Let the sun shine in.

Our living room is no longer a cave! Yay. When we were considering buying this house the one big drawback was the total lack of natural light. Aaron came up with the idea of a big window on the south side of the living room and we're super happy with the results so far. We had the crew save the old windows when they replaced the windows in the rest of the house and then create a stationary window made up of 6 panes to make a picture window in the living room. It's not finished yet but it's making a huge difference in the feel of the house already.

The porch, roof and siding are almost done too. Our plan was to make the porch into a sunroom but we're not sure if we'll even get to that, it's pretty nice as a regular porch. We're having to readjust a little on what we're going to be able to do since Aaron was diagnosed with carpal tunnel last week. His hand has been bothering him for a while now and I think all the work he's been doing lately has aggravated it, like maybe tearing off the side of a house? Anyway, they're going to run tests to see how bad it is. We're just hoping he doesn't need surgery.

We're not sure what to do with the deck that used to be attached to that side of the house. Any ideas? Anyone need a deck?

I spent the weekend out in the garden weeding and edging the beds with the siding we took down from the addition. It worked really well, I think it'll keep the weeds down a little. Plants are going to go in this week.

The studio is set up... finally. I really like the set up so far. I think it needs a little more light though, but that's easy enough to deal with. I'm going to build myself a better wedging table but other than that it's done.

Here a couple of random shots, tulip poplar and happy dog.

Spring Break is Over

Well, we made lots of progress last week. Aaron was able to take off the addition and we started to put the studio together so I can get back to work. Last week I went to a workshop given by Judith Duff and it really made me want to get my hands back into clay.

This week the workmen will start doing the finishing work on the porch, putting siding up where there isn't any and new tin roofing where there used to be shingles. Luckily we're having really dry weather so that tarp is just fine until they put the new tin roofing on. They're also going to install fixed windows in the living room to bring in more light.

Here are some photos of the progress and one of me spreading the adhesive for the flooring in the studio.

Day 2 of Demolition

It's Spring Break and Aaron's off school so we decided it would be a perfect time to take off the addition that was added to the house in the eighties. It's on the south side of the house so it blocks sunlight and makes it REALLLY dark in the rest of the first floor. What they did was enclose a porch to add rooms and we're going to tear off what was added and make it back into a porch and half bath. In order to save money we decided to do the demo work ourselves and hire the contractor to do the finish work.

We started yesterday by tearing up the roofing... that took pretty much all day. By today we had filled a big dumpster with stuff we had torn off. Today it's starting to look more like a porch.

Here are some photos of the progress.

Here are some random shots from the weekend, we've had beautiful weather here, all of the trees are in bloom. The little girl in the photo is Flora, the daughter of our good friends, Eli & Carolyn.