Garage Up!

I just had to do a little test parking on the way home from work : )  It's funny how we have done planning and planning and planning, and then when something is actually built it surprises you.  My first impression of the garage was that it is very tall - I guess I didn't realize most of the old fashion brick garages around us were around 8 or 9 feet in height, ours is a 10-11 ft. slope.  I went out and measured the width of several of the garages near our house to determine how wide would suffice without being too huge, I neglected to measure the heights! Good news is we'll have plenty of room to hang bikes, skis, and all kinds of things high onto the walls.  I like it.  The rest of our yard looks like a dump.

Snowy House

Ideas for Broken-Off Brick Part

Here are some pictures that show the idea of the 'fix' for the broken off brick corner.  I am thinking about the back of the house utilizing wood siding, which would wrap around the corner of the house where the brick broke off.  Kindof like the corner of the addition in this first photo on the corner, and then as this photo is around the french doors of the house, and then use smooth grey stucco for the addition and garage.  If we can't figure out how to implement this type of linear wood siding, or some variation, we will rebuild the brick and stick with the Hardy Plank on the back of the house and on the addition.

This photo shows for example, what my dream would be for the addition, but the wood is expensive I think so we are just going to try to use it on a little part.

This photo shows the combination of brick, grey stucco, and wood plank.

Here is a little coloring I did to depict this concept to our contractor a while back.

And voila, a basement!

This basement is much nicer than the old, dingy, smelly one that was originally in the house - or added at some point.  It will have 8' ceilings as opposed to 6'6", a couple of larger windows, and much more room.  It also stabilizes our foundation.  The wood posts will not be there in the end, they will be replaced by steel beams and supports and there will only be a few required.  One big piece of the puzzle done, ahh.

Digging, and a mishap

Photos below of the crew digging out the basement.  One of the corners of the existing house fell Monday, obviously not part of the plan - it will either be rebuilt or we are thinking of one creative solution, but we have to see if we can make it work!  I was not happy at all when this happened.  It felt like our house was being destroyed, like they didn't care what happened to it as they were working on it as long as they got their job done.  It was a stressful day.

Color Options For Addition

Siding color options available that we are deciding between for the addition. Which do you like?

Narrowing down the options to Iron Grey, Moss, and Timber Bark.


We are thinking the Iron Grey, hard to see, but it's the color above.

Upstairs Today

House Held Up by Toothpicks - Part II

Some more photos from when we went over today. Looks like they worked yesterday and dug out the rest of the crawl space and our old basement. I am kindof scared to walk around upstairs now!

A House Held Up by Toothpicks - Part I

Demolition is really in full force now - and excavation! Do not let the following pictures alarm you. These suppors holding up the house are there so that the roof is held up, and doesn't cave in - the brick walls are sturdy and a new foundation is will be poured supporting the brick and allowing us a nice sized basement. Our plans for the basement include room for guests to stay, bathroom, art studio, and a tv/movie watching lounge area.


It was pretty crazy going over to the house after work Friday to see it in this state! The digging commenced on Wednesday, it's hard for me to believe. We went over Wednesday night with instruction from our contractor to be careful there were holes and wires poking up everywhere in our backyard - to our surprise, we were the people with a giant pit you have to be careful not to fall into! Walking through the house. . . there were big X's on all of the walls that were coming down and drawings on the adjacent walls showing where supports were to temporarily go. Friday, many of those walls were gone, and there is a hole where the staircase to the basement used to be. The entire back wall of the house is gone, and yes, that is a tarp you see covering it in the photos below. It reminds me of a Galveston beach house - maybe after Hurricane Ike.



Jake was getting excited running around in the giant hole that will be our new basement as you can see in the photo above. A tunnel is being created big enough to drive a Bobcat under the house.

These wood posts are holding up the house for the weekend. Next week they will dig the rest of the crawlspace out and pour foundation for the basement and support. A structural engineer has okayed all of this mind you.

No more interior walls in the main living area where they used to separate the front sitting room from the dining room and the dining room from the kitchen.

Before the tarp was up over the back of the house, you could see straight through in this photo to the alley - it was snowing, it was a strange sight. Nick saw this, not me.

They filled this roll-off dumpster with so much brick that the driver's truck could not pick it up...there are now two of these in our front yard and the brick will have to be evenly distributed between them.