Busy busy busy...

Sorry for the lack of timely updates.   No lights yet, so interior shots are next to impossible and the bulk of the work has been going on inside... where we also have no heat and it's winter.  Hubby and I spent several unbearably cold days leading up to Christmas painting the basement walls with water-sealing masonry paint after the walls started seeping.  That was fun (or would have been if we were either penguins or masochists.  We are neither.)   Then the wiring began in earnest... this has been a family affair with my brother-in-law, sister, their son-in-law, a close family friend of my brother-in-law and us all there working side by side.   We have the basement and garage wiring yet to finish, a couple more cable outlets and we have the phone lines to run, yet.   After the wiring is finished and the HVAC guy finishes up a few more things, there's some framing yet to do, primarily in the basement, to enclose some things that could not be enclosed, yet.  Then insulation and drywall.   OH and we've been waiting several days for the power company to show up to activate our permanent electric service and install our gas service.   Not sure what the hold-up is on that, but hopefully, we won't be waiting much longer.  My assigned single point of contact is on vacation until next week, so I can't reach her to find out what's going on with that until next week.

The last few days saw some changes to the exterior, with Tyvec going on and the brick work starting:

Except for sinking ankle deep in mud trying to walk up to it from the street, it's more house than hole, now.  I'm told that we're within 45 to 60 days of completing the transition from hole to home.  This is the second time I've heard that in the last three months and I'm not home yet, so...  we shall see.

Progress-a-Plenty

Lots got done yesterday and today:

The front porch was poured.

The garage floor was poured.

The front porch roof was built and the garage door framing went on. ("eyebrow" roof over garage, door & front windows are still coming soon.)

The HVAC team arrived bearing goodies that included my fireplace (pictured) and my furnace (not pictured because it's pitch black in the basement and I couldn't get a pic.)

In addition to the above, a couple of wall changes we wanted were completed, my sister and my brother-in-law started prepping to wire and quite a bit of the moat was filled in (not all of it, yet, unfortunately.)  

Not A Soul.

Update: 6pm.  Spoke with our site coordinator and, as always, feel much better for it.  He's on the same page I am about getting this concrete poured before we lose our break in the weather.  Everybody keep your fingers crossed the weather holds just awhile longer. 

As of 9am, not a soul at the job site.  No framers - who aren't finished.  No roofers - who aren't finished.  No cement truck or even prep crew.  Checked my email - no answers to the questions last week and no response to the photos I sent showing something I'm concerned may be a serious issue that needs to be taken care of before anything can progress.

I can't mark for my outlets, switches and light fixtures because wall corrections that were to be made  before the holiday last week have not been made.

I can't have my new electric service trenched in or my gas service installed because back-fill is not complete.  And we need to be trenched in before the ground freezes.

We're not weathered in - and can't be weathered in - until the front porch is poured, which was supposed to happen weeks ago, but hasn't.

I'm stacked to the ceilings in the rental and my van is packed full with electrical supplies I can't off-load until I can lock the house -- which I can't do until we're fully weathered.  AND I'm not done buying what we need for that, but cannot finish buying what we need until I have the space in my van back to go purchase more.

The weather has certainly been an issue with getting the concrete poured. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be unseasonably warm and dry.  And then it's supposed to get wet again and the temps are supposed to take a nosedive and it's likely we will not get good concrete-weather again until spring.    Our deadline, not just to be back in the house, but to replace content I have nowhere to put until after I'm back in my house as well as our deadline for alternate living expenses (iow, the rent that is more than double what our mortgage was and that we cannot afford)  is Feb 22.  At the moment, it's not looking good to make the deadline.

Panic is setting in.  Again.

Quick Pick Dec 1.

View of the back of my house from pool deck - Dec 1, 2013.
Home is so close, yet so far away.  

Getting There... SLOOOOOOOWLY.

Not sure why we've fallen behind schedule, but we have.  The framing crew was there every day that the weather cooperated and made good time.  Concrete that was supposed to be poured weeks ago is still not poured.  We were supposed to be plumbed and wired by now -- not fully weathered in to begin either. Our roofing crew was making great time and then suddenly disappeared on us -- not sure if they've stopped until the concrete is poured and the porch roof is on or if something else happened.   A way too huge, expensive window I did not want and do not need was custom ordered, without my or my contractor's authorization, by the lumber yard -- they're refusing to take the window back and refund my money.  I'm currently weighing whether it's best to engage the services of an attorney or to sell the window for what I can get out of it to offset its cost (suing means valuable time spent in court battling it out over just one window.)  If I pay for it, it had better be delivered into my possession.

Here's a visual diary of what's happened since my last post:

They finished framing the upstairs and rafters were delivered.  Putting the rafters up was delayed several days because of impending storms that later resulted in the devastation of much of my state (including destroying the town of Washington, IL that is just 5 miles from my oldest daughter's house!)

The rafters went up and they started sheeting the roof.

After the framing crew left for the day, I spent some serious "me time" in my bedroom.
 This is the view from where my bed was / will be. 

They finished sheeting the roof -- and it rained and rained and rained.

While the roofing crew shingled, the framing crew put in some of the windows and the back door.

This is the back door.  It currently opens onto a 10' deep x 2' wide  moat that's weeks overdue to be backfilled.

This is the view of Mount Muddenrubble from my computer room window. This should have been used to backfill the giant moat around my house, before now. 

And that's pretty much it, so far.   No work was done over the long holiday weekend.  We didn't expect there to be.   I've had to put off delivery of the tub for the master 4 times for lack of clean, dry garage floor to put it on - that I was told several weeks ago would be laid within the week. We're not fully weathered in - which cannot happen until after the front porch is poured.  We're not backfilled.  The power company is probably never going to come out when I call again after bringing them out to run the gas service and the site not being ready for it.   I'm pretty sure sewage pipes were placed where my furnace and one of my hot water heaters go, so I may have to have all the basement walls ripped out and reconfigured (that or the concrete floor... and the floor is a lot more time/cost intensive to replace.)   Our deadline is Feb 22.  And because I'm up against content deadlines, as well, I need to be in by Jan 22 at the absolute latest -- if the pace doesn't pick up, I don't see how that can possibly happen, at this point.  Especially with weather not cooperating and so many no-work holidays coming up.    

And I keep hearing how exciting it must be to be getting a new house.  NO.  It isn't.  IF I had been designing my dream house and searching for a location for it and then found the perfect location and the house I'd imagined building was being built on it -- THAT would be exciting.   That is not what's happening here.  This is rebuilding what I already had, but different because of code changes since the original house was built and because of errors on one sub's part... not being in my own home while my new home is constructed... designing it without the proper drafting tools and while under extreme stress... hating it because I feel like I was forced to trade my kids' baby pictures for it and being back into a 30 year mortgage when the end of our previous mortgage was finally coming into sight.  It's not exciting.  It's exhausting.  It's taking too long.  It's heart breaking.  It's stressful.  It's expensive.  It's also pushed our retirement age back 15 years.   AND I get to live in a winter-build.  Something I very much never wanted. 

More Walls!

I went up my stairs for the first time, last night, but it was after dark, so I was unable to get a picture.

The outer walls went up on the upper story, today.  I snapped a pic about an hour and a half before they packed it up, today.   All of the exterior walls were up & braced when they were packing up. The interior walls will go up tomorrow -- trusses Monday. Framer says he told my contractor to have the plumbers in on Wednesday to begin the rough-in.

Exteriror walls going up -- taken about 2pm, Nov. 14

.

Upstairs walls on (about 4:30p)

Upstairs walls on (about 4:30p -- will have windows, they're just not cut out, yet.)

Upper Deck

The upper deck is on.  When I stopped by, construction was beginning on the staircase to the 2nd story.  I'm guessing this means the walls on the 2nd story will start being lifted, tomorrow.  If the weather holds through til the weekend, this has us right on track for setting trusses on Monday.

If you know what you're looking at, you'll spot that all of the box sill is in place on the second floor, indicating that all of the joists have been set.  The decking is all in place, too -- but it's difficult to show that in a pic taken from the ground... and I'm too afraid of heights to put up my extension ladder to get a pic from above.  I'll wait for the stairs.  :)

The upper deck is on and waiting for walls. 11-13-13

Onward and upward!  (Literally!)

Update 11-12-13

2nd floor joists and decking have  been going in -- impossible to get pics from the ground that show that progress.   Framer says he hopes to have the upstairs walls completed by the end of the day on Friday and then to set trusses on Mon (Tue at the latest.)   I should have some good pics coming up again, soon.

In other news, my mom took a bad fall over the weekend.  She initially refused to let Dad take her to the hospital. Last night, she finally let him.  Her hip is shattered, she has all kinds of other major health issues going on.  She needs surgery, they don't think she can survive a surgery. They transferred her to a hospital in a larger city and she is in cardiac I.C.U.   That's is literally all I know.  Dad has one of those phones you have to load with a tiny number of overpriced minutes -- so, he has to conserve his minutes and while I keep wishing the phone would ring with an update, I know that if the phone does ring, it will be because she didn't make it.   So, if I don't sound like I'm joyously bouncing off the new walls with enthusiasm, as I should be (and was until I got the call, last night,) it's because I'm so worried and upset about Mom.

More soon.  Let's just hope it's all good news.  I've lost so much this year... I cannot bear to lose Mom, too.

Now We're Cooking With Gas (or will be.)

We have our appliances ordered.  We got in on some unbelievable sales & price match guarantee deals that let us come in under our appliance budget without having to sacrifice any of the features we wanted!  I'm so excited and can hardly believe that each of these beautiful appliances will actually be mine!  Now, we just need a house to put them in so I can have them delivered, installed, move in and start using them every day!

Here's what we chose (which, I'm more about the appliance matching how I use it than the brands matching each other... the steel colors and grains can be an issue when mixing brands (some have a more bronzy tint than others, for example.)  The way I've laid out the new kitchen, this is actually not a concern except with the stove & over-range microwave combo.   (The kitchen appliances are steel, regardless of color in the images I've found to hotlink for you, below.  The washer/dryer combo is white - laundry will be in a utility room that guests will never see inside of, so finish & fitting a color palette was of zero concern with those.)

Freezer

Fridge

Washer/Dryer combo

Dishwasher

Range

Over-range microwave

Walls, Y'all!

Today, the first walls went up.  These were taken in the early afternoon while the crew was still hard at work in the cold and wind.

Looking at house from front

o/` Doot, doot, doot, lookin' out my back door.

The crew prepares to lift another section of wall into place as I watch from the family room.

The view looking toward the street from inside my family room.

Looking at back of house from pool deck

Floored!

I walked on my floor for the first time, yesterday!

From the front.

From the pool deck stairs.

My feet.  On my floor.  At long last!

It's raining, today.  I was hoping, just this once, 30% chance would not mean "it's definitely going to rain" as it always has.  But, alas.  The crew was there, sitting in their trucks, when I drove by, but if it doesn't stop soon, they'll have to leave.  Can't run the electric saws in the rain.  Can't backfill in the rain.   It's supposed to rain all day tomorrow. (100% chance.)   So, unless it clears up before the crew decides to leave, it may be Thursday before work can resume.

It Could Be Worse.

I have been reflecting, this morning, over some dreams I had in the months preceding the fire, that stuck with me and I wanted to share them.  Not because I put any stock in dreams as portents of the future or anything, just because, in hindsight, they remind me that while this has often felt like the worst thing that could happen, it really isn't.

The first dream was (a year?) before the fire.  There wasn't much to it.  It was a voice saying to me, over and over, that the conflagration was coming... and then some date I've since forgotten, but which I know was not the same as my fire would later be, because I do remember that the date was in the summer... and I'm thinking June, where my fire was in Feb.   I don't know what the inside of my house looked like during the fire, thankfully, but from the outside, it did not look like something I would describe as a conflagration - I never saw a flame.   From what I'm told, the inside very much did look like something anyone would describe as a conflagration.  So, this dream staying with me reminds me that it could have been worse - I could have been on the wrong side of that door when it slammed shut from the explosion - and in the path of the (what I am sure would have looked like a very conflagration-like) fireball that chased the blast.

The second dream was only a couple of months or so before the fire. It was more detailed, much more of a nightmare and the one that seems more prophetic in a way, if either of them seems it at all.  I dreamed I awoke and I was in a hospital room.  I didn't know how I'd gotten there.  The room was very small, brightly lit by sunlight streaming through windows with no shades or curtains and it was very stark and sparse.  No wall hangings. No flowers on the nightstand. No nightstand.  There were some large pieces of roll-in equipment against the wall across from the foot of my bed - which was quite narrow and more like a gurney than a hospital bed.  I reached for the call button, but there wasn't one and I had difficulty using my arms.  I couldn't sit up.  I thought I might be paralyzed, but I realized I could move, I was just weak.  I could hear voices in the hall, but I couldn't make out what they were saying.  And then a nurse took the clipboard off my door, walked into the room and when she noticed I was awake, she seemed astonished and ran from the room to get another nurse and a doctor.  They told me I'd been in a coma for two years following a very bad car accident.  I asked for my husband and my children, worried if they'd been with me.  I was assured I had been alone in the vehicle. As far as they knew, all of my family was still alive and well.  I asked to see them.  They acted funny and told me they'd call someone.

My dream flash forwarded.  My two older daughters arrived, overjoyed that I was awake.  In the dream I knew it had taken them several hours to arrive. I assumed they had been at work and couldn't get time off to come see me right away.  I asked after my husband, my son and my youngest daughter.  They stopped smiling.   My husband had divorced me just two months after my accident and then almost immediately remarried a woman with young children of her own.  My daughters had taken so long to arrive because they'd both moved several hours away.  My son had moved even farther away and it would be the next day before he could come.  My husband had asked my middle two children to move out so he could move his new family in and he had sent our youngest to live with her grandparents, 8 hours away, because his new wife didn't like having any reminders of me around.  I was devastated.  I asked if they could bring me some of my own clothes or something of mine to have until I could leave.  They told me my husband had sold everything of mine that sell-able and had donated or disposed of everything else... again, because his new wife insisted he rid her house (my house) of anything that reminded her that I had ever existed.

My dream flash forwarded again.  I was in my house with my husband. I still hadn't seen my youngest daughter - her grandparents had legal custody and didn't want her to miss any school (they would NEVER do that, but in the dream, they did.)    I was very upset about that.  In the dream, I knew that I had been released that day and that I was only in the house because someone had intervened on my behalf to get a court order to let me check the house for any of my possessions.  And there weren't any.  My husband, out of loyalty to his new wife, was very cold to me -- and I kept telling him that to me, no time had passed, he was still my husband and I needed him to hold me and love me.  He wouldn't.    I walked into my room, opened my closet and nothing inside was mine.  Even the hangers had changed.  The furniture in the room was different.  Even the carpet had been changed.  I asked if he'd at least packed away my photo albums or given them to the kids - no.  They went to the landfill.  I walked from room to room and while the layout was the same, everything else was different.  Even my pets were gone.  There was no trace of me or of my children.  Not a hint.  I went back to the bedroom, hoping to find something, any small thing of mine, that might have slipped behind a baseboard.  My husband told me I was being ridiculous and needed to leave.  I told him I had nowhere to go -- and no way to get there. The older kids all lived far away in tiny apartments with no room for me.  His parents weren't going to let me stay with them and my youngest because I wasn't part of their family anymore. My parents didn't have room for me.  I started crying and told him he should have had them pull the plug right away because there was nothing left of me or for me.  He told me that was my problem, not his, but I needed to go, that he wasn't my husband and that wasn't my house anymore... and that I was not to come back.   I awoke as he was ushering me down the stairs to the front door,  to a sopping wet pillow with tears streaming down my face... and I immediately turned on the lamp next to the bed (which I never do when I wake in the night) to make sure I was in my room, on my bed, under my covers and that my husband was next to me.  My husband was miffed that I woke him with the light until he saw that I was crying.  I told him about the dream, he told me it was just a nightmare, assured me he'd never do that and then he held me until his arm got too heavy and I shook it off of me.  I never did get back to sleep, that night.  I sobbed softly into my already drenched pillow until the alarm went off.  And I felt the pain from that dream all day.  It had quite an impact on me.  More than I like to let any dream have.

Well, since then, some aspects of that nightmare have actually come to pass.   I did lose my house.  And I did lose my stuff. And I did lose my clothing.  And all the photo albums are gone.  It hurts... it hurts every bit as much as it hurt in that nightmare.  But, my children are not scattered to the winds.  My husband hasn't replaced me like I'm no more important than a disposable razor that's gone dull.  I am still welcome to go stay with my in-laws and I'm still part of their family.  I have somewhere to go... somewhere that is keeping me safe and warm until my house is rebuilt. And I will get to go home again - it won't be exactly the same house and nothing of mine from before the fire will be there, but it will be home.  It was losing my family and the permanent loss of home and the security of having a place to go...  those losses are what soaked my pillow in my sleep and made the dream stick with me so vividly, for so long.

The fire sucks.  It does.  It sucks pretty freaking hard.  You can verify this with anyone who's been through it.  There's pretty much nothing about it that does not suck.  But as bad as it is, it is not nearly as bad as that dream scenario was.  Not even close.  And so, as much as I hated that dream and wished I'd never had it... since the fire, I've been glad I did because it helped me to put this into perspective a little faster and better than I might have, otherwise.  And the memory of that dream, as thoroughly heartbreaking as it was, is one of many things  I've leaned on to help keep a severe depression at bay, when I'm hanging by a thread.  (Which isn't the case, today.  I'm doing OK today. I just felt like sharing it.)

Thanks for letting me share.

Check back later tonight or tomorrow morning.  If I don't forget to take my phone with me, when I check on the progress, later, I'll try to grab some pictures of whatever they're getting done while I leave them alone to frame, today and get them posted.  They told me last week, that they thought I might have first floor deck down by the end of the work day, today.  Knowing how much joist work they still had ahead of them, before they arrived, this morning,  I'm going to guess they were being a little optimistic and that they'll be putting the deck down, tomorrow, weather willing, but... we'll see.   :)

Wood!

Looky what happened, today!!!

Steel beam went in,  First wood (sill plate) went on.

Good start on the box sill and the floor joists for the first story! 

There is a little bit of home on top of the hole, now!!   We just need the weather to hold so we can get blacked in as quickly as possible!


Oh and if you're wondering whether I got a costume together for Halloween, I did.  I went through two failed attempts at a day of the dead skull makeup -- the cheap department store stuff kept melting.  So I went with this:

Mulling it over....

Impossible to breath in the mask.

Rain, Rain, Go Away.

Well, shortly after the concrete was laid, day before yesterday, it started misting and sprinkling. Yesterday, our contractor told us that if it didn't rain, we'd start stick framing today.

So, I knew to expect rain.  And I was right.  It started raining shortly after he said that, it has been raining ever since and it's expected to rain through the rest of today and tonight.  The new basement is filling with water.  The wood can't be delivered.  We can't back fill. I can't start cleaning the pea gravel, sand etc from what remains of my driveway.

Usually, today is my favorite Holiday.  Instead, I'm standing at the top of a spiral water slide, trying hard to resist the urge to let go of the rail and ride it all the way down to the pool of despair at the bottom.

Courtesy of the ultra cool BitStrips app on FaceBook.  (Check it out, it's fun.)

Floor Pour and More Galore!

Hi all!

Sorry I didn't come back with the new pics as I promised... the block layers did not finish until about 6pm on Oct 21, which was only 3 days shy of a full month since they had started.  I think I might have had a little bout of situational depression set in, either that or the really bad allergies I've been experiencing sapped me.   Maybe both.

So, anyway, let me bring you up to speed with a couple of pics:

The blocks are done!  This was taken from North east corner of the front porch

Because the excavator dug us too deep, we are now below the sewage and had to have something I very much did not want installed -- an expulsion pit -- so, I get to live with and pay for his mistakes for the rest of my time here.  (The electricity to run the pump - a backup electrical supply to run the pump during power outages and routine maintenance and replacement of the pump.)    Oh, plus, the big walk in storage closet I had intended for my Halloween and Christmas decor (I'm one of half a dozen houses in town that are known for our trick or treat mini-haunts.)  I was already having to re think how I wanted to lay out the interior of that small room because that turned out to be the best place to put our sump.  Now, the expulsion pit is in there, too and together they take up such a huge chunk of that area that I don't think I can use that small room for anything at all.  So, yay Mr. Not Really An Excavator But Solicited A Bid As One -- you've made me hate a part of my house and I don't even have the house yet.  Good going.

Taken from inside garage area looking to north west toward back.  The basement has been water sealed and, to the right of the center of this picture, you can see the expulsion pit (the tall one) and the sump just to the right of that. These pits are standard in homes in surrounding cities - one reason I won't live in any of those cities. Had the original house had one when we were house hunting, we would not have purchased it. To say I am extremely unhappy that it is now necessary that I have one is an understatement.

And here's what's going on, today (October 29, 2013:)

Either an Imperial Walker disguised as a cement pump truck has arrived OR a pump truck has arrived to pour our basement floor!  (As you can see, it's supposed to rain -- let's hope it holds off as rain would be bad!)

The pump truck is actually a happy surprise.  I usually drive by the (not a house yet) every morning after I drop my youngest off at school (our real house is just two blocks from the school, our rental house is on the other side of town from the school.)  I didn't expect to see anyone there, that early.  Then, there it was.  So, I pulled into the culdesac to snap some pictures, intending to get out of the van and snap some from closer up.  However, a few seconds after I snapped this, the circle began to fill with work trucks arriving for the job.  So, with parking extremely limited in the culdesac, I decided more pictures could wait and I freed up the space I was taking up.   Here's hoping the rain holds off -- rain right now would be very, very bad.

In other news, as I mentioned, we were the Halloween House on our side of town.  In addition to outside decor and bits and pieces of things I use to make decor from, I had a very extensive collection of  costumes, capes, makeup, wigs, accessories and things to make all of the above from.  And I lost every bit of it in the fire (I did have a very small amount of outside decor in the garage instead of the basement and some of that was retrievable - very little of it, it's in bad shape, but it's set up on my porch here at the rental along with two new - not styrofoam -tombstones I purchased to begin my collection anew.  Anyway, as of the other night, I hadn't found enough to work with to put a costume together for this year to go with my micro-mini-haunt and I was getting pretty depressed about it as this would mark the first year -- in my ENTIRE life (including infancy) that I had not had a costume for Halloween.   I happened to be having a private online conversation with a small group of my online pals from my t-shirt adventure and mentioned that I was probably going to cry a lot on Halloween as my goal had been to dress up for Halloween every year until I die of record-setting old age and that the fire had robbed me of that, too.   One of my pals, whose Corgi had been visiting me in my dreams (I rarely dream of my own pets, so it's very weird that I would dream of one of hers,) started firing off low-budget-quick-to-throw-together ideas and her brainstorming got me perked up out of my doldrums enough to think maybe, just maybe, I could make one more run through the shops to try to get some cheap department store halloween makeup  to work with in addition to minimal supplies I already have here and put something together.  The original plan was a zombie, but I've been watching skull face tutorials online, some of which use a mix of real makeup and the cheap halloween junk and if I can steady my hand enough, I might be able to draw myself into my micro-mini-haunt.  If not, it all washes off and I know how to do a zombie, I'll just be using different materials for the rotting flesh than I've used before, but the basic principals are the same as confirmed by my friend.  Thanks Friend -- give that Corgi a big hug from me.  :)

Here are some photos of Halloweens past... and one at the end of what's left.

I think this goblin ate hubby.

This DIY chemical peel stings a little, I hope it's working!!

Mr. Graves was my newest dummy. This was his debut year, 2011. We tweaked him considerably, last year, so that he looked more like a real person pretending to be a dummy.

The gloves I have on with my reaper costume are (were) professional studio grade costuming. Hoping to find another pair.  LOVED them!  Actually built this costume around them.

Me with my (floating illusion) ghoul dummy (only her mask made it out after the fire.)

Thug afterlife.

And this is all that's left. The two tombstones are new. You can't see my giant reaper (I call him Guido because his face structure and black robing reminds me of Father Guido Sarducci) but he sort-of made it out OK after the fire, too.  I had to do quite a bit of repair work and when I'm home again, I'll do more extensive/permanent repairs on him.  Bonesy and the Jester will have to be completely rebuilt and re-costumed.  Their body forms are rotting and mildewed.   The hanging bat's face is partially melted - he actually looks gnarlier with it that way, so I thing I'll keep him as-is. But his electronics no longer work.  The stick is a sign post that will point the way to the graveyard on Halloween night.  No sense putting it out til then.  Now I have to figure out how to light this with no outside outlets and all my lighting stuff gone.  :(