disappearing carpenters

While Doug was waiting for the carpenters to come back to finish the steps, he did a bunch of miscellaneous things, like framing the attic floor and some doorways, more window installation, and installing a patio door into the porch. That is when he fell and CRACKED ONE OF HIS RIBS.

We had such a fantastic experience with the kitchen designer that we decided to get some advice from a lighting designer as well. We have mixed feelings about that experience. We did learn a lot, but it was expensive and more complicated than it needed to be. I wish we had researched it more and figured it all out on our own. But we did get detailed lighting diagrams done for the electrician who was due to start work this month.

I spent a lot of time this month sanding and painting a bunch of doors. These doors all have multiple window panes in them. It was a real pain to paint these doors, but they look really nice. Except that the front door color is not exactly what I had in mind – it’s what Doug had in mind. Maybe I’ll be able to do something about that later, like the next time Doug goes out on tour. The door is very pretty, but maybe just a little too pretty for our particular neighborhood.

Next we had to pick out and buy all of our plumbing stuff so that the plumber could do the proper rough-ins. I hate picking stuff out – it is so hard to decide what will look the best in all of those rooms that don’t even exist yet.

I got awesome deep bathtubs and beautiful medicine cabinets. Oh, and my kitchen sink is named “Orca" - not by me, but by the manufacturer. Doug selected some pretty cool looking faucets and a really girly sink for the powder room. If I can stand what he likes, I let him pick stuff out. I still don’t know about that door color though.

The pretty sink that Doug picked out



This door certainly is purple

STAIR TROUBLES
Around the middle of May, a different set of carpenters showed up to start building the basement stairs. Doug was going to the ITF in Las Vegas, but Cyndy decided to stay home so that she could let the carpenters in - hoping that they would continue working on the steps while Doug was gone. On their last day of work they left early while Doug was out buying additional lumber for them. They didn’t come back - ever. So I stayed home from Vegas for nothing.

About a month later we realized that they had made a significant error with the basement steps and probably just didn’t want to have to deal with fixing it. Their excuse for not coming back was that Doug was tardy in supplying some of the materials they needed. They actually left and never came back while he was at Home Depot buying the additional wood for them.

Fortunately these were just the basement stairs, and there was enough room to work around the error – except that there might not be quite enough height where the stairs pass under the header joist. It’s close, so hopefully the inspectors will let it go, if they even notice. If not we’ll have to get new stairs built, or build them ourselves.

These pictures are of our partially constructed back porch.

BUILDING THE FRONT PORCH
PART TWO
The roof is partially on. You can see the famous pulley sticking up out of the roof and the chain hanging down.


Here's a closeup of the magic pulley.


After I take this picture I will go operate the pulley and Doug will guide the panel into place.


Here's a side view


There's the truck which was our work station so we didn't have to deal with the hill and the mud. I'll be planting new grass again soon I guess.

THE NEW FRONT PORCH AND FOYER
PART ONE

The bottom structure is in place and you can see a couple of panels waiting to be installed. Doug decided to use them to insulate the floor of the foyer. I hope they aren't too springy for the tile that's going in there.


This is the glue that creates a seal between the sections of panels, the splines, and the 2x6s that are used for the window framing in the panels.


Here he's digging out a space to put in a 2x6


All cleaned out and ready to go

THE CARPENTERS HAVE ARRIVED AT LAST

Spring is here and so are the carpenters! I finished removing the framing just in the nick of time. In about three days all of the walls were back up in their new locations. The floor plan of our house is going to work so well for us. But the kitchen is scary-huge. I hope I can get used to it!

The carpenters became a little annoyed with Doug when they heard he was going out on tour for a couple of weeks. The main guy said “I thought you were in a hurry.” So I told them they could keep working because I would be there, but I think Doug told them otherwise. Another delay.....oh well.

Now I have a two week break from hard labor. After they finished the inside framing they built the back porch. It is fantastic. We added windows and a patio door to the sides and that will give us a much longer season of use. Now that I’m getting my dream screened-in porch I may never need to go on vacation again! Once the house is finished, that is.

"TOO LITTLE TIME" (OFF-TOPIC)
Although we are now working furiously on our house, there has also been some down time while we wait for various things to arrive and for various body parts to recover from the physical assaults we have been putting them through recently.

I took a jazz theory course last fall and now I'm taking an arranging class. Since I'm pretty much a beginner with the Sibelius program I decided that doing all of my arranging assignments on Sibelius would be the perfect way to get better at it. It's extremely time-consuming but the more I do it the faster I get.

In his "spare time" Doug has been making some mouthpieces and also getting ready for his performance of the Gordon Jacob Concerto which was arranged for concert band by Denis Wick. They also wanted him to prepare an encore and he decided to play the Henry Mancini song "Too Little Time" from the Glenn Miller Story. Doug had previously played an arrangement of this song with the Airmen of Note that he thought would be easily adaptable for the concert band.

Then Doug decided that I should put this on Sibelius for him. I wasn't sure how cool of an idea that was, considering how relatively inexperienced I am. I thought that he was being rather ambitious on my behalf, but I also sort of wanted to find out whether I could actually do it so I decided to go for it. We got the hand-written parts from a friend and then I got to work. It took a really long time to get it all done but it ended up sounding pretty good, and it had a much richer sound than the original because there was a larger variety of instruments playing each part. So although it was a lot of work, it ended up being well worth the effort.

I always forget that my camera can take videos so I neglected to get any clips of the concerto, which is a shame because he played it really well. But then I suddenly remembered about the video feature and I got a pretty good chunk of Doug playing "Too Little Time." One of these days I might even learn how to turn off my camera at the end of the performance! Or maybe I'll learn video-editing. Sure....

Anyway, here's Doug playing "Too Little Time" and the concert band playing the parts I made for them. Cool!

And just to clarify: This is not my arrangement, it is the original arrangement for big band with an enlarged orchstration so that the whole ensemble could play it. I just added parts for the clarinets, oboes, flutes, french horns, etc. Notice how great the bass sounds here - that's my friend Ed Skidmore. I'm also impressed with how well my camera picked up his excellent playing - I had no idea the sound quality would be this good.

OUR HOUSE HAS WINDOWS NOW...Check it out!

During February and March Doug installed some of the windows that had arrived back in December. Cyndy came to his aid whenever he needed help, mostly lifting things, holding things in place while he nailed, looking for misplaced tools, and cleaning up after him.

Cyndy spent the rest of the time carefully taking down all of the previous interior framing, nail by nail, so that the wood could be used again for the new framing. This involved chipping away at the wood under the head of the nail with a hammer and chisel, and then using a nail puller to wrench the nail out the rest of the way. Bang, bang, bang. Yank, yank, yank. Hit a finger with the hammer. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Kill your knees climbing up and down the ladder. Curse, curse, curse. Over and over and over. Up and down and up and down on the ladder. For two months straight. Her hands hurt for weeks after it was finally finished.

OUR FABULOUS KITCHEN PLANNING EXPERIENCE

Our contractor told us we had better hurry up and order our kitchen cabinets because it would hold things up if they didn’t arrive in time. We started meeting with a fantastic kitchen designer who used the architect’s kitchen plans as a starting point and turned our kitchen into something incredible.

It was an amazing experience that we thoroughly enjoyed. Kathy Schmick at Smoot Lumber is awesome. When we were first planning our house the architects kept implying that we could only afford standard stained wooden cabinets,not the painted ones that I wanted. But now I’m getting high quality (at Doug’s insistence) cabinets by Bertch in a really groovy blue-greenish color. I’m kind of in awe of them, and very excited. The day after I picked them out I bought a copy of Architectural Digest and there was a featured kitchen in exactly the same color. It looked fantastic!

We are getting tons of drawers and lots of counter space and storage. Doug is getting two microwaves, a convection oven and he insisted that we get a double drawer dishwasher. Cyndy is delighted to be getting a dishwasher, period, and also two sinks (one for Doug on the other side of the kitchen). I don’t know why we need such a fantastic kitchen but somehow that is what we are getting.

The cabinets will arrive in May right after the wallboard goes up. The timing should work out perfectly.

The bookcase in the lower left corner is the same color as our cabinets.
Imagine an entire kitchen that color!

New Year's Day Conversation

Cyndy: Why haven’t we heard from our contractor yet?
Doug: Don’t worry about it.

Cyndy: But it’s been three months since you spoke to him.
Doug: It’s no big deal, I need to finish the porch first anyway.

Cyndy: But doesn’t he want us to sign a contract or something?
Doug: I told him there’s no rush because I need to finish building the porch.

Cyndy: There is too a rush. I can’t take any more inactivity.
Cyndy: When was the last time you spoke to him?
Doug: Just that one time.

Cyndy: What if he forgot?
Cyndy: Didn’t he say he was going to stop by and take a look at it?
Cyndy: I think I should call him, if you won’t.
Cyndy: If he’s not available we will have to start over with another contractor and wait another three months. That is not good, etc, etc, etc.
Doug: (no response)

So I got his number and called him and left a pathetic message about the urgency of our situation and explained it all again. He called back and said that what he had gotten from his conversation with Doug back in October was that Doug wanted him to build a porch and that there was no rush. Gee I’m sure glad I called him - who knows how long this would have dragged out? Thankfully he agreed to take on our much larger project and we met with him two weeks later. Now I feel like something is actually going to happen and I am relieved.

At the same time, I feel like this little "misunderstanding" has caused another unnecessary delay to us getting our house finished.

WE ARE GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS

After they finished installing the water line not much else happened for the remainder of December. The 25 Anderson windows I ordered earlier this fall arrived on December 18th and Doug and I carried all of them up the stairs and into the house that same day. Carrying windows is a very physically awkward activity. We both completely trashed our backs and visited the chiropractor more often than usual for the rest of the month. In addition, Doug thought he had a hernia, but it turned out to be “only” a sprained groin muscle. Needless to say, we had to take it easy for a couple of weeks.

HEY! What are you guys doing to my new front lawn??!??

They came and dug a huge trench in the front yard to bring in the new water line to the house. How rude!!! There goes my beautiful new grass. Now it’s going to be muddy for the rest of the winter.

WATER LINE INSTALLED

okay, this is not fair....

Doug started this month by going out on a 10 day cruise from Madiera to Fort Lauderdale. Cyndy, admittedly, was somewhat bitter about this because she had turned down several ship gigs this past summer in the spirit of getting the house finished. Since Doug needed extra time after he got back to recover from his very exhausting ship gig, not much else happened with the house this month. But we did have our first meeting with Pat the Plumber. We have a very good feeling about him. Cyndy spent a lot of time researching doors. They are expensive. Isn’t this fascinating?

A BENEFIT OF BEING ON OUR OWN ALL THIS TIME
After we bought the plans from our previous builder we began to realize that we could tweak the plans to suit our previously unrealized needs in whichever way we pleased, within reason, and it wouldn’t cost us a penny.

It was so incredibly difficult trying to design our house from a piece of paper while we were on the road, but now that we actually own our plans we can carry them around the house with us and see how changing certain details will greatly improve the house.

We altered the window sizes quite a bit, and made a few secret changes to the porches that will work out great for us. We feel like for now, nobody can tell us what to do with our house.

There were so many money issues involved previously – after all, architects do charge by the hour – but now we are at a stage where we can freely mess with the plans and make them even better than they were already.

When the actual construction begins we will have to stop this nonsense, but we are having some serious fun with it right now. Hopefully we are not also making some serious mistakes that we will pay for later. There's no way to tell that at this point so I guess we'll just keep on fine tuning it for now as we see fit.

WE HAVE A NEW BUILDER!!!
Doug got in touch with an old friend of his who is a contractor and is known for his high quality work. He was not available to start right away, but Doug told him that was okay because he still needed to build the front porch out of the foam core panels. Nobody else gets to work with the foam core panels because Doug is the king of foam core construction.

Not much else happened this month – we got all of the cement poured into the piers for the front and back porches. Cyndy figured out all of the window sizes, ordered the windows, and tended to the new grass. Doug worked on mouthpieces.

We went to a home expo show late in the month just to get some ideas, and Doug decided that he just had to have a whole house vacuum system. Cyndy was skeptical, but she went along with it. The rich people who have these things apparently think they are great. The actual vacuum cleaner is in the basement and all you have to do is plug a hose into the wall instead of dragging a vacuum cleaner around all over the house. But the hoses are huge! Where will we keep them?

GRADING, PORCH PIERS, GRAVEL DRIVEWAY, and GRASS

In September we had some more grading done. They filled in the trench in front of the house and dug the holes for the back porch piers. We put in heavy-duty cardboard sonotubes and backfilled. Shovelling is super back-breaking work. Also they regraded and put in a gravel driveway in the back. It is great to be able to drive right up to the back door again after all these years. It is fantastic. The final activity for September was planting grass everywhere and covering it with straw. It looks much more pleasant now, don't you think?

All that Remains....

When they finished tearing down our house and finished hauling it all away we both felt kind of empty and yet also very relieved. It had been difficult to see our house in such a state of disrepair for well over a year.

But now we can finally begin to move on.

This is when they were beginning to fill in the former basement.

Our house is smaller but our front yard is bigger.

They left a big trench in front of the house so that Doug could do the parging and then apply the tar and plastic sheeting all the way down the front foundation wall. Then he added a drainage system. Thanks to all of this we should never have a wet basement.

This new, smaller version of our house does not look so good just yet. It is rather unattractive and a little sad without any windows in the front.
Maybe we should plant some grass now.

A Few More Videos

In case you just can't get enough of these, here are a few more. Certain people might find these entertaining, or even interesting. And if you don't watch them, you'll never know what you've missed!

Here's one taken from pretty close in:



Doesn't this look like a giant chicken?
Watch him pecking away at our house.

this one even has some inane dialog

Some Entertaining House Demolition Videos

These are fun to watch I guess, especially the second one.

PULLING DOWN THE BASEMENT WALL

THROWING CHUNKS OF CEMENT AROUND

VIDEOS!!! WATCH OUR HOUSE BEING DEMOLISHED

As we were watching our house being torn apart I suddenly decided that it was time to learn how to work the video thing on my camera. It wasn't that hard and I wish I'd checked it out sooner. It definitely made watching the permanent destruction of my house more "fun" as in: Well my house is being destroyed today but at least I 've learned how to make videos on my camera now. Great. After I made a few, Doug figured out how to do videos on his camera too, so I had a lot to choose from.

Loading Debris Into the Truck

Smashing Up the House Some More

House Demolition Photos

PHOTOS OF OUR HOUSE BEING BULLDOZED on AUGUST 14th

Here goes....


A small crowd gathered to watch.


Smashing up the front


Smashing up the roof


And that's all that's left of it for today

Another Sad Day....

Today is the day that our house is going away forever

I took some final pictures of our house in its current decrepit condition because it is our last chance to see the house we lived in for our entire marriage up until the fire. So this is it, I guess.

Goodbye House...


Goodbye Bedroom and Living Room.....


Goodbye Melted Kitchen....


Goodbye Green Bathroom.....


And this is the last bouquet that I'll
ever get from my beautiful snowball bush....




GOODBYE OLD HOUSE.........

Installing the Upstairs Wall

We finally installed the foam core panels into the remaining open front wall surface on the second floor. This was the trickiest thing we've had to do so far. The panels had to be cut and assembled with extreme accuracy and in a very definite order for it all to work. It did work, but it felt kind of like climbing a cliff - scary, and once you start you have to keep going no matter what. And those damn panels are HEAVY!

Here is the center top gable section just before it was pushed into place. This was taken on a cell phone and the lighting wasn't so great. We put in a lot of really late nights working on this - because it was cooler at night. The horizontal thing going across the middle of the picture is a collar tie.



Here I am exhibiting my Herculean strength, pushing that center panel into place. Besides the weight, there was the also the friction of the splines. But the wet glue made a nice lubricant, so pushing it up wasn't as hard as it might have been. hmmm.... Then I had to hold it in place while Doug nailed it with his big strong nail gun.


And now I am inserting the splines into the bottom piece, this time after it was installed because that was an easier way to assemble it on this piece. There is going to be a window in the middle part so we'll just leave that section open for now.

Okay, now I really need a vacation. Scotland here we come!

Preparing the Foam Core Panels for Installation

Here is the melting device that we use to remove the foam so that we can insert the panels over the awaiting 2x6s. It is a heating element that is sized to fit in the foam section between the two layers of OSB. The foam needs to be taken down to a certain level so that the 2x6s will fit exactly between the OSB layers. So instead of cutting the foam out, we are melting it out. The cross piece on the heating element adjusts to accomodate the exact depth of the 2x6.



Somebody commented that our house smells like a crystal meth lab after we've been melting foam. So I want to know how would they even know that? Notice the happy expression accompanying the lack of gas mask.
BRAIN DAMAGE ALERT!!!



The foam is cleaned out and we are ready for insertion.
oooh, that sounds dirty....

Almost Ready to Install the Front Wall

Doug is so happy about having finally finished sawing the house apart. He stands proudly by the light-emitting gap that he created with his mighty saw.



We've put in the 2x6s around the perimeter of the 2nd floor and attic. They are now ready to receive the panels.



Here is the collar tie system that Doug came up with back in 1995 for the roof structure. It's probably overkill, but it works and more importantly, the structural engineer passed it.



This is the final shot of the exterior wall of the old house, which thankfully kept the fire from spreading into the addition. We are putting up the new wall right next to it so soon it will no longer be visible. It's weird way of doing it but it's also the only way, and we are pretty sure it will work.

Cutting the House in Half

My former music room was completely filled with panels just a week ago. Now there are only a few left since most of them have been used to build the new front wall of the house.


Doug used a variety of saws to cut the old part of the house away from the new part so that the new part would not be damaged when we tore the old part down. He cut around the entire house, through all of the walls and the roof. He had to cut from the inside and from the outside to get all the way through the walls safely. He use a couple of different circular saws and I think at least one reciprocating saw died during this process.


It took close to a week to cut through everything but we ended up with a really nice one inch gap between the two sections of the house. Here is a close up shot of the gap. It's a rather scenic gap, as gaps go, don't you think? That basketball hoop is in our neighbors' front yard! I wish we'd been able to get Maggie into the shot.

THE BEST NEIGHBORS EVER!!!

When we lost our home because of the fire, Gerry and Larry, who live next door to us, took us in for an entire week until we found a place to rent. Now they are sharing their electricity with us while we work on our house. We are so lucky to have such kind and wonderful people as neighbors and I hope we will be able to do something really nice for them when we finally get through this mess.
They have a really nice dog too. I always enjoy visiting a little bit with Maggie whenever I go over to plug in our extension cord into the back of their house. Isn't she beautiful? I think she has such a pretty face.

Installing the Floors and Moving the Panels

During the month of July we removed the basement steps and installed the subfloor on the main level, which means that we can now only access the basement from the outside.

After we put in the floor, we installed the new front wall panels on the main level.

Then we used a pulley to lift the panels for the 2nd floor up through the floor joists.


We stored them in "hallway" of the main section of the upstairs, which already had a floor installed.

Once we got all of the panels we needed moved upstairs we put down the subfloor in the open areas that had originally been designated for the stairwell in the former design. We left a little opening around the wooden ladder that we've been using all this time to get to the 2nd floor.

PREPARING TO TEAR IT DOWN

In order to safely tear down the old part of our house we had to build a new front wall – from the inside. This involved removing the basement stairs, installing a new sub floor over all of the open stairwell areas on both floors, and then installing foam core panels on what was to become the new front surface of the house. All of these procedures were tricky and physically challenging. And it was hot as hell. We put in some really long hours because there was no way to tell how long it would actually take and it needed to be completely finished in time for the scheduled tear-down of the old part of the house.

After the front structure was complete, Doug used a few different types of saws to cut completely through the wall and roof of the old house at the intersection with the addition. The two sections needed to be completely separated before it would be safe to demolish the old house.

In other news, our building plans were approved by the county, but on July 13th we finally realized that we could not afford to have this builder build our house, so we bought the absolutely fantastic plans and paid the additional amount for ending the contract, and for a while we had no idea what we were going to be able to do about getting our house built. Scary times…..

Nevertheless, we took some time off and went to the International Trombone Festival in England and had a wonderful road trip afterwards through England, Wales, and Scotland. We needed the break, both physically and mentally.

Photo of our burned out house

This is what our house has looked like for an entire year and a half after the fire. Pretty depressing, huh? Obviously we aren't living there since it is CONDEMNED. I feel really bad for the neighbors in addition to myself and I hope we can get it into a more reasonable looking condition as soon as possible.