The House is coming together; the Kitchen is almost complete; we have color on the walls, and the electrical is almost finished. I think we will be ready to move in about 2 weeks or so. we still have to finish the plumbing fixtures and the bathrooms, floors and carpet and touch up painting, almost there. YEA!!!

Cabinets and Trim Complete

The cabinets were put in last week and the trim is almost completed. There has been some delay on the paint - hopefully that will get resolved and completed this week. Granite has been ordered and measured for the kitchen as well. Then we have tiling of the bathrooms, putting in appliances, finishing the plumbing, shelving, carpets and cleaning up. Baby is due August 14th - don't think we'll be in the house before he arrives - hopefully not too long after!
Crown molding in living room -
kitchen cabinets - island in front

trim around windows in master
we put back up the original french doors that were in the house - this is the entrance to the master bedroom - doors to be painted!
all the doors are in - this is James' room and closet doors

Sheetrock -

The sheetrock started going up last week - the plan is for it to be completed this week and the kitchen cabinets are going to be installed this Thursday and the exterior painting of the house should also be finished this week - Looks like we're not going to make the original August 2nd due date - hopefully the next week - Pray :)

Living Room

Dining Room off of kitchen
Master Bedroom
Boy's room -

Windows and Floors are in!

Front of the house with addition and windows in
Back of house with new carport added on
View from back door of house - kitchen will be along left wall with island sitting next to the post on the right hand side of pic
Sitting area across from kitchen/island
Dining area at back entrance; to the right of the back entrance-

Front of house - Living/Great room - kitchen is through the right arch; sitting area through the left
View from fireplace into front
Hardwoods - we got a great deal - we were able to buy and install at less than $3 a sq. foot!
View from front windows of house - our new dog, Goldie
Siding is also completed- This is the master suite. Here is Goldie again. He was a stray that came to live with the former owner over 13 years ago. She passed away early this year and the family continued to feed him and come out and visit. He has been there from the first time we looked at the house. The family really wasn't able to take him so they asked if he could stay and ofcourse we said yes. He's a very sweet dog. It's taken him a while but he's warmed up to us and doesn't bark when he sees our car coming up the drive. He's a little skiddish, especially of men, but Jeremy has got him eating out of his hands, literally! He and Charlie have also been introduced and seem to get along fine. I think he is a little lonely but lately he's had lots of company during the day as all the workers work on the house. He will be glad when we're moved out there for good - except he won't be able to come in and out of the house whenever he feels like it! Right now it's like a huge dog house for him!
Hopefully the roof will be completed this week and the HVAC. Still haven't got a firm commitment on who is doing that so please pray that gets taken care of this week. Once that is done we can get started on the sheet rock, insulation, and trim work the following week. We really only have 4 more weeks before my August 2nd deadline!

We had some bad luck with the weather and concrete got canceled on us two weeks in a row, so we had to mix 7 yards of concrete with this machine, i almost had a mutiny, but we got it done about $500 over budget we couldn't wait any longer. if we had waited another weekend it would have pushed us back 2 weeks.

The pictures above and below are the same view of the front of the house.

This is looking out the back of the house, there will be a car port outside this window.

This is another view of the front completely framed out. (looking good) We will be finishing the roof, siding electric, hardwood, windows and carport all this week. by Monday June 30th it should look like a real house. We are however having a little issue with the HVAC, no one wants to do it for what i want to pay, ill keep you posted. Right now i am over budget about $2000.00 and have quite a bit to go so i have to watch my pennies.

DEMOLITION

The hard work is under way and we keep tearing the house apart and i keep thinking we will not have any house left if we continue. I thought we would be able to get away with one 30yard construction dumpster and we are on #3 and i am worried it's still not going to be enough. we are over budget $875 on the First Item. The cost of Demo is going to be about $2500 that includes the removal of two large dead trees next to the house that was around $1000 The rest is labor, i have contributed quite a bit to this part of the project.

current entrance of the house - to the left of the door will be a bedroom - to the right is the main living area
back of the house - laundry room/pantry which will sit directly behind the kitchen wall
you are looking from the back of the house to the front - the wall to the left will be where all the kitchen cabinets and appliances will be - an island will be in the middle, just in front of the brick fireplace (this pic shows the back of it - the front faces the main living space - all of this will be open except for the fireplace in the middle)
back of the house
future master suite- currently a porch that will be closed in - the master bath will be on the left end with closets that open up into the master bedroom on the right end
corner of the master suite and front of the house - this is where the other addition will be
front of the house - it will be pulled out about 300 sq. ft
view if looking from the kitchen area through the hall way and to the master

main living space in front of house - wall on the right side is where we are adding addition; on the left of the fireplace is where the kitchen will sit; behind where this photo is taken will be a bedroom.

The plan

The original house is about 15oo sq feet and the new plan is to add about 300feet with a master suite where a current covered porch sits . We are also adding about 300 feet to the front of the house and extending a living room to make it about 2x its current size. Don't be confused- the lay outs are turned on the plan. The front of the house is to the left of first scan directly below the post. The orig layout is the bottom scan and the front of the house sits on the bottom of the the plan. we are completely opening up the kitchen to both living areas and adding a laundry. we have raised the ceilings in the whole house. some of ceilings in the house were barely 7.5 feet. we were able to raise the ceilings in the living areas quite a bit- it wont even look like the same house. This is a complete Gut. You name it, we are replacing it. we have a budget of $85k. That includes new appliances, which were able to get at atleast half price because a local appliance store was going out of business -$2500 total.

Now what do we do?

kitchen
porch that will be converted into master suite

Back entrance of house - this will be where the laundry/pantry area is and open into the kitchen
At this point we need to get a general idea of what we want to accomplish and what our needs are and try to establish a budget we can live with. At this point the house is a 2 Bedroom 1 small bath. We need another bed and bath. So we have to figure out how to accomplish this and determine the cost. Here we GO!!!
front entrance of house

porch of house - to be master bedroom
front of house

back of house