Mudroom takes shape and kitchen demolition (1/20/11)

Hello friends and family!  Our construction crew has worked through snow, sleet, and rain this week and the result is a fully-framed mudroom and a demolished kitchen!  The electrician was here replacing all the old outlets and light switches, and the plumber has been here rerouting pipes (what a maze!).  Auntie Mouse (a.k.a. Annie Bartol) was here yesterday helping us with ideas for paint colors for many of the rooms in the Big House -- she was loads of help!  Lots going on here at construction central!



One wall going up on the mudroom...



Walls up...roof on!

Kitchen BEFORE demolition...



Demolition in progress...



Ger - demoliton with a smile!

Kitchen AFTER demolition!

Another dumpster filling up!  Note the old freezer
from the small room off the kitchen -- the crew used a
sawzall to cut it up!

We had a great visit with the Eckels family --
Christopher, Caleb, and Emily on the roof of the garage!

Kristin Beebe Eckels and Eliza (holding the Eckels'
new puppy Belle) enjoying a fire (in the driveway) on
a cold night!



Eliza, Belle, and Anna

Girl cousins!  Anna, Eliza, Emily...



Snow, snow, and more snow!

It was a doozy of a snowstorm!  Caleb and Eliza had two days off from school, many pine boughs came down under heavy snow, and two days of work were lost on the house; but as of today, things are mostly back to normal.  We just have a lot of snow...and it's beautiful. 



On Wednesday, we woke up to a blizzard!
This is the door to our basement apartment.



Looking out from the brick arches to Field House
(Scout in the foreground)...



A snow day for everyone (except Scott)!



Looking down the lane (Scout in foreground)...



Family room under snow...



Mother Nature's pruning job...ouch!



Thursday: after Carl and Chris dug us out!

Friday: supplies for the mudroom floor...



Mike measuring and cutting up insulation...Ger fitting it into
the new floor on top of the concrete slab.



Corner of the new mudroom floor...covered with a tarp
for the weekend.



The finished dormer on the new family room.





The dormer from the inside...



Caleb's update 1/12/11

Hello everyone sorry it's been so long since I have done an update but now I’m getting back into it. It’s a snow day for all the schools in Milton and Boston. This update is not going to be about the construction project but it's going to be about the wildlife that we feed right outside the kitchen window. Here are some pictures I took of the birds.

 a hungry black capped chickadee visits the feeder.

 two juncos scouting out from below.

 a blue jay having his turn.

a cardinal waiting patiently. 

a black capped chickadee waiting for his turn.

 a cooper's hawk pays a visit for a snack that's real "bird" food

but birds aren't the only wildlife that roam close by.

this black mangy mutt sticks close to the house.

Family Room is Framed (1/9/11)

Hello out there.  Although we got some snow this weekend (only a couple of inches) this past week was a wonderful week for framing a family room.  And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened here on the farm as you'll see from the pictures below.  The walls are all up, the headers are in and supported, the rafters are in and the roof is on, inlcuding a full covering of ice and water shield (love that stuff).  Mike and his crew are going to finish up on the inside of the family room while also shifting gears to the mudroom which will be just to the side of the F.R..  The foundation has been poured for that and because we're not talking about a large square footage that should go reasonably quickly.  Michael Wang will be here today to measure up what will be the kids' bathroom so he can put a plan in place for that and he'll also be finalizing plans for the kitchen--Laura is MIGHTY excited about that discussion (picking cabinets etc etc).  Dermot, the electrician, spent an hour and a half in the house Saturday counting outlets, checking switches, asking about recessed and surface lighting, etc...the wiring will be a big project!

Life on the farm is otherwise moving along.  Laura ran into the person who is trying to manage our deer population (bow only!) earlier this week and he reported having taken out a mangy coyote that we've been worried about.  We've seen this guy around more and more of late and have been concerned about his or her increasingly brazen behavior--the departure is welcomed news.  Caleb is in the process of finishing up his last school application and Eliza is 2/3rds of the way thru the many Bat Mitzvahs she has with her classmates this year. 



Friday afternoon -- getting that ice and water shield on!



Saturday - under a dusting of snow...

Work continues on the addition... 1-4-11

Clear skies, lots of progress on the framing of the new family room...



Family room starts to take shape...



The two hallway windows across from Grandma's bedroom
were taken out to be replaced by shorter windows.  They need
to be shorter to make room for a new mudroom roof below.




A crane to bring in the large rafters...

Backyard or lumberyard?

Making so much progress!





And one day later!



Caleb has found this framing project very interesting...plus he
loves heights (that's him clambering over a rafter).



This is an old foundation to a small porch off the kitchen. 
It was in disrepair, so was torn down.  It will be rebuilt as
a year-round mudroom and will become the family's casual
entrance to the house.  That yellow door leads into the kitchen...

How we spent our holiday:  reading by the fire!  Note
the three cats in the window behind Caleb.