gwyn | Remodel, day 25

Things are heating up! Brent keeps saying, "Trusses on Friday," and I go, cool, except that I have no idea what that means. (Well, I finally asked today, and he said it's for the roof.) Now it's all starting to take shape -- walls going up, openings where windows will be. It's fascinating to see what it will look like. There are some hangups on the door, and about stuff in the utility room, but with any luck we'll work around it. Or bulldoze through it, one or the other.

He also kindly brought me four radiator style portable heaters because the weather turned so suddenly cold. The other night I got back late, and turned them all on, two of them on high setting, because the house was so freaking cold. I promptly blew the breaker, and couldn't find anything to let me see, so I tried to reset the switches blindly in the dark. That however did not work very well. Fortunately there's a huge streetlight on the front corner and the alley corner, so going out to the garage was easy enough to do. And I couldn't find my emergency lights at all. I have no idea where they were stashed, and I've looked everywhere. But one of the plumbers who put a bid in on the job left his light here, which I've kept in the garage for him, and after wandering around trying to solve this problem, I finally remembered it and was able to reset the breakers. And then I did it again today when I ran the vacuum. Sigh. I long for some clean electricity.

This is the bottom layer of floor. The asbestos abatement guys took off five, count 'em, five layers of flooring, and in between those floors there were two subfloors at various spots. In the right corner of the pic is a soft spot that I kept stepping on and freaking out because it was so soft and I could tell it would break through. Brent never seemed to find that same spot, and today, he almost killed himself when he put his ladder up on it -- I heard this crash and then these rock-falling sounds. When I went in to see what happened, he showed me where the floor caved in. He said he was saved by his "catlike reflexes", which cracked us both up. But I guess there's a reason they always give you a sheet of paper at the start of a job with directions and information on the nearest hospitals.

After the floor came up, they were able to tear out the exterior walls. This is the new temp wall moved in about a foot and a half, and you can see the eaves are missing and the edge of the floor.

There were a whole lotta nests going on behind those eaves. I know there are many, many more under the other side, but I don't think they'll be taking that wood off.

Putting up the wall studs for the new exterior.

Wall studs and walls! And, of course, Olive.

Still more walls -- with window borders. I don't know why it is, but when these frames went up, I could really see what the view will be like out the windows. For some reason, standing there with nothing didn't really give me the idea, but once these frames went up, I was like, wow! The bushes are right there! Everything's so close! And poor Brent -- he really doesn't want the double hung windows, two per section, like they'd originally designed as he thinks it ruins the view, and he kept getting overruled by the women on the project. I told him I honestly didn't care, but in the end I just stuck with the original design, even though I could tell he was so disappointed in me. I told him, "Dude, in situations like this, the chicks always beat down the guys. Always."

This will be the view he was so adamant about protecting. I think it'll still look nice, even with all the casements and the screens. I mean, it's still a huge, huge improvement over what I had before.