Glenn and Julie to the Rescue!

Whew....it has been a long, long time since we've had an entry here....that could either mean that we've burned out and don't have any work (life?) to report on, or, that we've been so busy that we haven't had any time to provide updates...

The second is true...between paid work, and work on the house (pay to work), we have been unusually busy for the past 2-3 months. The latest project has been working on remodeling the kitchen. This involved reconstructing the roof that was pushed in by a large pine tree that can probably be viewed in an entry back when we bought the house. The addition that encompasses the kitchen was completed in 1936, which we deduced from the hundreds of pages of newspaper that served as insulation. We found some bleached mice skulls during the demo of the interior kitchen, and after completing the demo, we were shocked that we hadn't been ill yet from living in that portion of the house.

Glenn and Julie arrived on the scene for a Thursday-Tuesday work weekend. We pretty much did just that, with some nice relaxing courtesy of some untimely precipitation.

Friday we knocked the roof off the top of the kitchen area, and began leveling the top wall portion…we ended up with one 2x4 on the south side of the wall, and 3.75 stacked 2x4s on the north side…so the old roof wasn’t exactly level. The new one now is, which unfortunately highlights the fact that the rest of our house is indeed, slightly uneven…Glenn wasn’t too happy about that one.

We finally have caved into the realities of winter approaching and fast. Two weeks ago we hired a local contractor to complete a set amount of work for us, just to be sure that we had things taken care of before the snow flew…it has been the best decision in the history of our house work, and could become addictive. I suppose the end bill will remind us why we “love” working on the house and why we diligently keep contractors at arm’s length. Although The Acklin Brother Construction has been good to us at 134 N Linden Ave.

On Saturday we were able to finish with the new roof beams, laid the plywood down, and got the tar paper in place…it started raining about 10 minutes after we finished this, and continued the rest of the day…impeccable timing. We called it a day, and celebrated our manual laborer’s birthday by taking Glenn and Julie out for dinner and a movie.

Sunday we put a skylight in after determining that the kitchen would be too dark, placed the rolled roofing, fixed the flashing, and leveled the floor…enjoy some pics from the weekend...


Get that roof off Glenn!



Looking good!



Notice Glenn's amusement with the 2-handed swing technique...



All dry and just in time!




That's a long board!





Cleaning frenzy inside the kitchen!




Like father like daughter?




Aaaaawwwwww







As I type, we have the contractors finishing up the texturing...we plan to put flooring and cabinets in sometime before December, we will be using our oven and sink before Christmas!

Stay tuned for more pics, we'll try to keep them coming, but life has been too busy for consistency latley! Sorry! Glenn, I think you're the only one who reads this anyways though...