I've been neglecting you

Well, I guess it's been a few days since I posted last. Much going on. Sorry

Lots of progress on the house.  It seems weird to have all the walls off and anyone can just traipsing right in without as much as a "howdy do".

As you can see from the pictures, the roof is complete. The soffit and fascia is starting to go on. All the siding has been removed and the sheathing is partly replaced.

Design decisions we've made so far:

* The brick and vinyl siding will be replaced with field stone and stucco respectively. We know what colors we want as well.

* We are moving a wall in the laundry room to allow for a shower in the powder room.

* We are rearranging the master bath to incorporate a double sink and better use of the space in the hall.

* The hall closet will be split so that there will be a small linen closet within the hall closet.

* We've picked out the windows and front door.

This is the front of the house on Monday night.

Now this is the front as of tonight.

The back of the house.

I think our neighbors may want us to 
finish this wall for some privacy.

Wedding Plans

So, did I mention Gen and Aaron are getting married in less than 2 months? Yikes!  That means Youth Camp in 2 weeks, vacation in 5 and the wedding in 8. And a house to build when we have nothing else to do ("I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wife to murder, and Gilder to blame for it. I'm swamped." - The Princess Bride ).

We had a great planning session on Monday sans Aaron. It's always best to plan a wedding without the groom or is that just standard operating procedure? :-)   The Souderton crew is hosting a bridal shower tomorrow and we'll be hosting one in August for the locals. Actually, ours will be a Jack and Jill shower per Gen and Aaron's preference and held at "the summer house". 

Speaking of the summer house - one of the family members from the estate showed us a really cool book with some photos of the estate.  I'm going to get some of them scanned so that I can post them.

  

Advertising post card with the Sharples cream separator.
 The estate was originally build by Sharples.

No pictures today.

We stopped at the house last evening to discuss kitchen designs.  While the basic layout will remain pretty close to the way it was we are attempting to improve some minor items.

The main roof is now completely done and almost half of the garage is as well.  Some of the wall areas have new sheathing installed too.  With the incredible heat this last week I don't envy David and his team working on a hot roof!

More Roof Progress

Erik and I stopped over at the house this evening to take some measurements and pictures.  He got a big kick out of being my "photographer".  He said maybe he'll be one when he grows up :-).

About half of the main roof is now shingled. The garage roof has been partially stripped of the old shingles.  The gables are now enclosed as well.

We're meeting with a cabinet maker tomorrow night to see about kitchen designs and finishes. Hopefully we can get some decisions from that meeting to move forward with how the kitchen will be rebuilt.

I've also been working on some floor plans so that I can ensure that certain things are rebuilt the way we want them (ie we really despise the sliding closet doors which fall off the tracks all the time and want to have them replaced with regular hinged doors - I had already replaced 2 of the 4 sets this way before the fire).  Plus there are small things like location of outlets that we know we want to enhance.

The front side of the main house is shingled now.

The gables are up.

Erik was fascinated with this hole in the floor to the shower drain.

You can't top this!

Great progress again today.  All the rafters have been installed and the roof sheathing is on.

Look Mom! No Roof.

That was fast.  In about half a day the entire roof disappeared.  Laurie stopped by around 1:00 pm to pick up the mail and this is what she found.  And not a old shingle in site.  The entire roof and end gables were gone and all the clean up had been completed.

Let the Building Commence!

I drove by the house today hoping to see signs of progress.  I found a glorious mess in the driveway. All kinds of scaffolding, ladder jacks, saw horses, etc. What a beautiful sight!

The power was restored in the house at some point today thanks to David, John, Aaron, the township and PECO.   All the shrubs in front of the house were removed.  They would get destroyed no matter how careful the guys were and having them removed makes it a lot easier to set up and work.

We did some kitchen design modeling at Lowe's last week.  It got us thinking about all the options available with the layout.  We are going to meet with a cabinet maker later this week to get into more detail.

Permits in hand

I believe we now have all the permits to allow us to start rebuilding.  The roof replacement should start on Monday (19th). The power is supposed to go back on tomorrow - just in time for work to start on Monday. WooHoo!

The inside is clean

The inside of the house is completely cleaned out as of late yesterday. The final step was to paint all the exposed wood with a special white paint to seal in any smoke smell.  It looks really weird having all the studs white, but there are no walls.

It never rains, but pours

I have two rain related stories.


The first is from Saturday. I was having my first cup of coffee as I read my Bible in the sun room. I love this time on Saturdays when it's quiet in the house and I don't have anything I need to run out and do.  As I sat there it started to rain lightly. I thought "Cool, we need the rain. I hope it lasts for a few hours." As it really started to come down Laurie joined me with her first cup of coffee.  As she entered the room she saw that the water from the heavy rain was splashing onto the door and coming into the room. No big deal. Then she noticed that it was starting to drip from the ceiling. Big BROWN drops. She grabbed a couple of buckets to catch the leaking water. After we collected a gallon or more of water I realized I needed to check the downspouts to see if they were clogged since the water was overflowing the gutters in the middle. That meant retrieving my extension ladder from the old house, climbing up in the middle of the heaviest rain and discovering the downspouts were fine. It was just that the old gutters were sagging so much in the middle that was the easiet/lowest place for the water to flow out.  With all the water hitting the window well over the sun room it just couldn't not leak.  I rigged up a piece of plywood to divert the water away from the window well and the leak stopped. We had collected two buckets full of chocolate brown water. The water had leached the wood stain out of the beams it was flowing over as it came through the ceiling.

The second happened today.  As most of you know we home school our kids. We lost all our school books in the fire so Laurie had placed a large book order last week.  We had them shipped to a friends house so that someone would be around to receive them (since then we have made friends with the UPS driver for the estate and can have them shipped directly to us).  Apparently the book company didn't check the shipping address Laurie gave them and just shipped to our home address. Laurie stopped by the house today to pick up our mail to discover two boxes of books completely sodden from the rain.  The book company will be reshipping the book order since it was their mistake.


These are the little foxes that try to steal our joy (Song of Solomon 2:1).  But we constantly remind ourselves that the Lord works ALL things to our greatest good. We may not understand how, but His Word promises that they are!

The world traveler has returned

Sarah has now returned from her European tour. She traveled with her best friend Kelsey and Kelsey's dad Andy. They stayed with Andy's brother in Switzerland. The tour included a 3 day trip to Florence, Italy and a two day hike into the Alps. She returned very tired, but with a lot of fun memories.  We are so glad to have her home.  We missed the ray of sunshine she is in our lives.

Rebuilding Next Steps

Some of the permits have been obtained for starting the rebuilding of the house. We hope to start the roof replacement this week. That means the existing roof, rafters, gable ends and some of the joists will be removed and replaced. We'll be going with a neutral colored architectural shingle.


The entire brick face on the front of the house will also be removed. We are considering replacing it with a stone front on the main house with stucco on the remainder of the house instead of vinyl siding. See the example below (less the window in the middle).

We met with David (and Jannie), our builder, yesterday to talk about design decisions we need to make and what our options are. This will include things like kitchen cabinet choices and layout, tile, carpeting and hardwood floors, etc. We would also like to consider a couple of space reallocations (like including a small shower in the powder room), but we're not sure how much flexibility we'll have.
 
The house is pretty well cleaned out now.  All the final clean up is done and I think all that remains is sealing the existing wood to prevent the smoke smell in the future.
 

Welcome to the 20th Century!

After 3 weeks of Verizon troubleshooting we've finally gotten our landline phone back. The same number it was before the fire. You may commence the communications! The issue was that the phone wires on the estate are really old and need to be replaced, but no one wants to take on the expense of having them upgraded. Anyway, with the poor cell reception here we still felt disconnected since you were never sure if someone's call was going to get to you.  So now we have reestablished reliable phone coverage.

Houston, we have a go!

We have approval to move forward with rebuilding the house. The builder ( http://davidwbard.com/ )estimate was perfectly acceptable to the insurance adjuster. David is now in the process of getting plans drawn up for the building permits.   The first thing to do is to get the new roof on - hopefully it will be complete this month.  Then all the mechanicals can begin their work inside.

Some basic facts about the rebuild:
* The house is 100% gutted down to the studs except the garage, laundry room, sun room and powder room.
* The entire roof of the main house will be replaced including decking.
* The furnace and A/C will be replaced.
* A large portion of the electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems will be replaced.
* The brick front of the house will be replaced.
* The kitchen will be replaced including cabinets and counter tops.

We are excited about moving forward as well as having David Bard doing the work.  Keep checking back for progress updates.