I am learning what every homeowner already knows.  You are never really done working on your home.  In November, I thought that we had finished with the construction upstairs.  These past 6 months have been easy living in our completely finished upstairs.

However, you can see by the picture below that we now have the beginnings of a new wall separating the area where our bed lives from the other area of the bedroom.  Kevin S. was on site on Saturday and built this wall for us in record time.  I had 3 jobs for him to do (including the wall), and he got all of it done before lunch.  Man that guy is fast. 

I am still in the process of pulling network / computer / tv cables down stairs.  When that is done insulation goes in.  When insulation passes inspection, then drywall goes up.  After drywall passes inspection then floors, doors and trim go in.  I am hoping for a 1st week of August start for the drywall.

We have 98% completed demolition of the first floor.  We are working with a cabinet maker to design the kitchen.  The electrician has made his first visit to the site.  Things are progressing.

One recent project was to pull up the old kitchen floor.  Under the fairly modern vinyl floor were linoleum (I think) tiles.  The tiles were affixed with tar to the sub floor.  Everything came up fairly easily and we exposed the subfloor in just a few hours.

This is a view from the front door down to the end of the house.  Many people had lobbied Toby to make a wall on the far side of the back door, so as create a small laundry room.  However, recently while walking through, Toby decided that she really wanted a larger mud room, and so the wall will be built on the near side of the back door.  I think everything will work out OK.

What used to be the front office will be a room with semi-private access to the first floor bathroom.  We have converted the first floor bathroom to a jack-and-jill bathroom.  The doorways were opened up wide to be ADA compliant for the day when old folks might be joining us in Carp.

This is a view from the back living room (formerly our master bedroom) into the kids room.  You can see some more funky tiles on the floor that need to be pulled up.

We are finishing up demolition of the downstairs.  Last weekend, we pulled off the last of the old drywall.  It is a messy business.  We wear masks and safety glasses and still have black boogers at the end of the day.  We have rigged up a ramp to get the stuff into the dumpster as directly as possible.

The more eagle-eyed reader will notice that although I am raising up the wheelbarrow, nothing is coming out.  Yes, the above is a staged photograph.  The picture below shows what really happened when I had Pop taking a picture of me dumping the wheelbarrow.

One of the planks that I was using as a ramp fell out from under me as I got the wheelbarrow up to dump.  Poppa was ready and waiting and snapped the shot as I hit the ground.  Click on the picture to view the full sized picture to get all the ugly details.  It was the first time that the ramp had failed, and Poppa got the shot.  Also, the batteries in the camera died right after that picture.  Strange.

We have started tearing down the interior walls on the first floor.  Toby and I are struggling during the week to empty out the rooms before the weekend.  There is so much stuff! 

Everybody wanted in on the act.  Even the kids.  It is not often that Dad says it is OK to make holes in the walls.