All Wrapped Up

The last I showed of the area underneath our house was this, while I was playing around with possible layouts for our downstairs kitchen. In fact, that particular post marked my introduction of a new word to the English language - Renotivation. Renovation motivation = renotivation.

Since my husband has been away a lot with work this year, I was experiencing a serious renotivation slump. Since progress is very slow with only me, and despite my newly found wall-building prowess, tackling this downstairs area is a little beyond my skill level.

So, I decided that there was nothing for it but to bring in the professionals. I found and hired a builder (who is also a carpenter), and things started happening rapidly!

The first step was to finish up the framing that the other carpenters we'd hired had run out of time to finish. Mostly, this was involved putting up the internal walls, since most of the external walls were framed up and ready to go. This photo is taken from the same angle as the one above, except now there is a framed up wall where the work bench used to be! That's now the wall that divides the kitchen from the first bedroom.

Here's the corridor...

And here's the bathroom...

And here are the doorways to the garages.

Speaking of which, the original carpenters had actually made these openings a little smaller. We decided that, since the turning circle to drive into those garages is pretty tight, we should extend the openings as wide as possible.

And while they were making changes, I asked them to shuffle the window across a little, since the original carpenters hadn't left much room for cabinetry beside it. Here's the before and after. It's kind of hard to see, but the timber line on the ground in the left photo is the same one as in the built wall on the right shot. Much further away from the window in the second shot!

The original carpenters hadn't had a chance to frame in the ceilings either, so they got some attention...

 And we could finally call the downstairs area officially framed up! It's starting to really feel like a house!

But of course that only marks the completion of step 1 of about 3,000, so the builders moved on. This time to the outside. They wrapped up the house in what they called 'builders wrap'. Its vibrant blue colour certainly added flair to the overall attractiveness of our yellow house.

I scavenged a nearby demolition yard for two doors that had roughly the same pattern so that we could put one on either side of the downstairs front walls (hard to tell that they match from the photos, but they do!)...

The garishness of the blue builders wrap at the front of the house was nothing compared with this sight at the back. Oh the horror! Is that ugly mess really my house?

 

Even just with the addition of that wrap (which has a silver backing), the rooms inside were really feeling like proper rooms! Here's the lounge...

And the first bedroom...

And the bathroom! With a bath installed! I got so excited when I realised the bath was in!

And the next very exciting step was windows! We needed a total of five pairs of casement windows to fit out downstairs. And I quickly discovered that this was not going to be a cheap exercise! At just over $500 a pop, the windows bill cost us more than $2.5k! Ouch! We did consider the alternative, which was to just buy the sashes themselves from demolition yards and get the frames built around them, but decided that the extra effort and labour (for not just us but the carpenters - which is pricey) was simply not worth it.

And they were certainly beautiful once they were in!

I have to keep pinching myself. I can't believe that we actually have something that feels like a house downstairs! It's a far cry from what it was last year!

Can you believe it's even the same house? Who's excited to see what happens next? I know I am!