Day 5 -- (-1) Roof (+1) Awesome View

On Friday, Day 3, the roof started coming off. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture without the plastic, but here's how it looks. The weather has been amazing. Perfect weather for having no roof. I'm just hoping it will hold out for another week and a half. Tomorrow the rest of the roof should come down.

I did have to take a picture of the new view from the dining room. On the left is the current view from the front room so you have an idea of what it looked like before...We should have taken those awnings down a long time ago.

Day 2 -- And so it begins...

We started today! Two of the 3 ugly "Cheers" awnings are GONE! I hated those things! It's awesome not having to bend down to see the view from inside. They also started taking off all of the shingles and have covered the bare wood with plastic for protection. One thing I'm sure our neighbors are thrilled over: a huge dumpster and port-o-potty taking up most of the driveway. Even though it ain't pretty, it still brings a smile to my face. We're on our way!

Day 1 -- A Slow Start

Well, check it out. See the difference? That's because there isn't any. Our good friends at the city said we'd have our permit by this morning, but we didn't get it until late this afternoon. Oh well, there's always Day 2.

Day 0

Tuesday May 5, Day 0. Yes, Day 0. I'm a software developer -- everything is 0-based. In preparation for the demolition scheduled to start Wednesday, we had to clear everything out of the rooms that will be affected. We are eliminating our current master bedroom to make way for the staircase to the new second story. As a result, our interim master bedroom leaves a lot to be desired. We're moving into our family room for the time being -- at least there's a big screen TV. After meeting with DAYT, we're encouraged that it won't be too long. Our goal is a completion date (to sheetrock) of August 1.

In the meantime, we're having to move a few things around. We had to clear out 4 of the 6 major rooms in our house. The office has become a storage unit. I was amazed at a) how much crap we actually have and b) how much of it we were able to fit in there. Once the prep work is done in the living room and dining room, we'll be able to start clearing some of this out.

Introduction

This is our house. We live in the Avenues of Salt Lake City, UT. We love this house, but it's not quite big enough. Our plan is to build a second story addition which will include a master suite with balcony, two small kids' rooms and a small bath. This blog will chronicle our adventures during this renovation.

The first question we had to ask ourselves was "Should we move?" As I said before, we love this house, but more importantly we love the view. (Click on the picture below to see the full size image.) From our front porch (and soon from our balcony) we are able to see most of downtown Salt Lake including the Capitol building, the Salt Lake LDS Temple, the Great Salt Lake and Ensign Peak. It's just too much to give up. Besides, it's 5 minutes from work. I could walk there in half an hour if I didn't insist on wearing heels everywhere.

Here's what the plans specify it will look like from the front and the floorplan for the upper level. Our architect, Ed Merrill from Renovation Design Group did a fantastic job with the plans.


We met with our contractor (DAYT Construction) today. It looks like we should have a permit by the end of the week and will be able to start demo as early as Monday. Wahoo!