We are floored

We have the beginnings of a floor taking shape in the basement. There will still be a smaller storage space below the floor that will be only about 7 or 8 feet tall, just enough for the storage door to clear, and then the downstairs floor begins. These pictures were taken standing at the level where the storage space will be looking slightly upward. The large cross beams pictured are what will support the floor once it goes in.

Many pickets

A lot of our stair railings for the middle part of the deck have now been installed along with most of the composite material on that level. The top level has lagged because it still needs another coating of tar and that can't be accomplished until we get out of the 20 degree temps and the rain stays at bay for a few days.






This is the view from our lower deck facing south towards our backyard. It is the view that we will have from the new office. Had we kept with our previous deck, this view would have been completely obstructed by the (very vertical) stairs.



Haven't taken a picture of the overall deck lately so we thought it would be a good idea to show how it looks now with all the progress that has been made.

Bright ideas

These are the lights that will light our top, middle, and underneath levels of the deck along with the stairwells. The uplights will be installed one on each level of the deck and two matching downlights (not pictured) will be installed in the stairwell of the deck. This uplight was installed on our side porch to replace a gross-looking brass thing that was there probably since the house has been built.

Concrete footings anyone?

So all of those little boxes that were built downstairs now have been filled in with concrete. This entire process of building up the footings for the support beams apparently is a very important task as far as the City is concerned since an inspector had to be on hand during some of this work.

Oh yeah, and there's this little side project called the downstairs expansion...

Work on our downstairs expansion has officially begun. When everything is finished, approximately 2300 square feet will be completed which will be our bottom floor of our house. This will include a big office, bedroom, bathroom, home theater room, master bedroom and bathroom, and a large storage space. For the time being, only "Phase 1" will be complete and this will include the office, bedroom and bathroom, plus the hallway and access from the main floor of the house.

Below are shots of the framing for the concrete footings that will soon be poured for the new support beams that will be moved in. One of the most fascinating parts of this project was all of the structural engineering that went into figuring out which of the existing posts can be moved and what new ones can be added and where. When all is said and done, we will have over 20 support beams downstairs.

Composite and Siding

Sorry for the long delay in posting pictures this time. Progress still continues to be made. The composite material is now getting installed. We decided to go with the cedar color instead of the grey color like we originally were thinking we'd use. Cedar seemed to be more basic and we also won't be locked into a smaller set of house colors that would match the composite color if we chose to paint our house someday.



This is a shot of one of the bottom corners of the deck. New cedar siding is now being installed.



More shots of the siding. It will be painted the same color of the deck some day down the road when the weather permits.