Sheathing almost done

The Great Room addition looking from the old house.  The cutout on the rear wall is where the gas fireplace will be .

This is the new porch.  It started out in concept as a screened in summer porch.  It has evolved into a year round porch with doors to the greatroom and our bedroom suite and the rear deck and patio..  

This is the southeast corner of the house.  The left portion of the picture is the greatroom.  The right extension is the master bath, closet, sitting room and porch.

The rear of the house with the bumpout for a gas fireplace/stove.  The room has no second floor and the great room is open about 22 feet.

Looking at the driveway side of the house with a new primary entrance at the middle of the house.  Upon entering the house you turn right out of the entrance foyer into the greatroom, or left into the kitchen.

The front of the house with new larger shed roof dormers, a cupola  and old sunroom concerted to master bath, and closet.

Old basement is now just a memory.  It was filled with blue stone and topped with concrete to make the crawl space shown.

Planned color-not sure of the name

GAF's picture of the roof color (weathered wood). Lifetime hurricane proof shingles. http://www.gaf.com/Roofing/Residential/Products/Shingles/Timberline/Timberline-ArmorShield/Timberline-ArmorShield-Shingles.aspx

Conspicuous progress

I was in Maine for 3 days and was happy to see the progress when I returned.

Basement is now a crawl space under the house.  Good-bye sump pumps and water worries.

House view from the front

House view from the left side

House view from the rear

House view from the driveway

Old Johns Manville sheathing being removed.

Borough inspection was completed on Tues AM but the threat of heavy rain delayed the continuation of work.  However early Wed there was a lot of activity.



New front entrance cut and support beam installed.



Looking rear front the front entrance to the far end of the new construction.

 

Looking forward from the house  new rear wall line.



old side sun room removed to be rebuilt with a floor level with the existing house floor

Progress-like watching a bridge rust!

Rear view of the house with old siding and new addition floor decking

Siding removed, exposed old sheathing-to be removed!

This house was built in 1941.  It withstood the terrible hurricane season of 1962 which was devastating to the Jersey shore communities, but the 70 year old sheathing under the existing siding on the house doesn't meet new hurricane standards.  So, now the house will be taken down to the framing on the outside also.All the black board sheathing has to come off and be replaced by 5/8th plywood.  Why can't the plywood just go over the existing Johns Manville black board?  Well it could have, if it was known when we ordered our windows in July.  As it turns out the windows which are made to order were ordered for the wall depth with the existing sheathing and putting plywood over the existing sheathing will result in custom windows that don't fit. Now the workers have something to do while we are waiting for the borough building officials to approve what was done to date.  We can't proceed without an inspection and while it was requested on Thursday of last week, the inspectors are not full time employees and we have to wait until today. I hope they inspect on windy cloudy days.( I wouldn't be surpised to find they only work on sunny days.) 

At this point our neighbors may be thinking we are going to have a bluestone lawn. 



Front lawn of our dream home



The stone for filling in the basement was delivered yesterday and the labor intensive job of getting it from the lawn to the basement was begun.  The mason was expecting to use a conveyor system to move it but the only available machine was rented several days ago to another contractor for  30 days so bucket loads of stone are dropped on the sluice in the basement window and moved around the basement by manual labor .   



Bucket loader for basement fill



Basement- all this stone has to be compacted



 

  

Our own mining sluice

So after a week that started 2 days late due to the previous week's rain, the visible signs of progress are a new front stoop almost completed, and the new addition floor decking.  Oh, and of course the disaster looking yard.



Floor decking for new addition



New entrance stoop

Thankfully, I  had some flights to Chicago and Maine and some and family activities during this past week days to keep me from going postal. My sister Dorothy visited for a few days from Albuquerque, NM to go to her 50th high school reunion held at a classmate's house in Spring Lake

Holy Trinity class of '62

Dorothy and me

The Watched Pot

The foundation continued on schedule for a few days and by the end of the week the threat of heavy rain, from Hurricane Leslie, for the following week changed my outlook that things would move along quickly from here. 
 Most of the second week of stone work was lost due to rain and the dust cap on the addition crawl space was about 5 days later than planned.  Having been assured for 2 weeks that the framers were ready to start on the 10th, we learned on Friday the 7th that they also were tied up on a rain delayed project.  So the 10th came and while there was no framing we did find something to destroy- the front entrance of the house was removed and a new front stoop is being made.  Have promises  framing to start on Wednesday the 12th.  I'm not going to put a lot of hope in that.

So at 18 weeks after purchase our Manasquan dream house looks like more like it's ready to be a good Halloween scare house.

I spent the weekend in Sheboygan, WI.  Actually, only the airplane spent the weekend in Sheboygan.

After arrival, the crew decided Milwaukee- 50 miles south would be a better RON location. Rainbow marks Milwaukee.

Visited the Harley Davidson Museum

And the Milwaukee waterfront.