It’s not pretty, but progress

From where we started, we’ve come a long way. Most of the garbage has been hauled away and the house has been gutted; although the last time I saw it there was still a toilet sitting in what will be the dining room. The new windows are arriving this week, walls are framed, the plumbing and light fixtures have almost all arrived, appliances are in storage and the kitchen cabinets are being delivered January 31st. A lot of progress, but so far from done. Over the years with our own projects and with clients, we have learned that the best chance you have of a job running smoothly is to have as much of the building material as you can on site and ready to go months before you need it. We didn’t expect to have everything show up as quickly as it did with the current pandemic backlog, so pleasantly surprised to be ahead of the game, at least with the materials; subs seem to be the bigger issue, good thing Joe can do almost anything.

As for the yard, it has been cleared, opening up a much better view of the water from the house

Still a ways to go but now we can see what we have to work with and come up with a plan. There is a spring that runs the length of the property from the barn to the beach with 2 holding ponds, one near the house and the other down by the water - it needs some work but an interesting feature and the source of the landscape irrigation. It runs on to the beach from the second pond and provides fresh drinking water for all sorts of wildlife and beach dogs, pretty cool. You can see it in the picture below -

There’s still a huge deck and a “kit” gazebo that sits on it that needs to be removed. The deck makes the house look short with it’s low mid-century roofline; we are trying to gain some visual height by removing it and cutting back the eves on the water side - a work/discussion (possible argument) in progress that will evolve once the deck comes off.

I always seem to forget how long the building/remodeling process takes; excited by the progress, I get ahead of myself, forgetting that the base that makes all of the things I care about work - electrical, plumbing, HVAC…takes the most time. For now I’ll have to be patient. To be continued…