New Windows!!

The old security bars and gone along with the old tinted windows!!! Replaced with new "Energy Stormsaver" hurricane windows!!!

The new french door to the backyard has arrived but cannot got in until the floors go in.

Turning Windows into Doors...

The work has continued all be it very slowly. While waiting for permits we have cut some new doors in the house. We made the window in the utility a door out to the side yard. It took a lot of work from the Swakon boys. And 5 trips to Home Depot....

 

Ryan and the shitty Home Depot concrete saw

 Eric knocking out CMU

 Our new door!

We also cut a door to the exterior in the master bathroom and enlarged the opening for the french doors in the family room. Everything is all set up for new doors.

New Concrete

Monday morning we had the concrete guys show up to make the house all one level. It took a whole truck or 11 yards to fill the three rooms.

The pour brings the family room, office, and utility room up 8" in some places and hopefully up enough to keep water out during a big storm.

 

The rooms look a lot better...

Clean Slate

With the discovery of some fair amounts of mold throughout the house the motivation and work have slowed and the frustration mounted. We made the decision to gut the whole house down to the studs...

We also took down all the studs that were termite eaten between the kitchen and utility room

 

I think its safe to say that demo is finally over...since there is nothing else to demo.

Yard Clearing

Eric and Cookie headed over to the house a few days ago to do some tree trimming at the house. The palms in the front yard had a lot of branches down and the back needed all the help it could get. After awhile of the palm tree winning the battle Cookie called in the big guns. Lee came in with his guys and cleared the property pretty quickly....

Front of the house before...

Front of the house after. That brings about the issue of what we are going to do the the god awful bars and paint color. 

Before in the backyard...

After...

They were kind enough to leave the gutter tree tho....

Clearing out numerous trees and the so called fire pit made the backyard look at least twice the size it looked before. A few large plants were left in place to hold up the failing fence and of course all the choice trees were left in place. We are really happy we didn't have to do it all ourselves..it would have taken months.

CLOSET!!!

Woohoo!!

Still trying to make granite decisions...

This was our second trip to Opus Stone and we only widened our options instead of narrowing them. The granite we like the most is of course the most expensive so we are still trying to pick a cheaper one out.

Way too many choices...

Conveniently enough for us all of the wood in the show room is the same color as our cabinets so we don't have to guess which granite looks good with our wood choice. We'll let you know when we come up with a decision but we are thinking that the counter tops will be green granite of some kind.

UPDATE!

We have been knocking down more walls, chipping up more thin-set and making more runs to the dump. Here are some new picks to show you some of the work...

Jamaica Room has lost a closet and a wall and joined the utility room...

There is a step down into the utility room which will have to be removed by raising the floors.

We completely gutted the kitchen...

We removed the wing wall on the right and the soffet at the top. The AC unit at the left center will be moved at some point and the walls surrounding it will come down as well.

 The stripper mirrors came down and the wall knocked down so that the hallway could go straight back.

We punched through the pink bedroom from the living room so that we could have a linen closet.

AND we gutted the master bath and closet so they could become the new and improved master bath!
 Eric and Ryan have been working on plumbing the master bathroom so those photos are on their way.

P.S.- We did finally find mama mouse who gave the boys a run for their money before they caught her and tossed her out the window.

Close Only Counts In Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

havent found a hand grenade yet...YET!!!

(im not ruling anything out after some of the non blog appropriate things we have found)

but
while ripping out kitchen cabinets we came across this awesome horseshoe set.

we promptly took a ten minute break and set them up in the back yard to play a quick game.

 

this was a nice set too...every set i've ever seen comes in some kind of crappy cardboard box. but not this one, it had its own canvas carrying case and everything

For Some Perspective

Ok... so we wanted to give everyone some perspective as to what it is we're doing exactly.
here are some images of the before and hopefuly afterwards floor plans.

as you can see were not changing anything too drastically. the bulk of the changes are to the kitchen and the master bedroom. For the master we plan on making it into a true master suite with a new bathroom and a  pretty sizable closet; which someone (to remain nameless, but i think you can guess) has already laid claim to almost all of it.

Oh and if your wondering why i would add a ridiculous 2 foot addition to the front of the house in the dining room and office; well im not.  it just took me about 3 weeks to realize there was even a step out in the floor plan... so when i made the first plans i didn't even know it was there.  we had to start ripping out walls and landscaping before it was even visable.

Remember to SMILE

Honey look what I found in the wall...

Found two of these little guys in the wall behind the shower. Never found mama but returned the babies to the food chain (i.e. left 'em out in the backyard for the wildlife)

Walls come down!!

Yesterday we set out to haul most of the trash and debris to the dump. Unfortunately the dump wouldn't let us dump because we had "too much stuff." Soo we made more debris and took down some walls.

This wall is coming down to open up the dining room to the rest of the house.

Note the one crooked stud on the near side of this 15" wide wall....

All That took the Swakon boys all about five minutes.

They also took down this little center wall in half that....