Surging forward

I am going to try and rush through the photos I have left and explain what happened and where we are at now.  It might take a couple more posts though.  I am tired of living in the past!!  haha!

Here we are finally carefully cutting the hole at the end of the upstairs hallway so we can put the stairs in for the addition.  Thanks again to our trusty friend Rich for all his expertise and help.  Here is the hole getting started.

Here it is waiting for the stairs.  Just getting the opening prepped.

We're going to just slide it through and lift it up.

Making sure everything is level and secured properly

And there you have it!  All we need now is some drywall to finish it up.  Too bad we didn't think of that before we filled in that hole.  We could have lifted up the drywall through the stairwell opening in the garage.  Instead we had to carry each sheet in through the front door and up the stairs....that's a LOT of drywall.  I'm glad we had some handy hutterites to help us out.  Great workers and Super Nice Guys!!

We finished framing in the arch in the front entrance....I have to admit that this was Steve's vision, but I LOVE it!  It turned out so pretty when all was said and done.

 The bannister came out and new walls were built instead.

The heating and plumbing went up through the ceiling in the back hall....

...up through the boys bedroom next to the new stairs...

and walls were framed around it all to box it in.

The ceiling in the garage got a pretty layer of salmon spray foam.  This is to help keep the addition warm upstairs and also to seal it so no exhaust fumes get up there either.

Isn't it lovely? =)

 And here are the wonderful hutterite boys I was talking about.  They worked so fast, and they loved it when I baked treats for them each night.  They came back 4 or 5 times to help get all the drywall up that we had to do.  Here they're doing the front entrance.  They also did the whole addition upstairs....except for the bathroom with Drew did himself.  The garage ceiling was the hardest though - even with renting a lift it was nice to have a few extra hands.

I am loving having that bannister gone!

Next came all the mudding and taping upstairs, the ceilings get a coat of knockdown, all the walls get painted and all the outlets and light fixtures go in.  See you later!