Start of Garage Construction

The construction of our three-car garage apartment was begun last week. They have so far set the forms, although the engineer didn't sign off on the architect's drawing...so they will now need to fill in and dig new trenches for the beams on the outside walls! This change will also cost us around $2,000 and we have only just started the project!

You can see from the picture that the new garage is almost as large as the house! The upstairs will be over the middle stall and will be 360 sqft.

The destruction has also started on our house. We are having the old yellow vinyl siding removed and replaced with Hardy Plank (concrete siding) to match the garage. They are demolishing a brick skirt around the lower four feet of the house at the same time. When they remove the skirt from aroud the porch, they will also remove a hip-high wall and 2x4s and replace with 4x4 posts to open up the porch. We will most likely put in a chair rail later. Mark will be building wodden steps in three locations including the entry below (where there are brick steps now). We have also removed the bushes (pulled them outfrom one side of the back of the house (view above) and from along the entire bay side. They were looking bad and we want a fresh start with the new siding. The rusty, leaking drain pipe below will need to be replaced with PVC and framed in with the new siding. Just one more surprise!




















The brick that they are removing is being piled into the rip rap behind the house. This will help to prevent mishaps like children falling off the bulkhead and into the jagged rocks (yes, this happened--Ella has no permanent damage :-).


We have ongoing drainage issues that need to be worked out. It has been raining here again this week, and Lake Land is getting full again. Will get the drainage issues worked out as our project progresses.



















We are still really excited about our project. We just need to keep our patience and stay positive. This will be really cool when we are finished. There should be plenty of space to do projects, for guests to come and stay and for RV's to hook up (we are putting in a plug on the side of the garage for friends and grandparents!). In the next couple of months, we will be getting things the way we envision that they should be! Then we will be ready for guests.