Framing, Footing and Tax-Free Shopping

On Friday, Jim’s crew roofed the whole house and the back of the garage, rebuilt our staircase so it was wider and to code, and framed out the whole inside of the upstairs.


The master bedroom window (big window on left) isn't closed up yet because it served as an entry way for some really large items like our shower/tub insert and all the lumber.

For the first time we were able to walk up stairs to our new second level and actually envision what it would look like. Doorways, walls, rooms and closets were all framed out. We started talking about where beds and vanities and other items would actually go in the various rooms.

Here's our master bath:

We actually want the shower to be on the right and the vanity to be on the left, but we need to confirm with the plumber that we'll be able to run the water pipes up through the floor for the vanity since you're not supposed to have plumbing on exterior walls because pipes freeze in this area.

Chris joined Black Tie Property (Kel’s company) on Saturday in some real manly work: digging up the footings for the porch. It was quite an undertaking, I hear. The builders are off this week because we’re waiting for the building inspector to come out and inspect the holes (they need to be 4 feet deep). Then, once we get the building inspector’s sign off, concrete can be poured. It takes a couple days for the concrete to dry so that needs to be factored in (and this rainy weather doesn’t help things!). Windows arrive on Thursday. If all goes well, Jim could potentially be back on Friday framing out the porch, installing windows and siding the house. Monday at the latest.

In addition to digging the footings, the boys also finished taking off the shingles and took the rest of the chimney down. Kel also installed the awning windows at the back of the mudroom/breezeway/den – whatever you want to call it – and finished patching up the exterior wall yesterday evening.




While the men were hard at work, I was hard on the credit card. After all, it was tax-free weekend in Massachusetts. Knowing this weeks ago, I teed up a whole bunch of purchases and ensured that the transactions would go through on Saturday or Sunday.

Here are the items we officially purchased this weekend:
Granite for kitchen countertop and island, guest bathroom tiles, all of our appliances, all of our windows, kitchen island base cabinets, white 36in vanity for guest bath, mirror for guest bath, door handles for all doors in the house, tiles for half bath (first floor), tiles for master bedroom, backsplash tiles for kitchen, all of the interior doors for the entire house.

Grand total: $16,837.26
Savings from tax-free weekend: $1,052.33

I won't show photos of everything - esp since I've featured a lot of these items already in the blog, but here are some photos of stuff you haven't seen before.

Interior doors: we're going two panel instead of 6 panel:


Master bath tiles - these will go great with the clawfoot tub:


Half bath tiles - these are neutral and will allow for a darker wood vanity, off-white built in cabinets and the cream/tan striped walls I want:


Oh - and I almost forgot - we also bought our gas fireplace. It's a Regency P36D. We'll buy or build a flush mantel like this eventually.


It was quite a busy weekend!