Siding and Such

This past week both Mike and I have felt so much relief.  My "breath of fresh air" came in the form of finishing my last day of school yesterday, and along with that, submitting my final grades!  Mike's happened this past week as well, when the project he has been working on took the reactor critical and finished shift work!

As of this past Wednesday, I was 2.5cm dilated.  My Dr. said it could be any day now.  Some days it feels really close; other days (like today) I feel just fine.  I'll go again at 40 weeks (June 4th) to get checked.  Our bags are packed and ready!  Just waiting on our baby girl at this point :)

We spent yesterday afternoon working in the yard and prepping for the last of the siding to go up today.  I even had enough energy to weed-whack the lawn since it was getting a little out of control.  And today, I helped Mike finish up the siding on the house.

With everything set for baby to come, we are enjoying these last few days of energy--but don't worry, we're resting well too--prepping for all those sleepless nights to come!

Because work and life have been so consuming, it's been a while since I've updated our blog with house progress, but I can't ignore the awesome job the hubby and our friends have done on the siding these last couple of days/weeks.  Thanks Luke, Jordan, and Ben for helping us finish!!

Mike measuring for the final cuts.

When we first started remodeling., there were several windows that had to either come out or be replaced.  Three to be exact, plus the large sliding door in the back.  Since we have basically finished the interior of the house, the time has come to start on the exterior.  We're not sure how it will all shake out, but we really want to refinance soon to get a lower interest rate.  In order to do that, we needed to finish the siding.  Plywood has been hanging up outside since last year when we blasted through the walls and went to work on the inside.  Here are a few pics to try to capture the before and after...  We finally decided to take the siding from the back of the garage and use it to fill in the gaps.  We bought a cheaper siding from Home Depot for the garage since they no longer make the kind we needed.

Last summer: note the large picture window on bottom right.

It came out, and plywood went up in its place.

Here's Mike framing in the new window.

This summer: now you can barely tell there was a window there!

We also replaced the big picture window on the left side.  It had jalousies on the bottom which we definitely didn't want.  Here's the progression.

Large window that doesn't open for air flow.

Window out.

Jordan and Mike framing for new window.

New window in.

Inside shot.

Now look on the bottom left.  Can't tell, right?!

And last, but certainly not least, we also took out a window on the side of the house where we ended up putting the beam.  It just didn't make sense to have one there.  Here are some pics to try and capture what went down.

The first walk through with a separated living room and kitchen.

Here's a closer view of the window and wall (on the right) we took out.
Angelica was testing out the coolness of the tile.

Demo.  Week ONE I think.

Window after the beam went in.
Vacuuming up the slosh of the newly poured footing.

Window with the beam in and the temporary walls removed.

Here's a shot from the outside.
Maddox working hard under dad's supervision :)

Same spot, finally removing the plywood and replacing it with siding.

And voila.  Finished.
You can barely tell a window was ever there!

Ok, that's all for now.  Hopefully my next update will be with pictures of our beautiful baby girl... Anytime now!!