hired crew – Page 4 – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Panel progress

Well the bumpout is going very smoothly so far. They got the panels all boxed out, the MDO all cut to approx size and pre-primed. They have to fussy cut the MDO to install it next but I’m impressed by one day of progress. The goal is to get this part of the bumpout finished, leaving the high part for later (caps and the peak). Next they’ll work on the cupola panels as well as siding the backside. Once the backside is sided they will move the pump station over to the bumpout so they can do the caps and peak with that. The staging will get moved to the roof for the higher part of the cupola. I think it’s a good plan. Hopefully our attic windows come soon (due some time next week), because they will be ready for them by then for sure unless it rains a lot.

Panels all framed out, all the way up. It’s hard to see but there are 3 rows of boxes between the windows. Next up will be MDO to put in the flat sections.

It was hard to get a picture of the sides, but I like how the thin vertical section will still have 3 boxes to match the other sections.

They rebuilt the structure and patched in the bottom of the soffit nice and tight and puttied it up. Looks great. Scraping has moved around to the bumpout portion now. Coming right along!

They are waiting on paint until they see some good dry days which makes sense.

Also they did 2 dump runs and a recycle run and the yard doesn’t look too bad.

Monday progress

Tuesday got rained out again but Monday the rain held off so they were able to get our bedroom windows all installed and a good start on scraping down the soffit over the backside.

Soffit scraping started, coming along nicely

Bedroom windows from the inside. They did a good job removing the trim and not really messing with the plaster. This is good because it may be a while before we get to renovating our bedroom.

Now the inside work is done, they are starting on panels on the bumpout today. At the pace they are going i’d say they may get all the panels on the bumpout done, maybe not the window cap only because it’s tricky? I’ve got some molding to paint tonight (I want the bed molding to be red and it’s easier if it’s pre-painted). Everything else will be yellow so it’s up to them when they add the molding, they could do it after painting the rest if they want, I just want to make sure I’m not holding them up.

Rainy day

No pictures because it’s raining too hard to go out and take them. I wanted to quick document the progress they made yesterday.

The 2 vinyl windows in the back are trimmed out with sills/casings and the caps were made but not yet installed (the frieze board has to be installed first and the caps modified to fit tightly). On the bumpout they got the sill extended all the way around so the panels can be started using that as a starting point.

The cupola siding is about 1/2 torn off, then they covered what was exposed with tar paper in preparation for the rain. Everything was cleaned up and covered for the weekend, with the rain coming they knew they wouldn’t be coming by today to work.

Monday the plan is to get the panels on the bumpout started, the rest of the cupola siding and windows removed (so our bedroom needs to be emptied out so they can remove windows). Then our bedroom windows will get installed and the panels finished up on the bumpout and then the siding on the back part done.

The whole front of the house minus the actual screen porch will get finished by then, we’ll do the porch ourselves either this summer or next but it’s in decent shape. The hard part is deciding what to do about the floor of that porch and adding drainage before we can re-roof the full wrap around porch roof.

Looking forward to next week’s progress!

The cupola revealed

Replicating the original cupola in some form or another is going to be very interesting. I was very excited to get a hint at what it used to look like this morning when they got the aluminum mostly off.

Last night I ran over to home depot after kiddo was in bed and Ryan was home and I ordered some vinyl replacement windows for the attic part of the cupola. We were waiting to see what was underneath and once we knew it was panels and could be rebuilt we just ordered new construction windows. Hopefully they come closer to 10 days instead of 2 weeks.

Day 2 – windows are in

It sure was nice to come home to some great progress! They got 5 windows flashed and installed today. They also removed some more siding so we could see what the original cupola panels looked like – very interesting. I’m a little worried we don’t have windows for the top of the cupola yet. I’ve been having trouble getting such small double (or single) hung windows. I’m going to talk to our contractor tomorrow about calling Harvey windows and see if they have any, but even then it’s 2 week lead time.

And the interior….

Bumpout (this will become the master bathroom.

Laundry room (left) and bathroom (right).

Hiring a crew

Well clearly we are not getting work done on the house lately since there have been no blog updates 🙂 The small amount we did get done last weekend was in preparation for our new crew to start work. We hired a crew of 3 to do the exterior work (replace windows and siding) on the right side and front of the house’s 2nd and 3rd stories. This is a HUGE job and the price certainly reflects that. They are hoping to complete in 5 weeks or less although the cost is a fixed price for labor. Since we’re not getting work done I might as well blog about the work other’s are doing 🙂

Day 1 –

Removed aluminum siding on 2/3rds of the bumpout and the back section. Removed the wood siding/paneling on same sections. Removed 4 windows. Reframed 2 windows for smaller vinyl replacements and closed 1 window up.

Siding removed on this section (aluminum and original) as well as 4 windows on the right.

Close up of the shingle damage – those are going to need to be replaced unlike the other side 🙁

You can see how far around they got removing siding – started on the cupola.

Attic staircase window closed up, the other 2 windows framed in

Debri was all cleaned up, aluminum is piled up for us to recycle and tomorrow they will start putting up staging so they can access the bumpout and cupola more effectively.

Inside shots…

New windows popped in backwards for the night (temporary). The left one is our laundry room, the right one is our bathroom. The bump out window just has plastic over it for now.

I’m very happy with the pace they started with, getting the cruddy work over with quickly and cleaning up in the same day. The overall estimate is 5-6 weeks for this job, we all know the finishing work is the slowest part and they are going to be going all the way to caulking and painting with the new siding (as well as scraping any old soffit that remains). So even though things start out fast, they will slow down eventually. For now though the progress is astounding and fun to capture.

Plus – it gets done while I sit at my computer working all day 🙂