Month: February 2017

We are experiencing a series of wonderful, warm, sunny days here. So much so the heat (to the house we live in) has been off for over 4 days! In February! Daffodils and hyacinths are green and delight us with the coming of Spring.

That being said, it is a great time of year to get on your favorite landscapers radar for upcoming projects you want to tackle, pruning that needs done, clean up from winter, that new patio space, securing mowing services and everything else on your to do list for your home and outdoor living space.

If you live in our neck of the woods Brian would be glad to help you, check out his services at dorchlandscapes.com.

This week Brian and Mike removed the external door that was the old entrance to the basement and poured concrete for the new wall.  Katherine lucked out and was just in time to write her initials in the concrete!

We are moving into getting everything into the walls, electrical first.

At the end of last week you saw the steps up (and down) were installed. Well, early this week Brian had to install a header at the base of the stairs going up because he had to duck coming down!  One thing often leads to another in a project like this.  It looks good though and he clears it! Yeah!

As the house begins to change I’ll try to help you see where we are going. Here I am standing in the kitchen, to my right are the new stairs and the room where the bathroom will be.  Straight ahead is the kitchen pantry with a pocket door and the mudroom to the right of it behind Brian & Katherine (also pocket door). From where Brian and Katherine are standing is a double wide doorway leading into what used to be the pink room.

Closets are framed out with room for a dresser/entertainment piece in the middle.  I like the gas fireplace idea!

This week brought Scott Bradford of Bradford Construction out to the Flip house to help Brain and Mike remove & replace the stairs from the main floor to the second as well as relocate the existing stairs to the basement from one location to another!  This was fascinating to me! Check out some of the stages below.

The new stairs will come out into the kitchen 5 more inches than Brian was hoping.  The stairs they took out fit the space but had been jimmied to do so and were not evenly spaced. Below, Will is standing in the old stairway to the basement.  If you look at the picture above these are located to the right of Mike ( in gray) behind the studs by the white door.  Where will they get moved too?…

New staircase going down!  Under the ones going up!  Love Brian’s design!

With the new stairs in place the house is beginning to take on a new look.  A very satisfying week.

It’s the end of the day at the end of a busy week.

A few posts ago, I mentioned we had to decide what to do about the pocket doors we wanted to install in the master bedroom, well a solution was found.  Pocket doors are being relocated to the mudroom and pantry off the kitchen.  Closets in master will be two large closets on either side of where Brian and Katherine are standing.  Mike, our idea man, said a gas fireplace in between these two closets would be really nice, I agree!

Today Brian realized sub flooring goes in before walls!  Great catch!  When I delivered lunch Mike said “Look, Lisa your hardwood floors are in”!  Does plywood count as a hardwood floor?!  Keep workin’ Mike!

A little bit of progress can make one feel so good!

I thought you’d like to see some side by side pics of the progress we have made so far.

Continue reading “Let’s See Where We’re At..”

Today one of the things Brian worked on was getting the pocket doors ready to install in the master bedroom.  He ran into a problem.  The height of the closet he wants is 76 inches and the pocket doors are 82 inches.  He’ll have to decide to either cut off part of the bottom to make it fit (this entails making sure the closet doors don’t look funny because he’ll have to cut inches off them as well), enlarge the closet to accommodate the bigger pocket doors (this makes the room smaller) or see if there is another size door he’ll be happy with. All in a day’s work.