Let The Fun Begin!

After reading some of the comments, I think I have some of you confused about these pictures that I have been posting. The work that these pictures show is what we have already done since we bought the house in April, 2004. With that cleared up let's walk through the room additions to the house.

This picture shows what is now the living room. J.D. took the two kitchen windows out and we left that open to the living room. The screen and porch doors came off to the porch and a solid wall went up there with a door that opens to the porch from the living room.

This is another view of what is now the living room with steps down to the master bed room.

This is a view from the front. Throwing in an interesting tidbit here. Before J.D. started construction on this addition, pretty much of what is now our living room was once the deck. As I was sweeping the deck off one evening, I caught a glimpse of something move under the deck. I was pretty certain that it was a snake. I called for J.D.and he confirmed that yes, it was a snake. He got his Brier knife and jabbed it down between the wooden slats of the deck several times. The snake kept moving around until we couldn't see it any more. I figured J.D. might have nipped it a few times and it had slithered away, perhaps back to the woods. The next morning we found it laying dead in the yard about 50 feet from the deck. It was a copperhead and had probably taken refuge under the deck when the bulldozing was going on.

J.D. got the frame work done for the walls and waited for Chris to bring a couple of his friends by after work to help raise it.

From this point on it surprised me how fast things moved along. Of course part of the reason for that was most likely the fact that once J.D. starts something, he stays on it like a man possessed.

In 2003 J.D. retired and we moved to Ohio from Louisiana. Our original plan was to travel and live in a camper for a few years and see the country. So a couple of years before he retired we decided to buy a camper, park it at a camper park and live in it to make sure we could deal with living in such close quarters ( figuring we would have the camper paid off by retirement time, that way too). We did fine living in the close quarters.

I don't even remember now why we decided to buy property and settle down in the first place instead of traveling. The fact that this house was quite small didn't bother us. After living in a camper for a couple of years the original size of this house felt huge to us.

Things started feeling tight when the grand girls would come to spend the weekend. We had one bedroom at the time and a very very small living room. The girls took turns with where they slept. All except for Britt of course. She laid claim on sleeping in the recliner. With that settled Alley Oop and T~Bear took turns sleeping on the couch and sleeping on a pallet on the floor. When we packed 6 adults and 4 children into the house it added up to needing some addition work to the house.

This is a side view shot of the house from the parking area. Since this picture was taken I have painted the pergola brown so it wouldn't blend in with the house. The small building off to the right of the pergola is what we call the bunk house. From what I understand the previous owners built it to be a wood shed and before it was completed they decided to make it an office/sleep over spare room instead. Since we moved in it has been a storage area, but we are slowly sorting through and thinning out what we had stored there. Hopefully someday it will once more be an office area.

An up and coming project will be to add a side deck from the pergola to the back of the house. With this idea in mind that is why J.D. added a single french door leading outside from the master bedroom.

In this picture you see the finished (Did I say finished???) product of J.D.'s labor. I helped with the staining, the painting and holding things in place while he attached them but the fact remains, he hammered every nail that went into this addition. The man amazes me.

Don't wander off too far because I'll be sharing some more photos with you in the next few posts. Until then have a great weekend.