For Margaret

Here are a couple of pictures before, during and after:

Inside job

We are starting to work on the inside guts of the house. First the plumbing. Master plumber, Eric Grub along with Chas and brother Cory are putting in the pipes and are almost finished. When Chas and Cory aren't plumbing they are demolishing the fireplace in the living room.


This wall used to be the outside wall of the house and a beehive oven was where the fireplace is now. I really wish the oven were still there. How cool to have a beehive oven to make pizza. Unfortunately, one of the owners put an addition on that side of the house and the oven was destroyed and an ugly fireplace was put in it's place. There was a lot of evidence in the attic of chimney fires. We are going to rebuild it and slide a wood burning stove inside. We chose a Jotul stove - not our first choice and not our second choice, either. We thought it would be fun to put a modern european stove in but the fireboxes were all too small. The largest log one could fit in was only 14". Gary said forget it.

We are also redoing the brick work around the little stove boxes on the other side of the wall in the fireplace in the dining room.





Our friend, George is sandblasting and painting the cast iron doors for us.

Decisions, decisions

While Kevin nails down the plumbing, heating and electrical guys, we have been deciding on flooring, light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, kitchen cabinets, vanities, etc. This is the fun part - at least until you see the bills. We have been to Patriot Flooring (formally Hoboken Flooring) in Pompton Plains, NJ to choose the hardwood for the dining and living rooms and upstairs for the master bedroom and library. Since the dining room is below grade, we are required to use engineered flooring in that particular room. We decided on an engineered cherry in vintage brown for the dining room and since walnut was way too expensive in solid wood, we chose cherry with the same vintage brown stain for the living, bedroom and library. The third floor bedrooms we hope to use the original oak flooring that was in the master bedroom and library- it depends on the price of refinishing vs new flooring.


I used Lighting Direct.com for the light fixtures as they had the best prices and free shipping. I also used Hesco Lighting in Califon - they have a pretty extensive selection and their prices were good, too.

E&B in Bridgewater is the place to go for plumbing fixtures and Martha was very helpful.

Showcase Kitchens in Bloomfield is doing the kitchen. Haviva, Vito and Chris have all had in put in the design and great suggestions. The cabinets are being made by Crystal Cabinets.

Kevin Fleming's crew are going to make a few of the bathroom vanities using a design I saw in Pottery Barn. I will provide picture of everything as it is installed.

More framing

For those of you interested in framing,here are some shots of the awesome framing job done by Arturo and company.






This is the little English window I saw in a magazine and incorporated into our master bath.


And this adorable little guy is our new great-nephew, Rowan (with mom and dad) who was born at the same time we started on the house. I think he's made a little more progress than we have.

Help

Well we finally broke down and hired a general contractor to help us finish the house. Kevin Fleming of Kevin Fleming Construction has come on board to make our lives easier. He has a ton of resources and a great crew. The roof is finally on - we bit the bullet and used Lamarite slate and it looks beautiful. The weather guard our first roofer used is not approved by Tamko so it voided the warranty. They don't say that the warranty will be voided and they don't specify what they want and they are very vague on the phone when asked about it. The only response I could get was "if you follow the directions, everything should be okay". It's the word should that makes me nervous. The copper flashing was put on and we had copper put on the porch roof which was very expensive. We thought we would put an anodized metal on the roof, but it cost almost as much and could not be soldered just caulked so we went with the copper. The glass doors and transom were put on by Kevin's crew. We ordered the wrong size windows for the original stone house - all nine and that was when we knew we needed some help and called Kevin. We will use the windows for the garage. The new windows are in but have not been installed yet. Here are some photos of the house last year at this time and today.

Down to the wire

The windows arrived and needed to be put up right away since we didn't want thousands of dollars of Andersen windows laying around. It has been pouring outside and windy and the Tyvec wrap needs to be put on the house before the windows. Since we don't have a siding contractor yet, we are going to have to do it ourselves. How hard could it be?

Hard. It was like gift wrapping a gigantic Christmas present. We were able to get Chas to help out.






The porch was able to be poured before it got too cold.

Thanksgiving

We had Thanksgiving at our house as usual since it's my favorite holiday. We thought we would take a break and celebrate with our great families. We had a good time (even though it snowed and we were thinking of our uncovered roof getting all wet again). The roofer (Valley Roofing) left with the roof only half covered with weather guard because he ran out and he hasn't been back since. We left him an unpleasant message on Saturday. A recession? People out of work and desperate? Not in NJ. We've gotten sky high prices from just about everyone, contractors not bothering to show up and jobs left half finished. We were at the house this weekend putting spray on foam insulation in the crevices between the roof and the stone just trying to keep it dry inside until our contractor comes back. The doors and the big arched window for the kitchen should be in this Tuesday. The two glass doors came in two weeks ago, but the framer doesn't want to put them together, the lumber yard where we bought the windows from won't and Andersen Windows doesn't want anything to do with them. No one wants the responsibility. Now we have to find a carpenter to put them together so the framer can install them this Friday. No worries.