Before and After

Sorry I have been slacking off on the blogging. I have been working at the job site almost every day for the last 2 weeks over seeing the construction. I am wearing many hats as the interior designer, project manager, general contractor and accountant for this whole renovation. The rain has thankfully not been coming down so bad as to hold up construction. And a mix-up in scheduling with the city's inspector helped kept us on schedule even after a last minute change before pouring the foundation.

I am happy to say that the second half of the foundation was put in today and we shall start on the back siding and windows next week! We are going to wait until after the wood siding is finished before putting down the concrete slab.

Here is Justin, dreaming of a finished house...

We came by the house one morning about an hour after the workers started working, this is what we saw...we knew the whole back side was coming, but it still took us by surprised.

Realizing that the deck and staircase will have to be rebuild on more stable foundation and to make it easier to work on the back siding, Mr. Tree single handedly took both down. The trash monster is over taking the house again! 

The back of the house is a more recent addition, so there is concrete foundation, but it was put on top of the old brick foundation. It's probably okay to keep it the way it is since it passed the last inspection. But we wanted to do a good job, so out it came. We rented a 90lb jackhammer that needed a giant compressor to operate. After some comparison shopping, Oakland Rentals  was the least expensive closest place to our house. It cost $101.00 to rent for minimum of 4 hours, we were done in about 1 hour.

With and without the old brick foundation...check out the 2 feet of space below the windows.

Our house has a gaping hole in the back! Can you imagine if we were to put in a giant glass wall in the back how much light that would let in?! I am a little, okay, a lot concern with getting a lot of light in our new house. I've lived in one too many dark apartments, including our current residence, to last me several life times. Expansive glass windows lining the back wall is out of our shoestring budget, so I will settle for having couple of working windows (without prison bars) on the back wall. :)

Our house has a gaping hole in the back, at least the foundation is done, for now. Next week, we will start to put up the new back wall and seal up the house so we can start working on the inside of the house!