The Billings home undergoes a facelift

Well, our home renovation project is finally underway. It should last about 14 weeks and it requires us to move out of the house. Woo hoo! Sounds like fun. Not.

July 3rd – Moving day. We moved out of our house into the “chicken house” (a name Cory gives to things that are small, as in, the "chicken car" that we rented one time in Ohio that was barely big enough to hold the 5 of us) a little 3 bedroom house that we will be living in for (hopefully no more than) the next 4 months. By coincidence our new across the street neighbors were moving in on the same day that we were moving out - and they were using the same moving company. It was weird to see two moving trucks from the same moving company parked in front of our houses. Nice to meet you John and Maureen (our new across the street neighbors), we’ll see you again around Thanksgiving! Since the rental that we are moving into is relatively small, we didn’t move everything, just the beds, a few tables, the TV, etc. The rest I had the movers stack up in the two “safe” rooms of the house that should not be touched at all by the construction.

The "Chicken House"

The boys love the rental house, to them it’s a big adventure. There are a bunch of kids in the neighborhood and Cory already knows some of them from school or some of his sports team. The transition for them was pretty painless. The houses are all pretty close together and share a common driveway, so the kids have a lot of safe places to play. The kids pretty much come and go from one house to another at will. One neighbor kid, Joey, who is the same age a Cory spends more time at our rental than his own house. It works though, ‘cause the kids entertain themselves and we like that! For me, the best (and worst, more on that in a sec) part about the rental is that the owner had a room built specifically to house a full size pool table. Yeah! Unfortunately, I have yet to find the balls and the rack! What a tease. The hunt will continue. I will find them. The rental also does not have any a/c. I grew up in a house with no a/c at all so I should be used to it. However, after spending the last 20 years of my life with a/c and the last 9 years with central a/c, I’ve become a serious wuss and must have a/c to sleep. The owner of the rental had an old a/c window unit stuffed away up in the attic and I put it to quick use in our bedroom. For now, the boys are without, but they haven’t complained yet.



Here’s my take on moving out temporarily: it’s much easier to simply take everything you own, and move it than to try to figure out what you need for the next for months and move only that. When you are moving from one house to another the math is simple – everything goes. Whatever isn’t going, is trash. On the way out of the house you simply walk though each room and if anything is still in there you throw it in a box and onto the truck it goes. The move that we just did is different. We had to try to pack only those things that we thought we’d need in the next 4 months. Also, the rental is partially furnished, so we didn’t need to bring certain things, like the dining room table. After the moving truck left us, I must have made a dozen trips back to the house to get things we forgot (like towels, Doh!). Oh well, we are officially out and the construction can begin.

This is what the house should look like when it's all done.

In the 2nd floor of our house we had two bedrooms and a full bath, along with attic space. We are adding two bedrooms and a bathroom so the 2nd floor will have four bedroms and two bathrooms. Downstairs we are making the kitchen about 5 feet longer by breaking into the room that was previously our master bedroom. The kitchen is being completely redone. Our old master bedroom becomes an office. And as long as were spending all of our money, we are also putting in new garage doors, a new front entrance, a 2nd HVAC zone, and a bunch of other stuff that I cant even remember. The whole project should last 14 to 16 weeks, if everything goes well. I’m hoping for 16 weeks, expecting 20 weeks. 14 weeks is just a dream.

July 5th – the demo team came and ripped out the kitchen, the wall between the kitchen and our old master bedroom and completed some of the demo for upstairs that they didn’t get to earlier. These guys didn’t waste any time! The demo guys had come while we were all over in Ohio a couple of weeks ago and completely gutted the upstairs. As a result, Cory, Ryan and Jason were all sleeping in the living room for a while. The next step is to wait for a few consecutive days of good weather so they can rip off the roof and start framing out the new 2nd story and roof line.

Hey, has anyone seen my kitchen?

By July 9th the contractor had ripped off the roof and started framing the new 2nd story. These guys work fast. When I drove past the house to inspect the progress and saw the roof was off, I knew then that we were committed.

Dude, where's my house?

Who knew they made tarps that big?

The framing upstairs is well underway.

By July 3rd they had really made progress on then new 2nd floor. The dormers were all framed out and the new roof rafters completely in place. You can really start to see the new shape coming into play. Let's hope it doesn't rain!

It's starting to take shape.