New Front Entrance

It took 4 weekends to drill 8 holes into the concrete so that we can FINALLY frame in the two openings for the garage doors. We placed our new front door this weekend. The weather was sweltering (notice the blue canopy - it rained on us), and we worked until we were out of light, but WE HAVE A DOOR!!! (and Exhaustion is our middle name.) Next weekend we'll install the new window and close in the other garage door. Then, after we install another door where a window currently is, we'll have the wind storm inspector out to approve it all. After that hurtle, we'll feel pretty good because the tricky engineering stuff will be over.

It's a fiberglass door, by the way. We didn't want to spend all this energy
and have it rot out in our harsh climate. Isn't it pretty?

Getting Nowhere FAST

We don't have much to show for the last three weekends of tears and sweat (well, the only tears were the ones caused by the rivers of sweat running into our eyes). We've been trying to work on enclosing the openings where the existing garage doors are. We've spent hours trying to drill into 40 year old concrete in order make holes deep enough for wedge anchors which we need to connect to the new construction. We finally got to consult with a wind storm inspector to make sure we are doing the correct things to get the new work certified for wind storm insurance coverage. Living on the coast makes remodeling jobs doubly difficult. However, the wind storm guy gave us some good advice, and we should save some time and money doing what he suggested. Here are some photos of Taylor and I working on those stink'n holes.

I'm working with a hammer drill.

Taylor's working with a star drill which means he's doing it the old-fashioned way by manually breaking up aggregate so I can come after him and drill out more concrete with the hammer drill. I know - it sounds like so much fun! How can I complain?!? What's amazing is how much faster the job became when we got the star drill and started working manually. We had two 3-inch holes drilled in 3 hours - WHAT INCREDIBLE LIGHTENING SPEED!

The other big job on the garage conversion has been running the electrical wiring.
I like the way Taylor makes notes on the walls to keep track of what's going where.

We're currently 4 weeks behind according to the dreaded list, so be patient with us.
Some day we'll have something pretty to show.

Garage Deconstruction

The job I had most feared during all this remodeling work was tearing out the sheet rock in the garage. I expected to have lots of roach poo and dead roaches falling on us as we removed the ceiling. Turned out it wasn't too disgusting. Taylor did find a snake skeleton in the wall, but it looked pretty cool. Here is a before photo of the VERY messy garage and some photos of the tear-out.

Kitchen Update

We've been spending our weekends working in the garage, so we are trying to fit the remaining kitchen jobs into the evenings after work. Here's a photo of one corner that is completely done (except I still haven't found the perfect convection microwave so the microwave shelf has stuff on it). Notice the upper and lower trim on the cabinets and the counter top edges. Those are the types of things we still have to complete. Of course, I have to go to IKEA to get more materials in order to finish everything.