Happy New Year! - Almost

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thought I would would quickly post before the end of the year. So we are wrapping up 2007. Amazing. So I went back to see when we started this whole process. Feb 2006 was when we had our first meeting with Craig Bosworth - our architect. So nearly two years ago!

Anyway - we were hoping to have everything ready for the plumber at the end of last week but that just did not happen. We ran into some issues with the outflow for the toilet in the master bathroom. To allow us to have the toilet where we want it (not directly in front of you when you walk-in) we had to basically remove the existing floor joist that span both bathrooms and re-direct the joices. Here is a good photo - this is taken from the second floor and you can see the new bedroom on the second floor and the mud room on the first floor. The old joices ran length wise in the photo but the new ones will run left to right.

The other major thing this week is that they have taken down the chimney in the front of the house. This is a HUGE benefit. The chimney had no working fireplace and currently only was used to vent the hot water tank (it was originally used as a flew for a pot-bellied stove). We are switching to a tankless water heater and will not neet to vent out a chimney so we are able to remove it. The chimney really divided both the living room on the first floor and our bedroom on the second floor. Here is a before and after of the chimney removal.

Let the excitement continue...

Last week we discovered a pantry (6 ft by 3 ft) hidden behind a tall kitchen cupboard and the fireplace in the kitchen. We are excited about the "bonus" space and currently calling it Ella and Ollie's bedroom. :-) Our plan is to use it to house stereo, TV equipment and for a pantry.

Yesterday, we received a less pleasant surprise -- the news that our master bath was designed without considering the direction the joists run which presents some construction challenges because it isn't koshur to drill through joists (not that that stopped previous workmen in earlier work on the house...). The crew pulled down the ceiling of the kitchen giving us a temporary
"sky light" in the first level and a sneak preview of the 2nd floor. They are working to come up with solutions to facilitate the plumbing work that will take place over the next few days.

Snow Storm in Marblehead

Well this week was the week for storms. We are now in the second worst December on record for snowfall - of course we would do construction in it (-:

However the house is for the most part weather tight, but we still have a large tarp over it because the siding is not on the house and the final roofing is not in place. Also there are no windows yet. So they were still able to keep working like mad on the inside. They have most of the rough walls in place upstairs and they are begining to remove the chimney at the front of the house. We have permission from the town to take down the current chimney but we have to replace it with a fake chimney of brick since we are in the historic district.

So here is a nice shot of the street we are staying on with all the snow.

Bathing in progress!

Chez Bows now has rough walls upstairs and I am loving "my" new walk-in closet and the spaciousness of the design. The carpenters have asked us if we are moving into the guest room because it's actually a bit more spacious than the master but our new design will facilitate a better view of the harbor from our new mini-master suite so will be staying put. Sorry house guests! :-)

India was gracious and accepted our appeal for interior design assistance and helped me to begin defining two elegant baths. Our Master will be soothing and classic with "crema marfil" (neutral, cream marble) and in the guest bath I'm shooting for a beachy feel with beadboard walls, hewn stone tile and white crackle tile with a beautiful shimmer around the bath. The kids on the guest list for next Summer (Connor, Jack, Suzie Whamond and Jack Whiting) are going to love the new bath we are putting in for them! Local friends Pam Lawrence and Gail Michaud also weighed in on tile options and kept me from making a grave mistake on the backsplash. I can't wait to see the new baths!

Hola desde Marblehead, Massachusetts!

Hola a nuestros amigos de Peru y Guatemala. Feliz Navidad a la familia de Emer. Esperamos que esten muy orgullosos de Emer ya que nos esta construyendo una casa preciosa y cada dia muestra su capacidad de resolver problemillas cuando surgen.

Desde el primer dia cuando Ray (el Jefe del proyecto) nos introdujo al equipo (Imer, Simon y Valdemar), David y yo (Mary) nos sentimos a gusto y con mucha confianza en el equipo. Me encanta hablar con ellos en espanol aunque quiero que sepan que todos dominan el ingles.

Les deseamos felices fiestas!

New Bedroom! - For all you guest who will come to see us

So the complete roofline is in! Imer, Simon and Valdamar are the main guys working on the framing of the house. This is Emer in the new window. They have been working very hard for us and have been very patient with us coming by each day to check out how our project is coming. This is the new back of the house. This is the new bedroom above the old mud room. You can see just under the dormer the new covered porch. It is going to have a nice mahogany deck and mahogany beadboard ceiling. I will take the same shot in a few months so we can see the difference.






This is a shot from Lee St. Those of you who have not visited are probably amazed at how close the houses are, well they are very close, that is how it is in an olde town.




So they are working to get the house all closed up. They have all the sides closed up as of this afternoon. We are expecting about 6-10 inches of snow tomorrow and another Nor'easter this weekend so they have gotten it closed up just in time.

Another Old Find - A Cesspool?

So as they were excavating for the new entrance to the basement they hit a brick wall - literaly.



However the bricks were in more of a dome shape than a wall. What they hit was the old cesspol, which is large 8 foot in diameter brick dome sitting on an stone foundation. A cesspool is an early design of our modern septic tank. Ours is brick and stone which was a typical construction in the 1880-1900. This is a rough design but ours is more of a dome. We found the access manhole when we took up the driveway but it was not actually on top of the cesspool.





Here is a photo I took of the inside of the cesspool (I stuck my hand in - that is as far as I wanted to go). You can see it is quite a nice pice of masonry. Notice the old bottles and cans in the pit. These would have been put in through the manhole, not via the house out flow.






Quite interesting - this was just below our driveway - who knew.

Lost Camera Cable

Well the second floor is coming right along. If I could find the cable for the camera I could upload some photos. However since we are not living in our house - for obvious reasons - things are easily misplaced. At home everything has a place, when you are housesitting for someone you have to weave your stuff with theirs and things are easly lost for a few days.

Please visit back in a day or two because I have some neat photos from an interesting find when we were excavating around the foundation.

First Floor Coming Along

The guys just keep making amazing progress! Since the last entry they have pushed out the first floor in the back of the house. The back area of the house was the dining room and our living room was in the front facing the street. With the added space in the back we are now going to make it the living room and move the dining room to the front of the house. This will be great because it will provide more room but will also give us a wonderful fireplace in the living room.


This is a photos show how the first floor addition looks and shows how they have removed the roof of the mud room to start the framing for the bedroom on the second floor.


You can see they have framed up the new windows in the back. There will be a lot of windows - we just ordered 38 of them. We are replacing every window in the house.

This is a good shot showing all the new windows that will be in the back. The existing windows on the far right will be replaced with french doors.

One nice thing is the entrance to the living room is much larger now. It really opens the first floor up.

Upstairs they have contiued to clear it out. Now it is basically just one large room. They will begin laying the walls back out in the next week or so once the remainder of the outside framing is done. They are really under the gun to get the rest of the outside framing done so they can close the house up from the weather. They are really focused on this before they do much more inside.

Wow the upstairs is a mess. You can see the stairwell at the lower right.

Look at the old wiring!

Bathroom Light Fixture (click photo to zoom in)
Bathroom Wall Outlet (click photo to zoom in)

So in the above photos you can see part of the old wiring in the upstairs. It is called knob & tube wiring, basically the first implementation of electrical wiring used between 1880 and 1930. The Knobs and Tubes, insulated the wires and the positive and negatives were different runs. Here is a link to Wikpedia about the history of this wiring - Wikpedia Description of Knob and Tube Wiring. Luckly it is less of a fire hazard than it looks.

New roof line and foundations

The second floor is coming along. As you can see the first two dormers (there will be a third on the new bedroom in the rear) are in and the rain and ice shield is in place.

We are currently working on ordering our windows. It has been a long process because of the house being in a the historic district of Marblehead. We have to have all wood, single pane glass windows that look like the old ones. The problem is that nearly all the window makers have moved away from all wood and single pane glass in favor energy efficient multi-pane glass. So we have very limited options. Additionally we have decided to replace every window in the house because many of them are in really bad shape. Why do all this work and then have to replace them later. We also want to get rid of all the external storm windows!

The foundations have been poured which will allow the other areas of framing to start after Thanksgiving. You can see the new entrance to the basement in the photo above. Later on they will pour steps down to the entrance. The new ground level will be about 6 inches below the top of the foundation so there will have to be a set of stairs set into the ground for us to access the basement.

Second Floor Framing Has Started

They have started the framing of the second floor. You can just get an idea of what the change is going to be. You can see the first of the three dormers in the first photo.

Today was such a beautiful day, mid-fifties and bright sun. It was nice to stand on the second floor and take the whole sky in. I will be glad when they get the roof on though. The entire west side of the roof is currently off so we are quite exposed.

Foundation Work Has Started

They began digging the new foundation yesterday. We suspected that we would hit ledge rather quickly since Marblehead is basically a big rock. However they dug 4 feet of earth from each area and no ledge, just nice looking rich soil. I will have some photos tonight.

They also have nearly finished taking down the walls on the second floor. Quite strange seeing the upstairs with no walls. It looks a lot bigger than I remember.

New Ridge Beam for the Roof

They have now put in a new ridge beam into the roof. This was neccessary to support the loads the new roof will carry. The beam runs the length of the house and they used a crane to lift it into place. You can also notice that the old dormers are off the roof. They will start to reconstruct them soon.

It begins - 11/5/2007

Well our long awaited re-model has begun. You can see that our bedroom has chaged a bit on the first day. They have not wasted any time demo-ing the upstairs.

The Beginning

So we do not forget.