Week 13 - Brick and Framing

A lot happened this week that is pretty visible. See below, by area.

The brick walls on the sides if the yard were finished.

It's all really coming together now.

Look at that beautiful wall!

And there's one on the other side, too!

Closer view of the west garden wall.

The end of the wall will tooth into the back (north) wall of the back yard.

Not quite sure why there aren't spaces to tooth in at the top here...there's a brick wall all along the back, too.

On to the interior! I walked in the front door and was surprised by what I saw...

They moved the door! This actually makes a lot of sense. As you can see here on the right, they started framing in the door opening to turn it into the pass-through window. The door actually locks now vs. it being held in place with an angled 2x4 before.

This is the main wall (back wall) of the kitchen, along the east side. You can see the new plumbing piping. The one at the left is connecting to the old vent pipe.

Closer up view of the new kitchen plumbing.

They reworked the ductwork so that it stays behind the upper cabinet above the refrigerator. That's some fancy work there!

The space where the stairs were isn't going to waste. They are using it for the main return riser from upstairs and to add a return in the living room. Hopefully this will make the airflow better in the house and balance the temperature better.

The new return in the living room.

Historic plumbing vent pipe! This is the old piece that was removed.

And now on to the addition!

Temporary door, from the addition side.

More framing along the existing north wall of the house. The plywood is where the door used to be and where the beginning framing for the pass-through window is.

Down to the basement. You can see a lot of electrical rough-in (the blue boxes everywhere are where the outlets and light switches will be).

View from the bottom of the stairs. They CMU is where the basement door opening was and is filling up the hole.

Another view of the relocated basement door opening.

Looking toward the west wall of the laundry room at the new electrical panel. You can also see some electrical rough-in happening.

What a pretty, new, code-compliantly located panel (as opposed to in the bathroom next to the toilet)

That's a print-out of my updates to the electrical and plumbing. I did a little shifting around of things.

The laundry nook underneath the landing. You can see the sump pump there in the back, with the cover off.

That white knob in the middle is the shower control.

Here's a more straight-on view.

Plumbing for the basement bathroom sink.

Duct from the new run going up to be connected to the furnace.

New vent piping. The furnace condensate will connect directly to this, replace the super-ghetto way it was before, which was a flexible piece of tubing that went through the wall and daylighted to the areaway drain outside (which is now gone)

The plumbing waste pipe for the kitchen sink, from below.

Basement east wall furring.

View of the main room in the basement looking toward the front of the house (south)

Looking toward the west wall of the main basement room.

Looking to the north, back towards the addition and bathroom.

Another view looking north, where you can see more of the east wall.

Some pieces of ductwork, waiting to be installed.

This week: pay request #3 (it's been 3 months already!!!) and additional electrical & duct work.

I have to get a waiver from the city (and pay $100 for it) to keep my electric service overhead because there's a city ordinance that requires electric service to be undergrounded when there's a new connection point to the building. In our case, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as all of the houses on our block have overhead lines and we have wires running across our backyard for our neighbors anyway.

Windows are suppose to come next week, so then the furnace can be installed, the space conditioned, and the interior finishes started. We are a little behind schedule (based on the original schedule) but I should be getting an updated schedule this week from my contractor.