The front door is going . . . going . . . GONE!

The original outside door and sidelights are already removed.

 

 

Kim in his "Sampson pose" pushing out the pillars.

Doorway gone, side wall still solid.

The "pony wall" (why is it called that) created.

The new entry area.  The beam above the old doorway was removed, but fear not--the wood is being re-used to widen out the "column" at the base of the stairs.  Waste not, want not . . . why would we not use a perfectly good piece of wood?

      The major work upstairs is done.  There is still a lot to do there, to be sure . . . but it's time to turn our attention to the downstairs.  Especially since we needed to have some activity on our building permit and go for at least a partial pass on the building inspection and thereby updating our building permit, BARELY within the 180 day requirement.
      We put in new sheetrock spanning the old to newer areas.  The old sheetrock was buckling right at the wall where the door was and had holes from the old heat vent--and having been stepped through I believe.  Apparently I haven't taken a picture of that yet.  Since we were up until 3:30 AM putting up that piece of sheetrock on the ceiling you may understand why it slipped my mind to capture the moment in a photograph.  But there is more (not all) of the sheetrock done on the ceiling here.
     Interesting to note on the timing of the Tuesday/Wednesday 3:30 AM sheetrock fest . . . . it was the night AFTER Kim called in for an inspection.  They didn't come Tuesday (at 180 days) so we knew they'd be there the next day.   On Wednesday the inspector was willing to give a partial pass for a wall that he figured was actually done. I think he had to look to find one.  I knew we wouldn't get it all done--even staying up all night--but I guess having at least some of the ceiling sheetrock up showed more progress.  It at least showed good intentions.