Late July 2002...
These photos were taken by my friend Keith Farley during a visit by him, his wife Marian, and grandmother Anna ("granny") just after the exterior siding was completed and the first layer of drywall mud was applied.
Here's the view
from the entry to the driveway. Above the garage door you can see the
hatch that opens to provide access to the attic above the garage area. We
have since put the house numbers on that hatch (dad's idea) and it really looks
good-- the large numbers stand out and make the hatch look more
appropriate. By providing hatches at the ends of the attic I am able to
store long items (like radio antennas, etc) up there if needed.
The view down the driveway toward the workshop (behind the trees on the right), and the view of the rear of the addition really show how much of a difference some vinyl siding can make.
Marion and I (with granny just poking her head in the corner of the photo)
are about to tour the addition.
The right photo is inside the garage. I finished off the garage fully, as
if it was just another room. All the walls and ceiling were made smooth
and painted. The ceiling was "stomped" with the same texture
coating as the rest of the place. Construction folks will note the unusual
drywall joints near the right of the garage photo. Those joints cover the
edges of a drywall piece that could be taken out to provide access to the
chimney. At some point in the future I may want to replace that section
with a removable access panel. I didn't want to spend too much time
working on a suitable removable panel at the time, so I mudded those joints so
that later removal of the piece would not be difficult. I hate to block
off something that I might want to inspect from time to time.
We now are in the entry foyer. The camera position is right inside the front door. You can see the dual purpose closet. This is either a nice large coat closet, or a small "main floor laundry". It wasn't much more work to put the plumbing and electrical in here for a washer and dryer, so that's what I did. When we get tired of going downstairs to do the laundry, the machines will come up here.
From the same camera angle as the last two (just inside the front door) you can see (left photo) straight down the hallway toward the rear of the house, or (right photo) the door leading into the garage.
To the rear of the garage (walk down that hallway and turn right) is the new "master bedroom". It's nearly a 15' square with a moderate sized closet (sadly, not a master-sized one). There is a window looking to the south (shown above-- overlooks the workshop and yard) and another looking to the west and the driveway.
The door opens onto the deck on the south side of the house. At the time of this photo, I had not completed the railing (as you can see). I've since completed that and even added a built in table for a barbeque-- hopefully next year we'll actually get to spend time on the deck!
The right photo shows the exhaust vent from the bathroom fan. After being disappointed with the exhaust flow from our other bathroom, this time I put in the largest blower I could find, and made sure the airway was as least restrictive as possible.
In the new bathroom you can see the moisture resistant drywall above the shower stall. That's all tiled now. The right photo shows a mystery moisture spot on the floor in front of the shower stall. I'm not sure how that got there-- it's a mystery. There is no apparent source, but the moiture took a very long time to dry-- and mysteriously reappeared during construction. It's now quite securely covered over by a nice tile floor.
In this photo
I'm showing Marion and Granny how the wood/oil furnace operates. I still
marvel over how well it works. No need to fuss with kindling, the oil
burner starts the fire for you, and the automatic draft regulator tries to keep
the fire regulated. This unit puts out plenty of heat-- which can make
things toasty warm on even the coldest days. Most of the time we have the
windows open to some extent to keep the temp down to near reasonable
levels. No problems with stale air in the house during the winter with
this furnace!