Scene of the crime

Painter Al was at the house today for more work on the exterior, and it is looking terrific! It looks like he finished the rarely seen west side of the house, and the second story of the north side (where the horizontal Hardie board siding is).

It was a good thing I knew what was going on before I went in the house, or I might have taken a look out the dining room window and called in CSI-Ypsilanti.

Bloodbath!!!

But seriously, I am loving the exterior color - we wanted to play up the "barn charm" of the house, and this color is just a great traditional barn red. We (by which I mean designer Mandi) even found these terrific lights for over the garage and main entry, perfectly in line with the whole barn vibe:

Adorable, right? I lurves them.

In other news, the garage door installer was back today to hook everything up on the inside. There is no power yet, but I can gaze at this and daydream about all the snow I will NOT be shoveling off my car this winter...

I think the drywall guys were back again today too, since some areas inside looked re-mudded. I figured you guys have seen enough photos of drywall mud, so instead, here are the boys looking perplexed about why I will not let them further into the house. Dogs + drywall mud = disaster!

P.S. Thank you all sooo much for the comments on my recent posts on interior paint and garage door color selections. There were a ton of great ideas and tips that we wouldn't have thought of on our own - we really appreciate it! And now that I've got the blog bug you know I'll keep you updated on how it all turns out!

Oh. Em. Garage.

We have one! With a roof and everything!!! And I can't believe how completely different the house looks...

All of a sudden it's like driving up to a HOUSE, rather than a towering three-story facade of everything ugly from the 70's. Let's take a little stroll down memory lane, shall we? Here is the house a mere month ago...

And another angle from today:

Here is the house from the river side - see that new garage roof on the right? That perfect, south-facing expanse with nothing at all shading it? Yup, that's where the solar panels will go - just as soon as we can afford it.

We went over a bit early today, because Brandon was going for a run so I joined him on my bike (don't laugh - it had been so long since I biked that it was just about the right pace...). The workers were still there and we didn't want to get in the way, hence the lack of close-up and interior shots. More tomorrow, at which point the roof will have shingles!

Raise the roof

A couple big days of progress at Turtle House yesterday and today! We didn't make it out yesterday to take photos due to the Michigan Beerfest (an event which doesn't lend itself to driving afterward...). However, we went out this morning with my college roommate Jen and her hubby Mike (in town for another weekend event, the Blue Angels' Thunder Over Michigan show). It was super fun to see them and to show them our future abode.

The framers made a lot of progress yesterday on the east side of the house - check out the bones of our garage!

They'd also started the roof over the new entry.

Here is the view from the back yard (north side):

While we were there today, the roofers were finishing up removing all of the old shingles from the roof (on a Saturday!). I didn't have my camera on me, so I went back later in the day to snap these shots.

From some angles it seems that 75% of our house is made of tarps right now.

Before all the tarps were up we could see that they'd removed all the shingles as well as the underlying plywood. The existing roof actually wasn't in terrible shape, but we are replacing all of the fiberglass insulation in the house with more eco-friendly (and health-friendly) blown-in cellulose. The original plan was to add insulation to the inside of the roof (i.e., the ceiling), but we decided this wouldn't work because we really wanted to keep the existing visual aesthetic of the ceiling.

Insulating from the inside would have meant covering the beams and decking with drywall, which would have been a huge bummer. And since the roof was going to need to be replaced in the not-too-distant future anyway, we decided that doing it now and insulating above the decking was the way to go. We originally considered spray foam insulation, which does have a higher r-value than cellulose (in other words, it prevents heat exchange better). However, I got spooked after doing some research and finding a number of accounts of it off-gassing nasty smells and chemicals, sometimes for years (!). It has been really interesting to learn and think about what "green building" means, and how it can mean different things to different people. Some would opt to maximize r-value, which is a totally legitimate choice, but we decided to take a bit of a hit there to go with a natural product that we knew was completely safe.

Quick pic

Not a lot of new shots to share with you today, because we visited the site sans camera (duh!). However, Brandon snapped this one with his cell phone:

You can see that the crew has added a second floor to the entryway area at right (hooray!) - that actually happened yesterday. Today a whole lot of dirt got moved, as ground of the future garage is much lower and more level than yesterday.

We were excited to run into our fantastic designer, Steven Varnum, just as we were getting ready to leave the site. He mentioned that he is going to feature Turtle House on his website as well, so I wanted to provide a link for you TH junkies. Haha. And in all seriousness, if anyone in SE Michigan is looking for someone to work on a house design project, we absolutely can't say enough good things about Steven!

Entrez mes amis!

Another big change at Turtle House today, accomplished by the carpenters in 90+ degree heat nonetheless! When we arrived at the house this afternoon, this was the view:

See that big wooden box at right? That is our future entryway, where I will meet you to hang your coat up when you come over for dinner. Here's a closer view:

The door in this photo will actually go from the garage to the entryway, while the exterior door will be in the wall at the right side of the picture. This is the door I will gleefully skip through in the winter because I WON'T HAVE TO CLEAN SNOW OFF MY CAR.

Here is Brandon pretending to go to his snow-free car:

And here we both are in the future main entry door. This doorway will lead into a mud room with a big coat closet, and some stairs up to the main floor of the house.

I took this next picture from within the future entry, right by the door I was standing in just above. This is the existing side of the house. I thought it was neat that you can see a line on the concrete wall from where the ground used to be. There is going to be a door in this wall (not sure how they are going to do that?!) which will go from the entryway into the basement. So in the future, at this angle, you will see two doors - the left one leading to the garage, and the right one leading to the basement (everyone with me?).

I can't wait until the garage walls go up, and the rest of the entryway - the house is going to start looking really different!

p.s. Also finished spraypainting the "cookout table" and added a photo to this post, after a bit of a rain delay yesterday!

Houston, we have a porch

I didn't do an update yesterday because the progress was mostly more impossible-to-photograph framing, but here are a few of the better shots. (I am going to work on a floor plan post next, which I will link here when it's done - that should make everything a bit easier to understand.)

Our bedroom wall now goes all the way to the ceiling!

Here is the door from our bedroom to the upstairs bathroom:

There was also more progress on the cinderblock walls of the future garage...

Today we were excited to see more progress upstairs in the loft. It now has the beginnings of the south wall, which will be helpful for not crashing out of bed into the living room.

See that window? It's actually an interior window that will be lined up with windows in the future dormer (out of this picture to the right). Another terrific idea by the designer, since it will let us see the river view from the bedroom! However, it's a bit lower than we thought, so we are going to have to make sure it's not accessible to certain overenthusiastic canines (ahem, Simon).

The carpenters had also begun work on our closets - another major upgrade for us in storage, which of course gets me all giddy (neatfreaks unite!). Here are three shots panning from my left to right showing the two big closets, and the space in between which will be a small window seat.

 

Here is Brandon pretending to hang something up in his future closet:

The grand finale for today was discovering that they'd started work on the porch! It's not quite all there yet...

 

...but that didn't stop Brandon from pulling up a chair and enjoying the view!

Freeze frame!

(Hat tip to my favorite song when I was two. Not entirely appropriate, because the poor crew was actually framing in ninety-plus degree heat... but I am running out of snappy titles including the word "frame.")

Lots more progress to report today! This was the view when we walked up to the house:

Cinderblocks! Yes I may have jumped up and down and squealed a little bit. The foundation guys were here all day working on our future garage. Here is another view of the pile o' future car home:

The following pictures are a series where I panned around the whole scene from my left to my right. Please take special note of the last picture. I asked Brandon to smile and pretend he was modeling the new wall a la Vanna White. This is what he did. I am not sure he's ever seen Wheel of Fortune (or at least I never remember this side of Vanna...).

 

Once we made it inside, we were excited to see lots more framing in place. Unfortunately, it is really hard to take pictures of framing and have it make sense at all! Suffice to say, they'd started putting the new stairs in place, along with framing for both bathrooms!

You couldn't really get all the way up the steps, since the part above the landing actually goes outside the current exterior wall (it is where we're adding a new room upstairs above the formerly flat-roofed first floor addition). However, I got this shot from below before we climbed a ladder to check it out up close:

The door to the right in the picture above will go to our bedroom, while straight ahead (middle part of the picture) will be the laundry nook, behind which will be the upstairs bathroom. I AM SO EXCITED TO HAVE LAUNDRY UPSTAIRS, you guys. No more hauling clothes down a rickety staircase into a creepy basement!! Life is good.