Extreme Home Makeover

No, not our house. The actual TV show is in town this week. Check out the demo. This is what I thought ours would be like:).

Front porch roof!!

Both Mike and I went over to the house today and we were psyched to discover that the front porch roof was up!

Starting the front porch roof

Mike was at the house today and took a couple of pics of the roof, that appears to now be done, sans shingles, and also what is the beginning of our front porch roof!

Cabinet molding?

This blog post goes straight into the "I've never noticed that before" bucket. I can honestly say that I've never paid any attention to whether or not cabinets have molding. Why would cabinets need molding? I like crown molding but I didn't know there was an equivalent in the cabinet world. So I've snooped around the Internet and took a quick trip to the Home Depot Design Center, and I've come to realize that nearly ALL cabinets have molding; there are actually very few that don't. Huh. How bizarre! Mike and I went back and forth on this. But in the end, we've decided to go ahead and succumb to the pressure and have cabinet molding like the rest of the world. To save a little face, we did make sure our selection was super simple and fell in line with the style of cabinets we've selected. Here's an example to show what we'll have...


But in case you wanted to see something a little more fancy....check out this decorative cabinet molding...(it's even spelled "moulding!")

Drawing of the house...

Here is the pencil sketch drawing of the house. Nothing fancy but this is the best I could do...I snapped a pic of the drawings that are sitting on our dining room table right this second:).

Roof pics

Second story and a couple of roof lines

Here are a few shots from yesterday's progress showing the second story and a few bump outs...

Indulge me for a second...

I've heard that the beginning part of building a house literally flies by. Straight through to framing, the house appears to be coming together overnight. Anyway, that's your forewarning for all of these pics that I keep posting. After this, things will likely move at a snail's pace and you'll never hear from us again! Ok, I'll still find something to mammer on about but I thought I'd say it anyway:). Additional framing pics here...

"2nd floor, please"

Mike just snapped this pic and zapped it over to me. How cool!

Some more framing pics

Here are a few more of our pictures of the first floor framing...

Framing the first floor

Lots of new blog posts for today. We're catching up on a week's worth of activity. But today - truly today - the framing was under way for the first floor and we were able to get inside, walk around and actually see how the rooms are laid out. It was really something to finally see our drawings come to life. What a bizarre moment! Here are some pics of framing the first floor. We'll start with outside (windows are coming) and then go on in...

Back porches

The new house includes two porches in the back of the house. One will be immediately off of the back mud room, under the roof of the house and will be approximately 7 feet x 14 feet. Head down a couple of stairs and you’ll find a covered patio that will be 14 feet x 20 feet. Each are perfect for having friends and family over!

"New age" crawl space

Our new crawl space is a bit more roomy than the one built in our “before” house. When we purchased the house in 2002, the home inspector had to be little – tiny is actually a better way to describe him – in order to even get in the there and check out the floor joists, heating, plumbing and the like.

This go-round, we elected to have a 32 inch crawl space. Perfect size for Mike to get down there and “fix” things. Ok…we’ll likely still hire someone if a crawl space trip is ever required. Oh, and one other perk of our "new age" crawl space...it’s concrete vs. dirt. Here are some pics...

Cabinets and plumbing fixtures

More pics of the house progress are coming soon but in the mean time, Mike and I have made some of our first selections that we thought we’d share. (this is beyond brick and shingle color selections– which to others, might not have been that exciting:)

First selection….the cabinets. We were looking for something that was plain, with very simple lines and quickly fell in love with what's called a shaker style cabinet. Shaker style is also more craftsman-like so it’ll go perfectly with our arts and crafts foursquare.

Looking through the options, both in catalogs and in person, it's actually easy to narrow down the selection to something quite plain. Unbeknownst to us, there are some pretty decorative, or as I like to call them, fancy cabinets out there. Once you eliminate the “fancies”, you are left with only a few styles so shaker cabinet it is.

We’ll have this style cabinet in each room where they need to be (bathrooms, laundry, kitchen, etc) and then later, we’ll select the stain or paint color to go on them. In the mean time, here's a pic of what the kitchen cabinets will look like. We already know we want the dark espresso stain in that room. Super cool!
















In addition to the cabinets, we’ve selected our plumbing fixtures. That was also pretty simple because we quickly zeroed in on the more simple, modern faucet sets. Here are a few pics to show some of what we’ll have in the house…

The American Foursquare

We've had some people ask if we could put up a picture of what the house will look like in this blog. What we have in electronic form is a PDF and unfortunately, I can't add it here. (I'm working on getting it into a jpeg and will then upload it). Nonetheless, the house is an American Foursquare in design. Here are some pics of what Foursquare houses look like to give you an idea of what the final Vail home will resemble. And a little history on this architectural style can be found here...

The front porch

A full front porch was a main ingredient when sketching the house plans. Check out this cool progression of it coming together (dimensions are 40 feet by 8 feet - lots of space for rocking chairs)...

Foundation pics

A lot is going on this week with the house. The foundation is almost complete. Here are some pics to show its progress...

Soil test, foundation and footings

This week was the soil test of our lot, which I'm happy to report, passed with flying colors. I've heard nightmare stories about soil test failures costing lots of money and eating up the project timeline, so we're both pretty excited. Also, check out these CNN videos about soil problems. Having a house on our lot for more than 60 years gave us a good feeling about how our test would go but some of these unassuming homeowners get stuck in quite a predicament. Next steps for us is to dig the foundation and pour the footings. We'll get pics up here as soon as we can.