House Remodel - Phase I, Exterior

There's a lot of charm in an old farmhouse.  Slanted ceilings, narrow stairways, knee walls for storage, and this interesting way to hang a curtain rod:

Entrance to the east knee wall (with my list of what's stored inside taped to the door):

Our bedroom with slanted ceilings and chimney column (artwork curtesy of Clare and Karl):

Despite the charm of this old house, there were some things that just weren't convenient, like scraping one's back on the knee wall door jamb while trying to maneuver totes in and out. Or bumping my head on the slanted walls when trying to sew.

The best way to describe our house remodel is the snowball effect.  We knew we would need to do some remodeling to our 100 year old farmhouse.  It started with siding; we had a hard time getting full insurance on our house with the siding as it was.  So, new siding was a must.

There was no insulation in most of the house.  Hence the big wood pile.

So... we had to replace siding, we had to insulate... there was no point in insulating the walls without insulating the roof.  And since we had to replace the siding, it would be a good time to replace the old windows, many of which didn't open.

Since we were re-roofing anyway, it wasn't that much more expensive to knock out the old walls upstairs and build a full story on top.  We wanted to save the south facing upstairs windows, but also fix the roof over our front room so we decided to build a full second story above our front room.  That gives us much more space without knee walls and slanty ceilings.

We hired a crew to do the big job of re-roofing since rain would be a factor when pulling the entire roof off.

House before the remodel:

Remodel photos:

Coming down:

View from the old upstairs:

New walls going up:

Tarped against the rain:

Open to the air for one night.  We used plastic on the kids' room door to keep out mosquitoes but awoke to 49 degrees in the house that night.  A bit chilly.

New post attached to a newly poured concrete pad in the crawl space beneath family room.

We took out the wall between the family room and play room because it will fit our future floor plan better to have it as one room.

Kids watching the boom truck setting the gable truss:

Little boy loving the boom truck:

Trusses going up quickly with the truck's help:

Finished for now:

Now Matt has a huge job ahead of him - insulation, siding, and windows.   We had fun trying to pick a good color for the house.  We're going with "Green Sprout" (which isn't in the picture; it took awhile to pick just the right color).

While all this was going on, the kids and I need to be away, someplace safe from falling nails and timbers.  We went to MN one week and to my parents' house and our church's kids' camp the next. More on that later...