It's Starting To Look Like A House!

Due to this little problem, I haven't been able to post frequent pictures of the progress on our addition. Well, feast your eyes on these:


This picture shows the end of the house that will be our Master Suite. Notice the large window on the end. The existing window (in the log part) will become a patio door.


Above, from left, you can see two of our three bedroom windows. They will be high because although there is no view (gas tanks, neighbors, etc.) we wanted lots of air and light. The third window you see (same size) will be in our Master Bath, above the tub. The fourth, larger, window will be in our kitchen. More on that in a moment.

I am so excited to see these plans, that I drew from my own mind, coming to life! It's really going to work! It's going to be awesome! We can't wait.


Here, at left, you see our bathroom window again, and a better view of the kitchen window opening. We've just decided to put one single-hung window in the kitchen, so it will be nice and big and open.


And finally, from left, you see the opening for our French doors, leading out from the kitchen/dining room area to the back yard. Near the middle, our large picture windows in the dining room. These will be more impressive with the actual windows in there--it will be a nice configuration. On the end, more picture windows in the dining room/family room, configured to match the other windows. Oh, we are so excited!

They are almost finished putting on the boards for the roof, then sometime soon our actual roof will go on!

Addition Progress!

I realized time has gotten away from me when it comes to posting pictures of our addition. Tons of progress has been made, and we find ourselves wishing that it would be completed all at once, rather than in Phase I this year and Phase II at some hopeful future date.

Since my last remodel post, the foundation has been poured:
The floor supports (so I don't know all the technical terms. so what??) were put in:

And the baseboards (another technical term, I'm sure):

And here is where it started to get exciting. The framing of the walls, with windows and doors. For those of you who aren't aware, #1 came up with the idea of extending our house out the back. I took the measurements we came up with, and designed the addition, opening it up to our existing house. So, this is My Very First House Design, and it is exciting and gratifying to see it coming to life.

This end will be the master suite (including bathroom and closets):


And this end, the dining room. In the middle, the new kitchen.



The trusses are going up now. Our roof line will change to accommodate the addition, as you can see.One glitch: the windows we chose have not yet been approved as far as the budget. With all the hemming and hawing, the bid didn't include the right window sizes. I'm not sure how much of a difference there was between the bid and the windows we want, but we are praying that ABEG will give us what we want. I'm not up for much more negotiation on this. I feel like we've already compromised enough.

Progress

Once ABEG was satisfied that Contractor was neither a terrorist or a supporter of terrorists...

(I'm not kidding, refer to section 14. CERTIFICATION REGARDING MATERIAL SUPPORT AND RESOURCES TO TERRORISTS. Well, you can't refer to it because I'm fairly certain the contract is not meant for public eyes)

...Phase I work on our house could begin. But trust me when I say, Contractor had to agree to this provision. This is an insane world in which we live, people. Even in this small town, where most likely the contractor has lived and worked for his entire life, and indeed has completed projects for ABEG in the past, he had to swear on a stack of Books of Mormon, probably, that he is not and does not support the crazies. While I also share concern about terrorists, I find this oddly amusing.

Regardless, work has begun. There is a huge gaping hole behind our house, ready for concrete footings and foundation to be poured sometime next week. It is exciting. They encountered a couple mystery pipelines while digging, but nothing important was broken in the excavation process.

Phase I entails basically the foundation and exterior of our addition, with windows, doors and a new roof on the entire house. (the interior will be Phase II) Sixteen feet back is the absolute farthest we could take our addition, and while it's not humongous, it will just about double our current living space. It will give us a master suite (complete with two separate closets and bath), kitchen and dining room. I think besides the master suite--our king size bed will actually FIT!!--I am most excited about the kitchen. It will be a real kitchen with a bar, an island, and counter space galore. We will have storage room to spare! It will be like a miracle.

Oh I cannot wait for Phase II to begin.

Remodel?

You've seen the roof. Now let me fill you in on some background.

Our house is literally falling down around us. There's the roof. Our front door is an interior door with a large hole in it that someone punched. There are broken windows and no screens all around. If you look closely at the roof pictures, you can see that the top of the garage door no longer attaches. I could go on, but these details are beside the point.

We have been negotiating with ABEG for several YEARS to get an addition on our house. It is tiny, we have a family, what happens if we leave and they have to hire an "actual" ranch manager? (they are not very far-sighted unless it fits into the scheme of their World Domination Plan--I'm not kidding, by the way, I've been to their meetings). Anyway, this housing would not be suitable for an "actual" ranch manager, yada, yada, yada. So. Finally. We came to an agreement, submitted a good plan, compromised (we wanted a second story, but came up with a different plan when they said no), met with the contractor, you name it.

We had an agreement, a few weeks ago it almost came crashing down but ABEG relented after C.G. and I both told them their "alternative to addition" plan was unacceptable.

Finally. ABEG's "legal" was all over it, getting the contract together. Ground was scheduled to be broken on September 10th. (As far as we know, our contractor has been in a holding pattern waiting for ABEG to get their shit together).

This morning, we get this email: (emphasis is mine)

I just wanted to let you know that our attorney was unable to complete that contract for the remodel before she left for vacation, so a more realistic start date is now Sept 17. I'll call and let [Contractor] know.

Are you kidding me? "Unable?" Since when is "unable" even in a lawyer's vocabulary? Seriously. You have got to be fucking kidding. This is laughable, right? Years of negotiation, and their lawyer is "unable" to complete a contract for which they should have at least a skeleton of a form anyway...

Unbelievable.

This is Why We Need A New Roof...

A photo blog. The only way to properly demonstrate our dire need for a new roof. #1 and I have been harping on ABEG for years now about a new roof. We recently found out from C.G. that ABEG had a new roof for our house on its budget agenda 10 years ago!! Finally, it appears as though we might be getting one! ABEG has agreed to give us an addition, and a new roof (to allow for the addition) is to be part of their "phase I" remodel plan. And just in the nick of time. I noticed this the other day (look, it's "supporting" our satellite internet dish):

Several years ago, I found a length of 2x4 with nails sticking out of it beside the house. What's this? We tried to figure it out. Looking up, it had fallen off the roof. As you can see below, the left half does not have the same edge the right half does. And, you will see that the other pieces of 2x4 all around the roof are NOT FAR behind.


The next picture is of the right edge of that side of the roof above, the one with the 2x4 edge still attached, but apparently, just barely attached, I'm just guessing because I can see daylight shining through there...Since that edge piece fell off, the roof doesn't have enough support (did it ever? looks pretty shoddily-constructed to me) and the whole corner of the roof began to...SAG.


Looking down the length of the roof, you can see that not only does the right edge sag, but look! The left edge sags too! Whee!
The next picture is a detail of that left edge. The whole thing just appears to be falling apart, doesn't it? The shingles are peeling up, the partical board that they used for the roof base (I don't know terminology) is warped and pulling away from the 2x4.



The roof leaks in several rooms in the house, including dripping down onto the water heater and into the gas heater in one of the bedrooms whenever it rains. (Luckily, we live in the desert).

When #1 took out an old stove pipe (which leaked) so we could fit in the boys' bunkbeds, he used a whole package of shingles to repair the hole because when he tried to slide the new shingles under the old shingles, the old ones kept crumbling.

The satellite dish installer, when he came to adjust our internet dish, said there was absolutely no solid place on our roof to attach the thing, that's why it wobbles and we have poor internet service, because our roof is "disintigrating." And, the 2x4 wasn't even falling off like this when he was last here...



Huh. Perhaps this is a contributing factor to our satellite internet problems? That is a cable that runs from our dish to the router, I believe. We'll have to do something about that. I'm sure it wasn't designed to hold up a freakin' roof.

You can see just how thin the particle board (or tar paper?) base is from how this cord is slicing through it like a knife through butta'.

You know, H-Bomb could build us a better roof out of his damn Legos. If the contractor doesn't show up as scheduled on September 10, I will get that kid on it.