Sorry for the long lapse in blog coverage -- my fingers have been too tired at night...we're way behind -- Ed and they guys are moving too fast to keep up! But here's the latest - in reverse order. Alot has happened in the last couple of weeks. We have a second floor on the addition, the first floor of the old part of the house has been re framed and the most of the basement floor has been poured -- oh and the roof is gone. Here you can see a photo of the front of the house tonight. On the left you can see all of the new roof rafters, tie beams and plates that will replace the rotted oak that has been eaten by carpenter ants and suffered from exposure to the weather over the last 40 years or so. You may also notice that the roof is no longer on the house.

Here's another view of the removed roof.

You can see the new plates that are sitting on top of old plates -- these are 8x8 beams that are milled in Rye NH at Rand Lumber.

The view from the addition into what will be the master bedroom.

Last week Ed and crew were working on re framing the first floor and replacing corner posts. They did that on Monday and Tuesday as well as installing the LVL beam that will hold up the back wall of the house. On Wednesday or Thursday (can't remember) - maybe even Friday, I put up new 1" rough cut sheathing on the back and on the front left of the house.

You can see the new sheathing here -- anything over 5/8" is considered structural.

Here's a photo looking down the stairs hole into the addition basement -- Mark E and crew did a great job polishing the floor so that it would be smooth. To do this they used a huge power trowel that we had to slide down a ladder through the bulkhead to get it in the basement.

The cement truck shot the cement through one of the basement windows.

Mark and two of his workers spread out the cement with rakes and shovels and then smoothed it out, waited for it to dry and then used the power trowel to finish it off.

Here you can see LVL that I mentioned before. It covers part of the kitchen and is the outside wall for the second floor of the house.

Earlier in the week, this beam and wall was put up -- it will help support the two main beams in the bedrooms.

The main stairs to the second floor!

New framing for the front wall of the living room.

New framing for the other living room wall -- the one that got new sheathing too. That wraps it up -- it will be very interesting to see how Ed and crew approach the roof project. It seems pretty tricky to me!