 in 1910”? This house will be so transformed in its solidity and quality when it’s done that it’s hard to even imagine! I would say that it is now seriously starting to turn the corner from PILE OF STICKS to HOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

The subfloor is being installed in the new bedroom! They’re even starting to frame out the roofline of the new rear-facing gable. They said that they plan to finish this roof framing—which covers the existing house—so that they can cover it with tarps if rain is expected.

Look at that! The huge new north-facing window of an existing bedroom is framed out. Darn—I meant to have the size of this window changed so that a desk would fit under the sill, but I guess I didn’t. I will have to pretend like this is okay. This room has a lot of windows, so we’ll see if a desk even fits.

They replaced that termite-devoured end joist along the rear of the building (the new horizonal member at left). You can see that the vertical members of the cripple wall below it were replaced, too. It still droops downward toward the outside corner (which was causing plaster cracks in the bedroom there) but we had to call it close-enough at some point. The slope in the floor will be corrected with the way they lay the subfloor (which will vary in thickness—thicker at the low points), but the sinking corner will stay where it is under the assumption that it is stable.

(Look at all that promising, fresh lumber behind in the driveway!)

The old subfloor in the kitchen was a lightly-refinished tongue and groove fir floor that we had exposed in 2014 (goodbye, vinyl sheet flooring!). That has now been removed and replaced with more solid new plywood, as you can see below. I feel better about this for the weight of the cabinets and new appliances, and it will feel more stable to walk on. The plywood will receive a finish layer of Marmoleum, eventually. Just you wait for my entry on flooring sheet goods!

The photo above was taken from the dining room looking through the kitchen with new subfloor and a back wall all in new framing. What a view out to the backyard the dining room has at the moment! I am trying not to think about it, but that sightline will disappear as all of this gets closed in and the addition (on platform in the distance) is framed out. But I would like to have a kitchen. And a bedroom. That was the whole point, after all.

Here is a bird’s eye view of the progress happening at the site!

Our neighbors have the best perspective on our project at this point. They sent us this shot from their second floor. It does remind us, though, what a piece of junk our garage looks like. This will be a big improvement for them! Actually, they won’t be able to see that garage any more. There will be a lot of bulk of the new addition blocking it.

This is starting to get pretty exciting. The crew is on site most of the day, and we can really see it taking shape and see the improvements to the existing structure that are being made. The order for the windows is going in this week, and I am trying to be brave enough to check in on all those appliance decisions we went to the trouble of making, and hoping that our selections will be available! So far it looks like we won’t have to go back to the drawing board on those choices, but we’ll see what we can get our hands on.