Starting Work

Well, we closed just over five days ago and already our contractor, Abel Diaz of A&D Construction and his crew have put in four days of work (although I only have pictures of three). On the day we closed, Wednesday, when I got home, even though Patrick was on the couch with a headache and some bug he caught over the weekend, he wanted to go with me to the house (probably because he knew I was dieing to get started). So we went out, grabbed some pizza and went off to the house. We met Abel when we got there and had a short walk-through and gave him the keys so his crew could get in the next morning. So he left and we were again locked out of our house. But we weren't going to do anything in the house anyway.

We went out to the back and started hacking at the weeds. Patrick quickly decided it was useless not having a weedwacker and I agreed. So we did what we could and the next day came back with one.

However...

This is a picture of the result of the work that was done Thursday which made me quite happy and anxious to see the bare inside. Patrick may be looking a little cross but it's not at the mess. It's kinda because we couldn't go inside to see what had gone on... The crew started early at 7am and probably went home around 5, but we didn't manage to get there until 6:30 with our trip to Home Depot. So no one was there and we'd given our keys to Abel. Actually, even if we had an extra copy of the keys, we'd given them some new lock sets to install and forgot to open them first and get out the extra keys so we were locked out. I'd have called Abel, but I'd also forgot my phone... that's probably what's made Patrick look frustrated! hehe. So we simply went back home because all our garden tools were locked up and Patrick didn't want to weed whack without gloves and a mask (allergies) and these were locked up too.

But we could see that Abel and the crew had gotten a ton done (the dumpster will be there later this week). They'd already started demolishing the porch.

Then by the end of Friday, they'd finished the job.

As you can see, there's a small access problem at the moment but we don't have to worry about rain, as the roof is still on! It was about the only stable part of the old porch. They'll be rebuilding top to bottom I guess.

The other bit of progress is in the kitchen, see my semi-panorama, left to right:


They've yet to knock down the middle wall dividing the back of the room but they have removed the the bits perpendicular to it which made the doorways to the smaller rooms. The place already looks much bigger and brighter. You can see in the left picture where our washer, dryer, and water heater (in a cabinet) will be, next to the original cabinets we will refinish later. And here's a better picture of them since I didn't have one earlier.

Of course, I haven't actually taken a picture of the full cabinets... Silly me, there are two more panels to the left without a gap in the middle.

They also managed to gut the bathroom in the two days before the weekend - normally they work Saturdays, but they took this one off for the 4th. So your first pictures of our bathroom are just of the the bare floor boards and the toilet the previous owners must have had for two decades before selling.

There used to be a horrendous one piece shower stall connected to the protruding pipes behind which the toilet hid, nearly invisible. But gladly, that is now in pieces in our back yard rubbish heap.

Now, that's about it, no rebuilding happening as of the 4th, but they've been working all done today and as we're (reluctantly myself) taking a night off from gardening so we'll have to see what's been going on tomorrow. But as I have a few better pictures of other areas of the house, here they are:

The doorway to the bath and two bedrooms which they're widening for us.

View into the living room from the dining room.

And our now superfluous front door.

Next, I'll show you the progress we've made from going every night to the garden since last Wednesday.