Renovation Week #2: Housefly Houses

Oliver loves building with blocks and when I asked him what he was building, he exclaimed/yelled, a housefly house! His house even came with a slide for the flies.  The flies Oliver was trying to accommodate are the ones darting around our house.  With contractors coming and going and the portions of our house still be open to the great outdoors, we have become a haven for flies.  Enough that Oliver could consider building a tract development.

Other than the flies, week two of construction wasn't bad.  But that's easy for me to say since I was away on business during last week's heat wave.  Chris slept in the basement at night to escape both the heat and the dust since our temporary bedroom became a staging ground for punching a hole through the wall to make a doorway into our new master bedroom.  When I arrived home late Friday night, I took my first peek at the new space (and without having to climb a ladder, which is how the contractors had accessed the second-story addition until they created the internal doorway).  The space is still very unfinished, but the walls, plumbing and electrical were all framed and/or roughed in, and a new soaker tub sat in our bathroom.  I haven't taken a bath since we've lived in this house (and honestly can't remember the last bath I took), so that tub upgrade was all for Chris.  Despite the unfinished space, I could finally see how it was all going to come together. 

Chris's other favorite part of the addition is the new windows.  There was no question about what windows we were going to buy.  They had to be Andersen.  Chris drove to the Menomonie plant to pick them up as soon as they came off the line.  Even after they were installed, he checked and rechecked all the mechanics of the windows and proudly explained all the improvements the windows have over the existing windows in our house.

We hope the inspectors make it this week as scheduled so the contractors can finish the walls.  While everything is mostly moving along on schedule, our au pair arrives in two and a half weeks and his room still needs a new ceiling, coat of paint, refinished floors, and most important to him, a door.