Here we go again!

Jesse's spring semester finished up yesterday. Guess what that means? He started the second phase of our renovation bright and early this morning! He's got good help this go-around. My dad is in town for six days of hard labor (he considers it a vacation...), Tanner stuck around and is on hand to help again (!), and Derrick is coming down from Pendleton for the weekend to help out.

Jesse wasn't completely idle during the school year, I'll post some pictures later of "small projects" he worked on these last few months.

A few weeks ago we found out the Big Orange Box was having a promotion where they offered 0% financing for one year on large purchases AND we happened to have a Lowe's 10% off coupon (that Home Depot honors) so we made a comprehensive list of everything we'd need for Phase II of the renovation. The next day, we took our list (seven pages, single spaced, 10 point font) to the store. We spent a total of ten hours at Home Depot Saturday and Sunday writing down all the SKUs for each item. Then we put our order together as a will-call and put it on a shiny new Orange Credit Card.

Tanner and Jesse spent an entire work day transporting all the goods back and forth (not counting all the items we special ordered and ordered from the website.) Our back yard turned into a GIANT stack of lumber, the side area turned into a plywood storage area, and our garage turned into a mini-Home Depot. THEN Jesse took his final exams. My dad flew into town right after I had dropped him off at school for his last final.

The next morning, they got to work:

Tanner started out on the roof

My dad started tearing out the garage side of where the second bedroom closet is going.

This hole got patched. It's where the waste water used to leave the garage.

Jesse came back from dropping me off at work and started cutting away the drywall from the second bedroom to make the closet opening.

Tanner progressed on the roof.

A bit of sunlight peaks through the ceiling.

FYI: The reason we're taking the roof off is to get rid of the beam and the sloping ceiling in the dining room. We'll raise the walls up and put a gable over this part of the house -- we'll then have a nice flat dining room ceiling that we can hang a chandelier from AND the outside of our house will be a lot more appealing.

Jesse and Tanner crafted a dust abatement strategy. It wouldn't last long...

A skylight! And a false wall to carry the load of the ceiling and roof while we remove that beam.

No more roof for the dining room or the front porch.

The beam must fail!

There will be more to come later. My dad is yelling at me to sweep up all the debris from the above picture (because, "that's what Liz would be doing. Instead of blogging.")

We have several projects slated for this second phase of the renovation. Here they are:

• Gabled roof over the dining room
• Second bedroom closet created (by extending the room into the garage a bit)
• Decrease the width of the wall between the bathroom and second bedroom (it's 7" right now and we want three of those inches for our bathroom)
• Remove the master bedroom closet and linen closet to give the bathroom three more feet of width.
• Create a new master bedroom closet and linen closet by using up 2.5' of width from the living room.
• Change the footprint of the bathroom and install all new fixtures, including a six foot vanity and tall cabinet.
• All new doors for any that haven't been replaced yet (exterior garage door, kitchen to garage door, 2 solid bedroom doors and a pocket door in the bathroom.

The kicker is that this all needs to be finished before July 26th, when Jesse and I leave for New York for our WEDDING! Yup, we're making it official. :)

Cheers!