I know it has been a while!

It has been a while since I have updated! I had training for work that went 12 hours a day for a week and that wiped out my brain cells. I have since recovered. Dennis went up to Milford a weekend without me and took some great pictures and then we both went up this past weekend and took some more. Just wait til you have seen what has happen since our last post.
We have a new roof and it looks amazing. It makes the little house look BIG!!. New roofing terms 5/12 pitch which indicates how high the pitch will be on the roof. Ours will be nice and high for Snow melt and run off. Other terms Vented or non vented eaves....this is for ventilation in the attic space for airflow. Other things we have learned, Fir stripping the exterior walls to prepare for insulation and sheathing so that the new siding can be installed. That is a mouthful and I hope self explanatory. It is going to be beautiful!!
Regan aka Mr. Sledgehammer has been knocking down all the interior block walls. Poor guy has lost weight but has been working very hard.Grandpa Fred put the wall up good and probably did not expect them to ever come down. Dennis and I went up to help with Block removal. We filled an entire 30 yard ton container with just the interior block wall debris!
Oh yeah and next time you see Dennis ask him how he got the scrape on the bridge of his nose!! Yep the ramp that went up into the dumpster collapsed as Dennis was taking a wheel barrow full of block and he face planted into the block pile!! I was cleaning up the front yard, when I saw his feet go up in the air and down he went!! Sorry I am still laughing...I don't think he is cut out for hard labor anymore!! HeeHee!! Yep I am still laughing!! Sorry honey! I so wish I could have filmed that! LOL!
I have ordered the new windows from Jones Paint and Glass, very nice and expedient to deal with! I am still waiting Siding quote and wishing they would move a little quicker! I have another contact for siding materials and may have to go that route! The Shingles  and roofing materials were delivered Monday and we will have a completed roof by weeks end hopefully. They will be replacing all the plumbing over the next couple of weeks and running the gas lines into the house for the furnace, tank-less water heater and oven. And I need to shop for a furnace and A/C soon! All of this should keep me busy in my spare time. Hope you enjoy the changes.
P.S. We found some interesting things in the walls this week, 1 bowling shoe??, 1 tube of Toothpaste with Grandma's name on it, 1 article on Knowing your Rights as a Nursing Home Resident and 1 Copenhagen chewing tobacco can stuffed in one of the chimney holes.

Friday November 11, 2011.

Dennis and I headed to Milford for an over night trip to help work on the Milford house.  For those of you who don't know the view from the front porch of the house faces the city's cemetery. My grandpa planted every blade of grass and cared for the cemetery as a Sexton for many years. A Sexton is an officer charged with the maintenance of its buildings and/or the surrounding graveyard.

Yesterday was Veterans day! When we pulled up we had just missed the Veterans Day Ceremony in the Cemetery. I did take a few pictures of all the flags that were put on all the graves. Each of the Armed Forces were represented with a larger individual flag. Towards the end of the day just before dusk, droves of individuals from town came to the cemetery to remove the flags. Thank you to all the veterans out there! I am so grateful for the veterans of our country and all they do to keep us safe! My dad was in the Marine Corp! Semper Fi daddy!

Corde, Regan and Hunter removed the roof, while Dennis and I worked on the ground picking up shingles, nails, boards, insulation and lots of ah dead things!! Bats, bees and wasps! Yuck!
I think my grandpa Fred had an arsenal of nails. There was a nail about every three inches on most boards. Speaking of nails....later on that subject. That roof was not going anywhere if he had any say in the matter. He created a very sound structure!! Layers of cement  on the front porch and an extra layer just in case two layers were not enough.

As you can see from the pictures, the roof is gone now.The new trusses lay in the street waiting to be installed.  While the boys were peeling off the roof, remnants of the old green shingles fell to the ground. The first shingle on the house were green, which matched the original color of the house which was a light sage green. We filled a 30 Yard trash container to the brim and needed it dumped to be filled again.

About the nails...all day we had been saying watch for nails! While I was clearing the boards in front, Dennis started clearing the boards on the back of the house. I was pulling boards down from the front and on the next to last board I pulled too hard and took a nail to my left leg just above my knee.  Just a scrape... no puncture. Whew! And about five minutes later Dennis came hobbling out from the back yard and he stepped on one! Through the shoe and punctured into the outer fleshy part of the ball of his right foot! Ouch! We decided we better take a trip to the "new" hospital clinic and get a tetanus shot for good measure. There we met new friends, Connie Mayer Barnes, Dr. Ken and Nurse Cutie patootie! No waiting, got right in and super nice people!

After a quick trip to the Ace Hardware store for a halogen work light, traffic cones and gloves we headed back to the house to finish clearing the boards. I love the Ace Hardware store! They carry everything there and then some. Blenders, guns, ammo and traffic cones! Who knew!

We have movement!!

Today has been a very busy day! Lot of phone calls and lot of movement. After a short delay for inspections, we have a few things to tidy up and then we can proceed with the new roof.

New construction terms I have learned this week are footers, weight bearing and freeze line. Footers are dug and filled with cement which will be used to hold up the new porch beams and posts. Weight or load bearing is when you need to determine if the existing home structure or the new "footers" will bear the weight of the new roof. Things to remember to do correctly so your new roof does not collapse! And finally freeze or frost line, this term is used in places where moisture in the soil can freeze and if a foundation is too shallow can be damaged or even experience structure failure. Here in the desert a 12" deep footer would suffice, but in Milford it snows so you have to dig to 30" depth below the freeze line to protect your footers from freezing.

The trusses will be delivered on Friday and lumber for the new roof and porch will be delivered on Saturday. Then on to shingles and siding.

Which brings up a good question.  I am polling my readers for what color do you think we should choose for siding? Below is a link to the type of siding we will be using. I like the Woodstock Brown but I like the Mountain Sage as well. Please click below and share your choice with us!
http://www.jameshardie.com/homeowner/colorplus-palette.shtml

Our trim will be the Arctic white color, with shingled fish scaled trim in the gable points and our front door will be crabby apple red from Sherwin Williams Paint and we are still deciding whether to add shutter accents to the windows as well.

There has been some weather this past week so there is new snow on the ground and we are expecting some rain this weekend, but next week promises to bring sunshine so we can continue on. Dennis and I will be there this weekend and I will take some pictures and add to the blog. So stay tuned and let us know what color you like!

Construction has begun

Construction has begun on our little house. Our contractor Corde and his son Regan have removed the front porch and it is gone! I felt a little nostalgic when they called and told me the porch had been removed. I along with many of you remember sitting on the front porch with Grandpa while he chewed his snuff and spit it into a can or off the porch, countless hours of chatting and catching up and Grandma asking us the latest scoop we happened to hear while running the streets of Milford as a kid. I remember all the pictures we took in front of the porch that if you gathered them today would see a timeline of growth for each of the cousins throughout our lives. I remember sitting on the top of the walls of the porch and jumping off like a super hero and all the family time we spent on the Milford house porch! No pictures yet, but I will be sure to take some and post later this week.

And so it begins...

My husband Dennis and I have purchased my grandparents home in Milford, Utah. It is a very small home my Grandpa Fred built for my Grandma Hilda after all their children left home. We have decided to transform this little homemade block home built in the 50's to a Shabby Chic cottage.As we go I will post old pictures of Grandpa Fred building this home from new and re-purposed items found back in the 50's and watch how we change a few things...well a lot of things and "modernize" this little gem.

We welcome you to join us in the transformation of this little home and the restoration of the lush gardens that surrounded this home in it's heyday!