Making More Room

Once the sunroom and deck were demolished, we moved on to cutting down trees. At first I felt terribly guilty about killing trees to make more room for the addition, but as luck would have it, our timing was excellent. One of the trees was in bad shape, completely hollow inside. It probably would not have remained upright much longer. And the other tree would have been taken by the emerald ash borer within the next couple years, so I'd like to think we spared it a slow, painful death.

To save money, we recruited a friend who worked for a professional tree service several years back. In one day, he took down both trees. We're so grateful to Jeff for his hard work, but I'm convinced that Mike was a little disappointed at having to keep both feet firmly planted on the ground.

The following day, Henry came over, armed with his wood splitter and John Deere Gator, and Jeff came back as well to help us organize the wood.

Goodbye and Good Riddance!

Just two days after demolition of the sunroom began, the remaining structure came down. Mike got to do two of his favorite things at the same time - stand up on the roof and operate a chainsaw. (It's important to note when watching this video that Mike and Todd are engineers and knew which way the room would fall, etc. Everyone observing the demolition watched from a very safe distance.)

That same day, the deck was torn down. We discovered a set of concrete steps beneath it that must have led up to the sunroom before the deck was built. We also discovered a concrete sidewalk extending from the patio to the steps. We did not however find any dead animals, which was my biggest fear.

The deck was harder to tear apart than expected, with the wood so swollen that the nails holding it together were impossible to remove. Mike and Todd used a circular saw to cut the structure into pieces.

The Beginning of the End for the Sunroom

As soon as Mike received clearance from the City, he was eager to begin the demolition of the sunroom. I did not realize just how quickly he would get his chance.

One Thursday night, I arrived home at 8 p.m. after a very long day. I saw my father-in-law's car in the driveway and suddenly remembered that Mike had said he might bring his brother and sister over for a visit. I parked in the street so I wouldn't block Henry's car in, and as I made my way up the driveway, I heard voices coming from the backyard. I soon became aware of other noises - grinding, whirring, and sawing. Curious, I walked around the side of the house and saw Henry, Aunt Eleanor, Uncle Raymond, and Becky deconstructing the sunroom. Once enclosed by glass doors and screens, it had become an open-air space, resembling a pavilion at a park, with just a roof and support pillars.

Getting Crazy with the Kitchen Plans

As time passed, our kitchen plans became more and more complex. We realized we could not realistically resdesign our kitchen in the space we had. We started talking about increasing the size of the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, and before long we had decided to blow out the back wall of the house and expand.

After consulting with an architect, we arrived at the perfect plan. We would tear down the existing sunroom off the dining area, and rid ourselves of the ugly deck, which was accessible from the kitchen and sunroom. We would also cut down a couple of trees (they were going to die anyway) to extend the new room out six feet from where the deck and sun room ended. The new space wouldn't be just a kitchen, but would include a living area, too. The existing living room would become the formal dining room, and I would finally get my big pantry!

Beginning the Kitchen Redesign

When we bought the house, we immediately knew that one day we would have to renovate the kitchen, which was certainly not designed for two cooks! If I had a dollar for every time Mike and I have almost knifed each other while working in such close quarters, I would be rich enough to have someone else do all this work.

We found the biggest problem to be the furnace chimney that ran up and down one wall, sticking out several feet into the room. Another issue was the peninsula attached to the chimney. It contained the stove, oven, and some useless cabinets and extended more than halfway across the room. We were left with a narrow walkway from one side to the other, and if the dishwasher door was open, we were unable to cross the room at all.

To solve these problems, we replaced the existing furnace with a high-efficiency one. This meant the chimney would no longer be necessary because the new furnace would vent from a pipe on the back of the house. Once the new furnace was installed, Mike and our friend Steve removed the entire chimney, from the roof down to the basement, giving us much more room in the kitchen.

Once that was done, Mike shoved the peninsula against the wall and turned the stove in a different direction to give us more room temporarily. What a treat it was to be able to walk from one side of the room to the other with the dishwasher door open! And this was only just the beginning!

A Facelift for 7712

"How's the house coming?" Friends and family often ask us this question as we tackle a number of ambitious renovation projects on the home we bought in September of 2006. While most in our inner circle understand the magintude of what we have undertaken, there are those who think that "renovating" means slapping some paint on the walls and hanging a few pictures. They simply can't understand why the house isn't "done" and then joke that no house is ever really done, as if to reassure us that it's okay to still be working on the dwelling we've lived in for almost four years. You'd think they'd cut us some slack when we mention that we're doing all of the work ourselves...

In case you're wondering, here's what we've done so far:

• Removed the worn carpet and had the wood floors refinished (one of the only things we haven't done ourselves).


• Replaced 14 windows (all done by Mike, not by a window company).


• Renovated the guest room, which included tearing out the walls; adding insulation; putting up new dry wall; painting the ceiling; painting the walls; adding new crown molding and trim around the door, windows, and closet; building a chair rail; redoing the wiring; and refinishing furniture purchased at garage sales.


• Renovated the den, which included removing two layers of wallpaper tiny bit by tiny bit; tearing out the walls; adding insulation; putting up new dry wall; building picture frame paneling to go around the entire bottom of the room; painting the top half of the room; adding a wallpaper border just above the paneling; adding new crown molding and trim around the door, window, and closet; and redoing the wiring.


• Tore out the chimey, which ran right through the kitchen, and put in a new high-efficiency furnace that vents out a pipe in the back of the house. (We had someone install the furnace.)


• Put up new shutters.


• Grassed in two difficult-to-maintain flower beds in the yard. Got rid of the statue of the naked boy riding a fish.


• Cut down hundreds of unhealthy trees in the backyard.


• Replaced the water heater.


• Added an irrigation system for a flower bed in the front yard.


• Removed ivy from a 35' x 25' flower bed.


• Tore out the walls in the third bedroom, added insulation, put up new drywall, and redid the wiring.


• Installed built-in drawers in our bedroom closets (handmade by Mike.)


• Installed a reverse osmosis water filtration system.


• Added a patio to the backyard (4 tons of flagstone.) Colleen sledgehammered it herself to break the rock apart.


• Put in a new garage door opener.


• Built a 12' x 6' storage shelf in the garage.


• Rebuilt the exterior portion of the fireplace chimney (which would have cost $900 to repoint, but Mike rebuilt it for $150.)


• Replaced all door knobs.


• Installed a 6 ft. antenna in the attic.

We've done other stuff, too, but there's so much that we can't remember every single thing.

Our next project is our big kitchen remodel, which we're going to do completely on our own, except for digging the foundation for the extension. We've started this blog so that we can share our progress.

Wish us luck! We're going to need it.