Floor Two

These photos aren't great but Ben was able to climb the ladder this morning and get a peek at the upstairs.  You start to get a good feel for the size of the windows.  They are going to be BIG - much larger than before.  We really enjoy mid-century architecture, and though we decided against buying a mid-century home (real estate professionals assure us that it is a fad with a 20% markup), we wanted to incorporate as many elements of mid-century architecture as we could.  We worked hard to place large windows in most of the rooms to bring light in and to arrange the windows on the exterior so that everything looked well balanced.

We also created a wall of clerestory windows (pronounced "clear story" but not spelled that way!) in the master bedroom to eliminate the line of sight into our neighbor's house and vice versa.  In fact, every window, except one, on the South side of the house will be a clerestory window.  The clerestory windows are a great way to create privacy for our family - which is hard to do on a skinny, 4,000 sq. ft. lot.

Master Bedroom - looking towards Master Bath

Kids' Bathroom

The weather is looking great for the next week so we should be able to get the roof on without any further rain damage to the existing house.  

Up, Up and Away

Yep, that's a second floor!  This is a drive-by photo from a friend of mine.  (Thanks, Liyah!)   It was very exciting to see the new developments.  We are able to see the scale of the house now that the 2nd story exterior walls are nearly complete. 

The shape of the back of the house is also taking form.  We've cantilevered out about 3-4' in order to gain a bit more floor space upstairs and so that we'd have a covered area for the BBQ.

We really wanted to avoid another "modern box house" so our architect came up with a few creative concepts and they are starting to take shape in the photo above:

(1) We decided to split our roof line and make it about 2' higher on one side.  This also allows us to show off our funky, angular soffits.  Love 'em or hate 'em, we promise that they will be unique.  I really don't think we've seen another house in the neighborhood with this type of soffit.  Our contractor tells me that they will take a long time to construct - but (hopefully) well worth the extra effort!
(2)  The depth of the back of the house will be slightly greater on one side than the other, meaning that it will push further into the yard on one side (on the 2nd story).
(3)  Also (slightly hard to see - and explain), the "belly band" raises up about a foot in the middle of the house.

The front entry of the home will look very different as well, but they won't start on the new entry until the roof is underway.  Roofing package gets delivered next week!  

Movin' on up!

Things are moving along!  I drove by on Thursday and took this picture for Ben.  It was the first time either of us had seen any framing for the 2nd floor.  I sent him the photo by text...

His immediate response, "Someone tell that guy to put down his Coke and pick up a hammer." 

Ha!  It is official proof that Ben is way more observant than me.

Progress

When I walked up to the house today, there were visible signs of an addition.  If you look closely (below), you can see the 2nd story overhang starting to be framed out.  That is part of the floor of the new master bedroom.  Eventually, the front door will move to make way for the new "entry" area.  One of my complaints about our house was that you just open the door and walk into the living room.  In the new house, there will be a short walk-though entryway with a coat closet, before reaching the living room.  It should feel a lot more welcoming.  

Here is a picture of the framing for the 2nd story addition (below).  This is inside the living room.  We intended to raise the ceiling from 7'6" to 8'3", but the demo team realized that our house "tipped" about 3" towards the street over the years.  So, effectively, it was 3" shorter on the street side.  In order to even everything out, they added another 3" to the living room side.  Yay!  Now our ceilings will be a foot taller.  This 3" "tip" ended up to be a blessing in disguise.

Kitchen demo has begun... the 80s cabinets are gone!  And so is that awful grayish-blue tile with gold flecks.  Good news all around.

Tarps with holes...

Tarps with holes... don't hold water.  And under this weekend's very wet and very windy conditions, the tarps failed.  It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great either.  The basement, which was supposed to be untouched during this project, has water soaking through the drywall in the downstairs bathroom and the furnace room.  Kuddos to our hard working construction team that did their best to contain the water during one of Seattle's worst September storms in history.  Good time to have a house with no roof.

Despite, stress level is still fairly low.

The 2nd floor framing should be visible by the end of the week.  It will be exciting to start to see the structure's size and shape come together during framing.