Back to the Howard Creates web page
A house without a roof is a really sad thing indeed.
A view up into the new attic room above the bedrooms. We
put the HVAC system in here to free up floor space in the main house.
Here you can see that the gable ends of the house are still open. We had a bunch of snow
in January of 1996 and it blew into the house. We had to shovel snow out of the house
before we could work.
Here is Maureen posing with her implements of snow removal.
Maureen worked with me on this house every day doing work she
wasn't always comfortable doing. She is the best wife in the world.
The winter was harsh and Maureen and I often worked in temperatures below freezing.
Here I am wearing a respirator not so much for dust but to keep my face warm.
The house had these big blue tarps over it from December of 2005
till May of 2006. This picture shows the gable end sheathing that
kept
further snow out. During these days we refered to ourselves as "Blue Tarp Construction Co.".
Here you cans see the 4x4 pole I bolted to the house to hold the
electrical service insulator and wires. This allowed me to keep
the power on
during the construction.
Here is Frank installing a skylight.
The Happy Day when the roof was finally finished!
This project involved a lot of rot repair. Here we are replacing
the sill plate in the back of the house and repairing most of the floor
joists.
You can also see the skylights that I added. This really lit up the great room and the laundry.
The french patio door was especially bad.
We had to outright replace 10 of the floor joists and sister the outer half of more than 20.
We were beginning to think this house repair/remodel would have been easier if we started from scratch.
But it was nice and sturdy when it was finished.
Below you can see the 6 inch wall top extension that we had to add to bring the wall height up to the uniform 8 foot.
Here Maureen is inspecting our repair of rotten place
below the middle bedroom window. It went all the way down
to the sill plate and joist.
This was caused by bad window installation and flashing. In the
end we reframed every window opening and replaced the windows with nice
Andersen vinyl clad wood windows. The heat pump system was newer and was reused.
More rot in this wall in the family room. All the way down to the sill plate.
The family room wall all repaired
The front entry wall of the house wasn't so much rotted as just needed changing to accomodate our new mahogany door.
I had to build a temporary stud wall to carry the load of the roof while I rebuilt the wall.
Maureen is destruction personified when wielding her 5 pound sledge hammer. These studs MUST go!
This is a good photo of the temporary shoring stud wall that I built
to hold up the roof while we rebuilt the front facade and entryway.
We moved the door over to the right and replaced the old picture window with a nice bay window.
What a transformation of the facade.
I made the passage into the living room arch shaped. The ceiling in the great room is now vaulted.
The view from the kitchen into the formal living room and bay window on the front.
View from the front door. This short partition wall now has a plant shelf on top of it with up lighting.
This house is very open airy and bright now.
The extended wall framing in the kitchen and dining room.
More longer studs between the kitchen and family room.
Luan plywood goes down prior to the Maple hardwood floors.
We were able to reuse the cabinetry. I stored them at my brother's house till I could reinstall them.
We loved the vault and the half round window as well as all the recessed can lights.
A proud Frank poses with his beautiful electrical panel.
Here you can also see one of the many recessed "can" lights that we installed.
Maureen pulled most of the romex wire in this house from sketches made by me.
She installed most of the electrical boxes as well. I did most of the terminations.
We hired a crew to hang and finish the drywall. They put up 144 boards in 7 hours!
It took the finisher 10 days to get it ready for paint.
We put down a brick paved 16 by 32 patio ( 2500 bricks! ) the last week of
October 1998.
We really enjoyed the bobcat work.
Here I am compacting the crushed limestone base for the bricks.
The limestone is topped with sand and the bricks are set on the sand.
Frank at work cutting the pie shaped bricks with the wet diamond saw for the edge of the patio.
Here is the finished nursery. We really liked our maple hardwood floors.
Maureen did an outstanding job of designing and decorating this room.
A view of the mostly finished family room. We had just had a Kirby vacuum demonstration.
The vaulted ceilings allowed us to have really tall Christmas trees.
We sold this house in July of 2005 when we moved to England.
Just a reminder of where we started
I built the concrete porches, sidewalks and new driveway. I
hired a crew to place and finish the driveway but I did the design,
backfill and forming.
Maureen designed and executed the raised beds and landscaping.
Last Updated - August 13th, 2009