The Walls Go Up

Big changes with our house addition this week.



For a refresher, this was the "before" shot.



Week One

Week Two

Week Three

On Monday, my brother came over and helped Ed finish the heat system in the floor. It took quite a while to make double sure they had no leaks. There would be no going back and fixing a hole once the floor was poured.


On Tuesday the whole crew came to pour the floor. Notice the onlookers at the door. The children have a front row seats to all the action.


Two of the guys stayed for the day to work on the concrete. I'm learning as much as anyone about the construction process. I had no idea that concrete took so many hours of troweling. The children liked the power trowel the best! In between waiting for the concrete to set up, the guys stacked our woodshed full of firewood!


On Wednesday all the men were back to put up the walls. Now it truly begins to look like something!


My mom and sisters came and brought lunch.  My family is always ready to enjoy  food together.



We've been planning and saving for this addition for a number of years and Ed has been watching for good deals on building material. The windows and the fireplace came from Craig's List. We were able to get a much larger fireplace than we originally planned. This thing is big enough to roast a pig - well, a baby pig. With Ed's love of wood and fire, I'm hoping to enjoy some Dutch Oven meals from this fireplace!



And the good price on windows means much of this addition will be surrounded by windows! Yeah, for sunlight!


For those who have asked "what will the addition be?" maybe now I can show you a basic floor plan. The addition will be a family room. We plan to tear out the wall at our dining room  to extend a table into the new room when we have guests.


A porch on the side will function as the entrance to our home. If you've been to our house, you know how much we hate the narrow steep flight of steps to our front door. We plan to just avoid the front steps and use this entrance instead.


A small mudroom is maybe my favorite part of the addition, which may sound unreasonable...


...until you see the mud in our yard. If you have children you probably don't need much imagination to visualize what my children's clothes look like these days!


The children think the addition is the perfect play ground.


Saturday, Ed worked on laying up more block for the chimney. We had a couple warm sunny days this week and it even dried out the garden enough to plant some peas.

Next? The roof!