It was the best of times, it was the.....
August 7 - 13 -- thank you to some very wonderful friends, I was able to leave the construction zone for almost a full week where I enjoyed sailing, a mail boat ride, wonderful conversation, great food, a fun walk in the pouring rain, and an escape from the every day challenges of life among the construction ruins. I really did not think about my home renovation once I was on the airplane and headed half-way across the country for a real vacation.
I was prepared that upon my return home, all but two rooms on the main level would be demolished, including the kitchen, pantry, bathroom (except for the claw foot tub), and a closet in the guest room. This meant that the refrigerator would be moved from the kitchen into the current living room to join my temporary kitchen. There would be no running water on the main floor, and there would be the most annoying thin, but persistent layer of construction dust (think plaster from the walls) everywhere.
What I was NOTprepared for, after a very long day of travel, was to find that sure enough the refrigerator was in the living room, but there was no power to it, although it was plugged into an outlet. I was simply stunned. I won't even attempt to describe the vile odor when I opened the refrigerator door from the obvious spoiled food. Although there was power to the light fixtures, there was no power to any of the outlets, especially the one that the refrigerator was plugged into. I was simply in a state of shock and dread.
In the freezer compartment were the meals I had prepared for this adventure, pesto cubes (homemade garden pesto poured into ice cube trays and then individually wrapped to form pesto cubes waiting to land on top of hot pasta), homemade garden tomato paste cubes, salmon caught by a friend in Alaska, ice cream, and I could go on and on. About the only thing that survived in the rest of the refrigerator was several bottles of beer. Eggs that broke during the refrigerator move were cracked and now dried on the refrigerator walls, lots of stuff had gone bad, and I was still in shock.
I ran an extension cord from the upper level to the refrigerator, but it was too late to save the food. I left a voice mail message for the contractor and sent an e-mail message expressing my disappointment about this turn of events. I couldn't help but think that if I had not gone away on vacation I would not be freaking out about this mess. My frustration level was pretty high, but there was nothing left to do but unpack my suitcase, set up my "alternative sleeping arrangement," and try to go to sleep.
The next morning the contractor came over, and apologized for not checking the refrigerator by opening the door. When the refrigerator was moved, plugged in and was working, he didn't think that he needed to check it again. Apparently, in order to remove the appliances from the kitchen (double ovens, microwave, etc.), the circuit to the outlets in the electrical box was turned off and no one bothered to turn the breaker switch back on. All the outlets, including the one the refrigerator was connected to in the living room, are on the same circuit.
I had found a cooler in the garage that was accessible, bought a 10 lb bag of ice and some milk so I could at least make my morning latte. Of course, with no running water, it was a challenge to clean up, but another advantage of having a temporary kitchen in the living room is that it is located near the front door where there is a garden hose near the front of the house.
While drinking my latte I began to plan how I would attack cleaning up the refrigerator. Fortunately, the microwave that was once over the cook top in my kitchen is now sitting on top of the refrigerator. With the microwave I heated water to scrub down the refrigerator after I threw out just about everything from the freezer and fridge. On the bright side, it was a short walk from the temporary kitchen in the living room to the construction dumpster in front of the house. After about four hours of scrubbing, the smell of spoiled food was gone, the spoiled food was tossed out in the dumpster, and I began to face a run to the grocery store. The shock was wearing off, but I would be lying if I wrote that I was back in my uber-zen mode. This was a disappointing event that I did not anticipate, not to mention a giant pain in the butt in terms of several hundred dollars worth of food that was lost and my time spent on cleaning, rather than other things.
Right before I left for vacation, the rafters for the new master bedroom roof started to go up as shown in these photos, along with the walls of the new master bathroom.
When I returned, almost all of the framing for the upper-level addition was in place, including the roof. The new north wall roof lines are pretty interesting, especially how the architect mirrored part of the existing roof line. In this next photo, look below the sunflower to your left to see a shed dormer in the existing master bathroom and its extension (the wall with a small window cutout) that will be the new master bathroom. There will be three small windows in the new master bathroom with the other two remaining to be cut out. Below the extended shed dormer you can see the original roof line and how the new master bedroom dormer ties into that. The master bedroom has a gabled dormer and in that big cutout will be a bank of three smaller windows. At the right most edge of this photo you can see the door that faces west off the master bedroom that will lead to a small covered deck.
Take a good look at the metal-capped chimney stack seen in the left-hand part of this photo -- that stack will come down when the load-bearing wall that it is a part of will be moved to enlarge the guest bedroom on the main level.
An interesting aspect of this new framing is the view from inside, that will eventually be covered up by wall board to hide the wiring, plumbing, and insulation. The craftsmanship that goes into the framing is really something as shown by these next photos.
I am pretty much over the shock of the refrigerator disaster. In the end, the contractor is giving me a $250 credit to cover the spoiled food. Technically, he didn't have to do this, but as I've written before, he is a good person who ends up doing the right thing. By tomorrow, the rest of the roof overhangs and framing should be done.
