Thanksgiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!  It was very quiet around the house for four days while we all took a break and celebrated Thanksgiving.  Before the holiday, our work team prepared the bead board for the porch ceiling and began putting it up while the electricians spent a day wiring lighting for the porch and disconnecting the electricity in the maids' wing which will be coming down shortly. 

Preparing the fir bead board for the porch ceiling.



The porch ceiling is going up...plus recessed cans for lighting.



Door from Audubon (that went to nowhere) has been installed in the Nursery (to be Eliza's room), so it will be easier to go out on the balcony.



Door in "The Nursery" from the inside...



Cedar Harbor Conly and Scott checking the turkey just before our Thanksgiving dinner.



Prescott peeling a pomegranate...



Pumpkin Chiffon Pie (Hannah's recipe)



Sunset over Pine Hill



Eliza, Cedar, and Caleb at the Franklin Park Zoo

Today we rescued the pear tree along the front drive from miles of entwined vines.  We hope it will look healthier in the spring!

Gutters and posts! 11/19/10

Hello all!  This week our porch was adorned with lovely new posts and gutters!  They are currently white but will eventually be painted a nice historic green.  Our contractor, Mike Dwyer, also told me this morning that the house has been made completely weathertight for the winter -- they have insulated and sealed all the areas where work has been done, so we will stay dry and warm inside.  With the exception of some rain early in the week, it's been a good week for the men to work and our porch is looking great.  Happy weekend!  Laura (photos by Caleb)


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Posts going in!



Gutter, fascia board, soffit , and soffit vent!



Birds' eye view of gutter and drain...



A diagram that shows what a soffit and soffit vent is...plus the fascia board,
and attached to the fascia boards, we now have gutters!



Masons finish the stonewall! 11/15/10

Today was Monday and while we were all back at work and school, lots of work took place here at the house.  The masons finished the stonewall under the porch -- these photos won't do it justice as it was very overcast late today, but the stonewall looks like it's been there forever as though the new porch was built on top of it!  They did an amazing job.

Outside, some work continued on the porch and we filled our first dumpster!

Inside, the ceiling in the laundry room and its environs were torn down so they can check the foundation under the servants' wing.  Tomorrow a structural engineer is coming by to check the floor joists and other things to find out what needs to be done to the foundation to support the new family room. 

Phew!



The mason left us a little escape hatch so that if we ever needed to crawl out of our basement bedroom windows, we could do so.  It will be closed in at a later time.



Goodbye to a full dumpster, hello to a new one...

Eek!  The laundry room is dusty!

Looking through the laundry room into another small basement room...



Soccer ends, the masons work all weekend, and roofers arrive on Sunday! 11/14/10

It was a busy weekend around here -- Eliza and Caleb finished their Milton Travel Soccer seasons on Saturday and here at the house, the masons worked Saturday and Sunday on the stone wall, and roofers came today to reroof several sections.  A beehive of activity...


Eliza following her last game.  The Jaguars were 10-0 and only allowed two goals all season!  The team's assistant coach was Yoshi Belash, and Yoshi's two girls, Ali and Isabelle, were teammates.  Yoshi is Laura's second cousin and lives here on the Farm with his family.



Caleb following his last game alongside Coach Taugher.  The boys celebrated with a pizza party!



Macker the Tractor at work on the Farm gathering rocks for the stone wall!



The mason using an excavator to dig through rubble for usable stones.



The building of a stone wall...



Roofers were here all day putting new shingles on the new porch, the dormer area and the little roof to the left...by the time they left, it was too dark to get a picture of the finished product.  So we'll get to that photo tomorrow.



Plans for a Family Room (11/12/10)



Computer rendering of family room addition on the back of the house



While work goes on outside, our architect has been hard at work on plans for a new family room.  The idea is that the first and second floors of the rear servants' wing will come down and on the same footprint, a new family room will be built.  We think, given the proximity of the kitchen, this will be an informal, light-filled space we will use a lot.  It will be a spacious room with lots of windows, doors opening onto the back yard, a wood stove in one corner, and a partial "cathedral" ceiling to provide a sense of space and light.  Below are some plans for those who enjoy looking at that kind of thing:

Cross section looking from the rear -- we have decided to "complete the triangles" on the dropped ceiling, so although this sketch shows a little shelf with cove lighting, that won't be the case in reality.

Cross section of the inside of the family room.  An interior balcony will overlook the family room from the second floor (figure is standing in the hallway down to Grandma's Bedroom and Sitting Room).



 Framing of the new family room:

The Mason Starts Work! [Laura 11/10/10]

Our crew has been working in pretty tough conditions -- 5 days of rain, cold, and wind -- but they have persisted!  They have continued to work on the dormer and porch areas -- the white stuff is AZEK, a modern PVC composite that will stand up to moisture over many, many years.  When painted, no one will ever know it isn't wood.  Also the mason started today!  You'll see the cement blocks which have been put up to support a stone wall that will run along the base of the new porch.  The stones are being reclaimed from the old goldfish pond area -- the old mortar is being knocked off and the old stones will be carefully placed to create a lovely "old" but new stone wall.  Our contractor, like us, believes in the three R's.  I took the photos today and although I'm not as good a photographer as Caleb, he was too busy playing with his cousin Robert to take them himself. :)

Stone wall preparation!

 Selecting the stones that will be used to build the new stone wall under/along the new porch.

Dormer windows come out

Pretty tough weather on Thursday and Friday to be working outside but Mike and his team continued to button up the porch and the new roof/dormer.  Michael will have the plans done for the back of the house in a little over a week so the demolition of the wing could start as early as this coming week.  Stand by for news.

                                  Two pictures of what the kitchen looks like now, soon to change

Our roof gets redone and the Gingko goes [Scott 11/3/10]

Hi everyone.  Caleb got some great pictures today of the progress on the new roof above the oak room.  Im still not sure how they did this but the sagging roof was replaced and a new roof is now in its place.  Check out the photos below:

This will be a room off our master bath with windows, eventually. (Audubon)

   Notice all the lovely INSULATION!  (Stuart Little) We're going to have our hands full!

The Gingko tree sheds its leaves, in one day.

Caleb's update 11/2/10

So the workers are building up a sag in the roofline below the dormer, but before they can build up they have to strip down. They also removed an old, leaky skylight today. Here are some pics.

                                                                               

Halloween and a "new" dormer at the Big House! [by Laura, 11/1/10]

Hello friends!  We had a wonderful Halloween weekend as you will see in a few photos below.  And today we saw some exciting work done on the dormer of Down the Ave.  Pictures of the revamped dormer also available below!

The Brick Arches decorated for Halloween

Lots of kids enjoying Halloween snacks!

The charming Nadia Belash McKay and Jim McKay

Another lovely couple, Daren and Carolyn Gill

The Mummy game!  Thanks to Scott, Daren, Michael, and Dan for being good sports!

Now for the real stuff:  here are two shots of the revamped dormer above the new porch -- the dormer windows belong to Down the Ave (bedroom on the third floor) and will be replaced with two classic double-hung windows, centered in the dormer.

Our dog, Scout, supervising the construction:


More tomorrow!  Laura