Can't sleep.

I can't sleep. It's almost 2:00 in the morning, and I really can't sleep. There are a lot of reasons. One of the main ones is that the back of our house is not there. :) We tore it out in our remodel and will be putting in our new windows and doors in the coming week, but we didn't have time to put up plastic back there, so it's just a huge open wall. The weather was perfect today (in the 80s) and tonight feels just right, so that's been nice. However...see...there's this cat.

Her name is Chloe, but Ethan calls her Chuck the Cat. Chuck the cat is a stray that wanders around all the time and she and our cat gus gus have a very dog-like best friend relationship. They cry for each other at the door and run and play with one another when I open it. They have a little "love trail" through my front yard where you can literally SEE a place for EACH foot to go. Chuck the cat gets his name from our neighbor. Our neighbor leaves food on his porch for Chuck the cat and our neighbor's name is Chuck. Ethan therefore thought that Chuck that cat was Chuck's cat and now we have "Chuck the cat" and "Chuck the guy".

Chuck the Cat loves to be in our house. She sneaks in whenever she can and Ethan chases her back out again. All this to say that with no back wall, Chuck the cat is in for the night and pretty happy about it, but keeps making a crap-ton of noise. Nothing I can do about it, so I thought I would get up.

So...remodel is going great! Sam worked really hard today and got the back windows and wall torn out and framed in and the old floor removed and a new sub floor put down. Tomorrow, we are hoping to finish painting the outside of the last of the 3 windows and get to sheet rocking. It's going a good deal faster than I ever thought it would. The backyard is ATROCIOUS, but there is so much potential back there that once we have the time and money, working on it will be great fun! :)

So...Here are some pics....



This is the old house. blue asbestos siding with painted chipped and somewhat rotted wood siding underneath. Notice the storm windows over the wood windows. there are three and they are all different sizes and framed in with whatever wood happened to be around the person at the time.



Here is Sam removing the white wood siding and you can see my old vinyl bathroom window to his right. Notice the narrow back doorway.



Here is the inside of the vinyl window. You can get an idea of the not-so-great framing job someone did here as well. :)



Here's the new window from the inside. This window is solid wood and I LOVE IT!!! We are working on one side of the house at a time so we can pay for it out of pocket, but it will be worth it!! I think there is more glass in this window and it feels bigger! Sam just put the old trip back up, but we'll eventually trim it out in matching stained fir.

Here's what we did today:



notice the large HOLE in the wall? :) That's where those nasty windows were and where our pretty doors will be going. They are all three technically doors, but only one will have hardware and function that way...the others will just let in a lot of sunshine! :) I'll take some pictures of the rest tomorrow and post them. Sam got the tiny walls framed in and the header above where the new windows and door is going as well as put in the sub-floor.

I'll post some more tomorrow... I'm going to go try to sleep now. :)

night.