Great view. . . until. . .

The decks for the front and back porches are up, and with a temporary sheet of plywood, the views have been pretty sweet. This makes up for the other crap we're dealing with inside (story coming soon). We never realized that we'd have a water view across Morehead Yacht Basin from the upper back deck (accessed from our master bedroom). Not bad. And the front porch is turning out very nicely. I think the shed roof will be added this week (unless they are distracted by other issues - read on). And with the house wrapped in all-black tar paper, it is quite visible as we come over the highrise bridge. Well, not as visible as the "Day Estate" over on Bay Street, though we may be able to wave to them. Hopefully our view will last forever. Maybe we coudl pay our neighbors across the street to not obstruct our view when they follow our example.















A view from the back deck out over the army reserve and into the canal that passes Morehead Yacht Basin.

In the news

I think everyone has now heard about the explosives spill at the Morehead City port.  They closed the lab at noon on Tuesday, and we had to drive through Beaufort and nearly to Havelock to pick up Hwy 70.  Another advantage of living closer to the west end of town with the Avens.  Local news covered it like a thick coat of sunscreen.  And while talking to some folks about how this was impacting their day, a reporter made her way down the road to talk to some construction workers. . . (near the end at ~3:55)

http://news14.com/charlotte-news-104-content/620458/highway-70-back-open-after-hazmat-spill-at-city-port?ap=1&Flash

We have an upstairs?

Fast work catching up after the evacuation of Downtown Morehead due to some errant forklifting of a container of PETN (yes, that PETN) at he Morehead Port. Some of you may have even seen coverage of Al Jazeera.

Walt and the boys have removed all the temporary walls which has really opened up the downstairs (like the plans, but in 3D). Those pictures are coming. But the biggest part is the stairs. The stairs run up the northwest corner of the old house and up into the old living room/family room. First pic is the first stair tred so they could figure on headroom and location of the landing. The pic shows the window(s) on the east wall (alley side) of the house (I was told to provide a bit more context and orientation in the pictures). (Thanks, Dad, for pointing out the error in the orientation!  Clearly not helpful calling west east.














This next shot shows the old tongue-groove floor of the living room with parts of the old joists removed. Unfortunately, my goal to collect the old timbers has not been very successful. Most of them explode when they hit the floor. . . interior is paper from the termites.




















This is the view from the doorway to the livingroom/TV room. Pardon the dust! Walt is standing on the landing. The stairs will wrap to the left and the final stairs will be at the front window (that used to be behind the couch).



















And from below. The new front entry is immediately to my left. Thanks to the skilled use of a sawsall and skilsaw, we will be able to save all of the heart pine floorboards from the cutout floor. . . good thing since the doorway and half walls to the livingroom will be removed and we'll need to patch in the flooring.

The inside scoop

The carpenters have made some great progress on the interior of the house. Much of the work has been trying to hoist 22" wide LVL beams (stacked 3 thick) to support the joists of the main part of the old house, the load-bearing wall between the front house and the old kitchen and under the upstairs bathroom. Some of you may be saying: i didn't think they made 22" LVLs. They don't. We had to buy 25" LVLs and they were then ripped down to width. Oooph! But it was the only way to get the open floor plan downstairs. And now that they've pulled down most of the temporary support walls, you can really get a sense of how open the living room, dining room and kitchen will be.

The first picture is (to Larisa's left) is the north wall of the "office" and the two closets under the stairs (ladder leaning against the closets).















This next picture is from the "living room" towards the dining room and kitchen. The back door is on the left.















Here are some of those massive beams. The walls are closets for the airhandler and furnace and the guest bathroom.















(The fummy story hinted to in the last post.  For those who do not know Todd Kellison, he coined the word fummy, to mean funny, just without any laughter).
So, early in the project, we joked with the contractor that many of the walls were being held up by exterior siding and paint. .. some framing was not necessarily continuous between the ceiling and floors. Some of you have experienced this first hand during various gut/remodels of bedrooms and the kitchen but 5 years ago.  I guess this information was not conveyed to the carpenters. . . they took off the siding on the back of the house, only to have the back wall fall off and drop 2 stories to the ground. Fortunately, they had supported the ceiling and roof. With hind-sight being what it is, we probably should have demolished the back half of thehouse and started from scratch. Oh well!  The picture below is the now new south wall of what will be our master bathroom (formerly the kitchen) off of our bedroom (formerly the dining room).  I guess this answered whether they would save any of the dry wall on that wall, especially since the tile mosaic backsplash was still attached.  Sadly, some of the glass tiles are still scattered in the back yard.

Where were we. . .

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We enjoyed seeing Larisa's sister Erika for a long stay over the holidays. Walked the beaches and filled her up with seafood - partly thanks to the generous gift of a large loin of yellowfin tuna from Greg Bolton. (Mmmmm). So holidays were great here.

Oh, back to the house. Rapid progress is being made on the exterior and interio over the holidays. The carpenters worked most oft he holidays with a couple days off for Christmas and New Years. Their main task was to finish enclosing the house. And as you'll see below, they're nearly done.

Next: interior walls.  Oh and a fummy story about the house.