Isn't "Man Cave" just a great name for this project? One of Susan's friends came up with it and we have claimed it as our own! A lot has been happening with this project and the kitchen in the last two weeks, but most of it has been behind the scenes. The plumbing has been redone and we now have water and gas feeding into the garage. They had to tear up part of the kitchen, hallway, and the hall closet to achieve that so the inside of the house is a bit of a disaster. More on that later.Electrical stuff has also been happening and they finished up the back wall. 
Two doors have been hung and the garage door should be going up soon. When I left for work this morning there were roofers on top of the garage. As you can see by the picture on the right, we are now papered and chicken-wired so the stucco can't be far behind. As soon as we can secure the contents of the garage, we will move our kitchen stuff out there and begin the remodel on that. Yippee!!
Yes! They called in a crane to place the header beam up where it belonged. It's a bit smaller than the one by work, but it was still exciting to watch. The crane operator told me the beam weighed 800 lbs. He's been doing this a long time and managed to land it right where it belonged at the back and only inches from the cut on the front. Just a little bit to the left and fell into place just like it was supposed to!
The guys worked really hard today and got so much accomplished. We now have cross bars for the roof and windows on the yard side of the garage. They expect to wrap this up tomorrow. I'll have more pictures to share and an entire album of framing shots for those of you who want more detail.
Work began at 8 am just as promised. I love these guys! They've become accustomed to my camera now and just keep on working. It was really interesting to watch them pour and work the concrete. They have quite a system and work as a team. I had no idea how physical it was. I would call this backbreaking work!
By 9 am the concrete was poured and they were ready to do all the other secret stuff that masons do (a little nod to my dad here.)I had to do a some research to understand the difference between concrete and cement. I know my dad and Tim have explained this to me more than once but it didn't really set. Cement is one of the elements in concrete and is what holds it all together. If you are bored enough to watch concrete dry*, click here for even more info: What is concrete anyway? If you are really, really bored you can see more of the concrete process in the photo album on the left.*If you read carefully, you will discover that concrete doesn't dry, it hydrates!
Every time I look at this, I think we should be playing a giant game of checkers! They finished the rebar for the foundation this morning. It was pretty cool to watch them cut it, bend it, and put it all together. The inspector was scheduled for Wednesday, but he was in the neighborhood and dropped by this afternoon. It was encouraging to hear him say that K-Co does such good work that he knew it would be a slam-dunk. We were scheduled for the concrete to be poured on Thursday. 
I have a call in to the supervisor to see if that moves up to Wednesday now that we've passed inspection. I sure don't want to miss that photo op! For those of you who have been wondering about the new drainage pipe, here's a shot of it with a bit of the old pipe thrown in for comparison. There seems to be a leak under the house, too, so we will be taking a look at that soon.
And for those of you who are so tired of looking at dirt, dirt, dirt, I took this picture of the front of the house this morning. As you can see, a few things are blooming and living through all the commotion going on around them. We are using that garden as our path to the front door, so it's getting a lot of wear and tear!
Isn't "Man Cave" just a great name for this project? One of Susan's friends came up with it and we have claimed it as our own! A lot has been happening with this project and the kitchen in the last two weeks, but most of it has been behind the scenes. The plumbing has been redone and we now have water and gas feeding into the garage. They had to tear up part of the kitchen, hallway, and the hall closet to achieve that so the inside of the house is a bit of a disaster. More on that later.
Two doors have been hung and the garage door should be going up soon. When I left for work this morning there were roofers on top of the garage. As you can see by the picture on the right, we are now papered and chicken-wired so the stucco can't be far behind. 
