Moving Along

Well, it’s Saturday and we have workers here today. We have been without heat and hot water since Thursday morning and they are working hard to remedy that. Luckily, we have a separate heating system upstairs in our bedroom/bathroom/sitting area and have been able to sleep at home. During the day, my friend Jewel across the street has been kind enough to let me hang out at her house. So I’ve been able to go to radiation and then head over to Jewel’s for my afternoon nap. We’ve got a space heater in our temporary kitchen in the basement so we’ve been able to eat down there although we have been going out more. And this morning we just threw up our hands and went out for breakfast.

The craziest day so far in this adventure was Thursday. That was the day they took down the old center chimney that vented the furnace and the hot water heater. Wow! It was so incredible. There were two guys on the roof, two guys in the kitchen and then the HVAC guy working in the basement. And of course it rained on and off all day. The chimney runs up the back of my closet so I had to clean it out in case they needed to punch a hole in it to get to the bricks. And sure enough they did. So the entire contents of my closet are all over our sitting area upstairs. They had all three floors heavily plasticed off because of all the dust so there was just no where here to hide on Thursday. I ended up spending the morning at knitting, going to radiation at noon and then hanging at Jewel’s for the rest of the day. Those guys worked their butts off all day and were finally done about 4:30. And boy were they dirty. They all had hazmat suits and masks on and still they were filthy. At the end of the day, I noticed Jose and Eric taking pictures of each other with their phones and laughing because they looked so funny.

Front of the kitchen. (click for full-size)

On Friday, they tore out the roof over the new addition area and they took out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. Wow again. What a difference that made. With the newly added area you see above and the area where the chimney used to be, the kitchen is looking so much bigger. With each step, I am getting so excited.

Towards the dining room. (click for full-size)

You can see above where the chimney used to be. It’s that area where the dirty white trash can is. You can see the hole in the floor and the ceiling. And look how big the opening to the dining room is now.

(click for full-size)

Here’s the view of the new opening from the dining room. They will finish it with curved edges so it matches the other archways in the house, like the one on the right. Isn’t it amazing?! I’m so excited!

I’m writing this at four in the afternoon and they had our hot water on about 2 hours ago. It was heavenly to take a shower. And they are still working so I imagine we’ll have heat any time now. I think tomorrow will be spent trying to restore some bit of order to the house before the fun continues on Monday. The kitchen should be totally sealed up with the outside of the house looking mostly finished by the end of next week. We’ve got electricians, roofers and plumbers all scheduled for next week. Can’t wait to see what happens next. It’s a fascinating process.