Check out the water beading up on that sucker.

We could not wait for City Light’s mysteriously cumbersome process of moving our power line to complete, so there is about a 2.5″ hole where the existing power line still drops through. It’s well protected, or as well protected as it can be.

The new meter awaits its line.

Just a couple more things to do before we are weatherproof– a parge coat needs to go on the west lower wall before that last downstairs window can go in, and just a wee bit more Tyvek (we’ve been picking up scraps from friends to avoid buying another big roll) and then the closet window upstairs. 

A table protects the last bit of exposed sheathing from today’s rain.

Once we are weatherproof, Morgan will go back to earning money for a few months and we will hang in limbo. We don’t have heat or insulation, so the prediction of a mild winter is welcome. We at least will have a container around us that stops the wind, which is way better than we had last year! 

Now, where did I stash those electric blankets…?

This week the doorway that has always served this house as a main entry became a closet.  

 
For the time being, our new front door, though perfectly functional, doesn’t lead into a space we are actually living in, so our back door is the primary entry and exit. The thing is, when you step into our back entry, this is what you see:  

Welcome to our… bathroom.

You might think that building some walls around that toilet would be a high priority for us, but with the impending shift in the weather, we’re more concerned about creating some roofing to keep us dry. Many tasks lie between us and that all-important goal, such as moving our electrical drop. 

In the meantime, we got these little cuties to keep us warm. 

Nimrod and Nibble.

Huck’s in heaven.

Another big thing that happened here this week was more earth-moving. We hadn’t quite dialed in the new entryway when last we had a big machine on site, so Patrick came over on Tuesday and Wednesday to do a little land-sculpting.

Morgan and Patrick moving earth.

We’ll be building some stairs next to the house to get from the front door to the upper driveway, so that needed some accommodation. Then the funny island of land that we have inadvertently created out of what was our front yard will need rock walls to hold it together, so we had to scrape more dirt away to make room for those.

Room for stairs and rock walls.

A little more space around the entry feels good.

This work now makes it possible for us to finish the exterior of the West wall and put the last window in, put the main water line into the house where it actually goes, wall-in the closet that was our front door… the list goes on! Now that kitten achievement has been unlocked, the new goal is the all-important weatherproofing of the exterior.

This will change radically soon.

After much wrangling, we have a run of stairs. They are functional, not the finished product, but as Morgan says, we’ll be living with this version for “a while”. My uncle Tom told us that they made stairs like this in one of their homes and lived with them for five years before remembering that they had another finish in mind :). These will suffice until drywall goes in, and then we’ll probably get the real deal.

Looking down from the back door landing.

As seen from the future living space.

Notice the extra-thick treads on the lower run– these stairs will be drawers in the future!

Looking up at the throne from the landing in the middle.

We are still using this very exposed potty. Walls will be built around it eventually. For now it’s part of the stairwell.

Morgan and Huck running up and down in celebration.

Huck will get his kittens after Labor Day, as we have two camping trips between now and then. He’s super duper excited.

Huck has been waiting for the stairs to be built, because when they are, we’re getting kittens. I had told him we needed doors and windows and walls, but then we realized that stairs would be crucial to connecting us to the larger space, a space the kittens can roam in.

Stairs are tricky, and believe it or not, these are Morgan’s first real run of them. He is, as usual, taking the time to learn and do it right, and he has the extra challenge of working with the original house, which is not square.

We got a little taste of the future this weekend when he installed some temporary stairs to the back door. Found some construction stairs at Second Use and used some of our credit there to hook us up, and now we can enter one of our doors the old-fashioned way.  

Almost like normal folks!

Two stairs inside to complete the run to the future hallway.

Where the cat door goes.

We lived for a week without plumbing again. We pulled the trailer up and used the potty in there, and I did our dishes in the driveway. Warm dry weather makes that not as big of a deal, but I’m glad it was only a week.

 
At the end of that week we had our real toilet location up and running, though still with the old toilet. Unfortunately, the real toilet location is right by the existing stove.

   
 
It’s rather dramatic, as the walls that will enclose the toilet have yet to be built, as do the stairs that will occupy the big chasm around it. We did hang a curtain between the kitchen and the throne room, but it still doesn’t feel very private!

The rest of our plumbing is temporarily hooked in again, too. There was quite a bit of head-scratching and figuring about the placement of future fixtures before that happened.

Our new powder room still looks like this: 

Morgan couldn’t wait to install the in-wall tank for our fancy future toilet.

When we set the house back down last fall, more than one person said, “The worst is over!” I would raise my eyebrows, because yes, for sure, that was a big weird disruption, but the house we have always lived in remained pretty much intact in all of the meaningful ways. No longer.

Walls came down

Our newly spacious bathroom

Looking at the kitchen and bathroom from the back entry.

The hope is that we won’t have to give up the old kitchen and bathroom upstairs until there is something functional enough down in the new space to get by. The reality might be a little different.

Walls were removed today that make privacy a stretchier concept while in the old (and currently only) bathroom, and I think we might be putting a toilet in our kitchen this week, because that’s where it goes. Given the option between a toilet in the kitchen and a porta-potty, I’ll take the flusher over modesty. 

It seems wise in any major remodel to withhold judgment about what the actual “worst” is. In the meantime, I am grateful for a sense of humor and some flexibility around my hopes and expectations. 

Up on ladders, making it happen.

This was a BIG weekend at the Hammershack! All of the detailed prep-work was ready and POW! Windows and doors!

If you are my Facebook friend, you may have seen me posting each one as they went in. Both Morgan and I were beyond thrilled to be able to do this big step. It means we won’t be freezing our butts off quite as badly this winter, no matter what.

Big thanks to Buphalo for working on this insanely hot weekend to help us with this, and to Benson for coming over to help with the big slider. Biggest thanks of all to my Grandma Helen whose generous gift basically bought us those big sexy sliding glass doors. So very, very appreciated!

Installing the regular slider.

The “French” slider, seen from within. The middle doors slide out to the sides to make a nice big opening.

Exterior view of the future patio and the gorgeous doors.

Back door and kitchen window down low.

The stairwell will be well-lit.

Our new front door.

Relaxing in what will be our living room.

Seeking…

Just as a quick aside, here, in the category of “Things we know now”:

It is probably best, when using a non-traditional building material such as insulated concrete forms, to purchase them from an active distributor, and not from someone who is shutting down their business and offloading them to you for “cheap”. BECAUSE, as it turns out, should you need any extra pieces to supplement what you got, it will be very difficult to locate them and will cause a delay. AND there will be other products that you will need to purchase that are specific to your materials that only a distributor will be able to attain for you. The internet will tell you this, instead of yielding up what you need.

Take heed, my friends, and learn from our mistake!