1950s CARD ROOM comes to life...

IT'S ALIVE!

This is the major renovation project going on right now. Future Card Room & Eat-in-Kitchen. Busy, busy, busy...very little time to blog about it, but I will post some photos to display what has been going on.

To sum it up, we're rebuilding the portion of the wall that was damaged by the carpenter ants, installing new insulation in that portion of the wall and ceiling. Then we will be installing new drywall segments to refinish the water damaged wall.

The window casing has been mostly removed, saving the left side & as soon as the new drywall is in place and skim coated, Liam will begin building the new window frame.

My job is to cover all the cosmetics. I am stripping the large double window. It was caked with many layers of paint, and in taking it off, it will become a stunning wall of beautiful woodframe windows. This project alone will take me about three weeks to complete.

In the meantime I will be repairing all the joint seams, and carefully spackling all of the drywall.

I am also reviving a walk in storage closet as our future walk-in pantry. Liam will be building new shelving.

That's all going on right now.

stripping window casing...(day 3 photographed here)

Liam's beautiful carpentry patch for the damaged wall.

super handsome carpenter at work.

lumberjack lamb!

getting started here.

handy laddercat.

future somewhat walk-in-able pantry.

major split wall joint about to be magically repaired.

There's really a more impressive before & after than the one you're about to see. Before this, I chiseled and knocked-out and sanded gobs and slops of caulk from a crazy lazy previous repair.

& now for the drywall tape miracle.

AFTER

BEFORE

HEALED!

some like to use a drywall hawk...I prefer a drywall cat.

CARD ROOM COMES TO LIFE...

BEFORE (August 2008)

Garage being rebuilt

Basically most of the garage is being rebuilt. This was day two of the garage roof being put on. The back wall will be rebuilt probably by Friday. We'd like to put some vinyl siding on it to match the house, but that might not happen until next year. It's probably the best we can do to keep the old decaying walls sealed out of moisture and carpenter ants!

Day 3: Back Addition Renovation

We found that we had carpenter ant damage to the water damaged area of the back addition. Unfortunately, that leak went on for far too long and there was nothing we could really do about it right away. Carpenter ants like to burrow in wood with a 15%or more moisture content. We figure that they came from a large colony in the garage and moved to the house. The colony is gone, however we've had to exterminate our entire house. It's a good thing that I began working on the back addition this past week so that we could address the issue as soon as possible. Fortunately, they only burrowed in the moist wood surrounding the window casing and left the rest of the house alone. There was sawdust packed into the wall when we removed the drywall. It was quite a sight to see...