Week 3 - Monday

Today they're cutting out the windows. They're bigger than I expected. Mom and Jeanette say bigger windows are better... no complaints here!

Day 17 - the chimney goes through the roof

The excitement is slowing down a bit. Today Louie told me the plan for the upcoming weeks. The chimney guy is coming today to extend the chimney through the roof. And the heating guy is coming to discuss where to place the ducts for the new AC (believe it or not, we are the only house in town that does not have central air - but pretty soon we will no longer be able to make that claim!).

I also talked with Louie about changing out the single window in the left-back bedroom to a double-width window. All the window changes that we're making are more or less what the architect had suggested in the first place. OK he was right. I guess I had to see just how big the structure was to appreciate how many windows we would really need.

Then on Monday, the plan is to frame the rest of the interior walls. And the windows and siding go on next week.

Day 15 - the roofers are here!

The roofers arrived at 7 am...

And finished by 4 pm. They did a great job of protecting the landscaping and cleaning up afterward. The color of the roof shingles... well, maybe a bit pinker than I would have liked but still very nice. Big improvement over the black that was there before.

And the best part is, I no longer check the weather channel every 3 minutes, and I can go retrieve my pots and pans from upstairs now. Overall, for all my worrying, the tarps held up remarkably well. There is not a single water mark on any of the ceilings downstairs.

Sara approves of the job so far..

Day 13 - Saturday, no roof

Dave and I spent much of last night upstairs chasing the leaks around with pots and pans, trying to catch all the water from the storm. The weather channel calls for heavy rain again today and flood warnings for much of NJ (with "damaging winds" - that can't be good) so our roofer has decided to postpone. Again. The crew is up there now trying to reinforce the tarps so that we can make it through the rest of the weekend.

There are no water marks on any of the ceilings so far. Let's see if we can pull this off.

Day 12 - 4:30 pm

The crew got all the original structure apart, but need to wait till the dumpster company comes tomorrow and empties the dumpster before they can throw out the last bit of old roof.

Meanwhile an unexpected storm has just rolled in - at least the guys were still here so they could find the leaks and place buckets under them.

Tomorrow we get a roof!

Day 12 - 10 am

More deconstruction of the original structure. They got most of it out now. They've even built the wall that will be between Sara's bedroom and the laundry room.

The roofer is supposedly coming on Saturday. They're calling for rain so I'm not sure we'll get our roof this weekend.

Day 11 - 8 am

They cut an opening and they're deconstructing the original structure. Today we should be able to get a feel for the new space inside.

This morning Louie and I talked about windows. We decided to add another window in the front right bedroom to create two matching pairs of windows on the driveway side of the house, and to move the bedroom window so the windows line up better over the existing windows. That works for me. Then there was an issue with the window in the stairwell being too big for the wall space that was planned there. Louie suggested bumping out the stairwell by 10 inches or so and adding a plant shelf, to give a wider wall area for the stairwell window. Problem solved.

There was also an issue with the way the load for the roof was carried, and Louie needed to move part of one of the bedroom walls over by 3 inches. He explained it in builder-speak which I understood most of, but I definitely understood "this will be stronger." Stronger is good, I figure.

Day 10 - 3 pm

Delivery of the roof shingles...

Day 10 - 10 am

They started framing the little faux dormer, which adds some interest and helps bring focus to the almost-invisible front entry. We will have to come up with some other tricks later to draw more attention to the front entry, which has always been a problem of this sideways-cape design.

Day 10 - 8 am

We got a thunderstorm, supposedly with 70 mph winds, and the tarps didn't hold too well. Dave went up and used some fasteners to secure the tarp to the studs, which kept them on, but some water got in. I don't see any stains on the ceilings though, so I think we escaped any actual damage.

The crew was back at work at 6 am again, finishing up the sheathing before the inspector gets here. By 8 am they had made pretty good progress. And at least it's a little cooler today.. well, double digits anyway.

Day 9 - 7:45 pm

Well it's almost 8 pm and the crew is still out there, working furiously on the sheathing. They have a sheathing inspection tomorrow so they have to finish tonight.

Here's Dave riding past the mayhem.

It's still well over 90 degrees out, at this hour. Louie's crew are sure troopers.

Day 9 - 2:30 pm

The crew got the roof rafters up while I was at work this morning. At least they had a few hours to work without the pesky homeowner following them around with her camera.

This is an interesting way of building this addition - notice that the original structure is still there, inside the new one which was built around it.

Day 8 - 6 pm

And that's a day's work for Louie and his crew...

Day 8 - 3:45 pm

One little snaffooie. Turns out the lumber for the roof rafters is too short. Luckily the folks at Somerville Lumber were able to deliver another load of rafters right away, and they took the short lumber back. Just what the crew wanted to do on this 100 degree day - load and unload more lumber from a truck.

Day 8 - 2 pm

Moving along...

Day 8 - 10:30 am

The crew got here by 6 am, as promised, and immediately began building the exterior walls right around the existing structure. I'm off to the building department now to pick up that permit.

Day 5 - permits and roof shingles

The bad news is, we don't *exactly* have a permit yet. Turns out they lost the zoning paperwork, but luckily I had my copy which they had mailed to me after they approved it back in June. So a quick trip to the building office straightened that out. We're waiting for one more signature and with any luck the permit should be in my hands this afternoon.

Next order of business is to pick a roof color. I picked two from the samples Louie showed me and he went and nailed up a square of each so I could compare them. Now that I see them on the roof I'm not crazy about either one of them. As a matter of principle I prefer the brownish one - but it seems to change color every time I see it, as the light changes - sometimes appearing a little pinker than I'm comfortable with. I can't see Dave being too happy with a pink roof. So I'm probably going to go with the gray, which is not very adverturous... but then again, starting construction without a permit has filled my adventure quota for the week.

Day 4 - still "prep" work

This week they've been removing shingles from the roof, laying the joists for the new second floor, and reinforcing two of the three beams in the basement that hold the house up. Nothing exciting yet that is visible from the outside, though the neighbors slow down and examine the house intently each time they pass. And with the window AC units removed from the upstairs, it's got to be 120 degrees up there. I think I speak for us all when I say the sooner that roof comes off, the better.

The addition floor plan

Here's the plan for the addition. One of the two second-floor bedrooms is staying, along with the existing bathroom. The front bedroom and foyer are being removed and replaced with 3 bedrooms. The stairwell will get a window and a 2-story height. I've always wondered how people replace the lightbulbs in those 2-story stairwells. Guess I'll find out.

The architect we hired was great. He was very fast, always highly professional, and was even willing to come back out and make the changes the township wanted - even though both he and the builder agreed those changes were truly unnecessary (our township has a reputation for being "difficult", many builders won't even work here). I would definitely hire him again.

Day 1 - the fun begins

The materials arrived and took up residence on our lawn. The first thing the guys did was build a wall in our foyer, which allowed them to come and go, accessing the upstairs, without actually entering the part of the house we were now living in. They removed a bit of sheetrock from the upstairs front bedroom but because of the impending rain, they decided to wait a week before actually removing the second floor structure.

Day 0 - our house 'before'

We could sure use a couple more bedrooms

Our little 2400 square foot cape with 4 bedrooms and 3 full baths was perfect when I bought it in March of 2001, and moved in with my two children, then 10 and 8. When I married Dave in July 2002, and was lucky enough to get two beautiful stepchildren in the package, the little house just wasn't cutting it anymore for our family of 6. The upstairs had two decent bedrooms (12x14 and 10x14), and a nice bathroom and foyer, all in a 14'-wide strip down the center of the cape with kneewalls and a 7.5' ceiling. It was cozy, with pretty hardwood floors, but with 4 kids and only 4 bedrooms, the boys had to share a room. They get along great, but Dave and I figured it was time for each kid to have his own room. Plus, I started working from home a little over a year ago and have been using the dining room as an office, and it was time for me to have a real home office. Sooooo.. we decided to add on.

We first thought about adding dormers to the exising cape roof, expanding out into the 8' eave space on one side. But it turns out, our town wouldn't approve that plan because the existing ceiling height was not per code. So our only option was to rip the second floor off altogether and add a "real" second floor. It took weeks going back and forth with our very patient architect, and we eventually settled on a plan that replaced two thirds of the existing second floor (the front bedroom and upstairs foyer), leaving the existing bathroom and back bedroom intact. The addition would contain 3 bedrooms and a laundry room with a double vanity sink, giving us a total of 4 bedrooms upstairs, with our master bedroom and my home office/guestroom remaining on the first floor. If we survive the next 4 months, we'll end up with a 3100 square foot, 6 bedroom house.

We'll be poor as dirt, but we'll have a big house....