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In early July the tile floor in the sunroom is installed.  The base looks like sand when they bring it in, but hardens as it dries out.

A smaller contrasting tile will be used as a border around the larger ones that are being used for the majority of the floor.

The spacers are gone and the grout is in place between the tiles. Early morning sunshine gives the room a glow.

The horribly dirty carpet in the family room has been replaced with hardwood planks.

Slowly getting the furniture back in place after months of it being pushed to one side of the room. It seems so much larger now.

 

By the beginning of June the finish carpenter had done his work and trimmed out the doors, windows and where possible put in the floor moldings.  Then it was time for the painters to come through and when they left most of the place looked like it had always been that way.

Since they had to do the entire ceiling as well as several walls to make sure it looked right, we decided that the entire bedroom could benefit from a coat of paint. That meant that furniture had to be squished towards the center of the room.

Likewise the changes in the family room seem like they will be just fine eventually — when we can move furniture to more appropriate locations. (That will be a while longer yet as the carpet is going to be replaced.)

Once again the kitchen is usable.  The holes in the ceiling for the fire system are not visible and the openings to the sunroom are starting to feel like they belong as well. Like the bedroom it needed the entire ceiling painted and most of the walls — so the little remaining was also painted.

Meanwhile, the stucco on the outside has been applied has been drying.

 

Once all the work inside the walls was done, it was time for the drywall to go up.  It tends to be a bit on the messy side.

The sunroom drywall is installed. And a sizable quantity of debris left where it fell when the workers left for the day.

The openings to the kitchen have been covered and scraps left behind. It would have been so much nicer had the mess been cleaned up.  But the new sunroom did start to feel more like a real room.

To keep the mess down during the application of “mud”, sanding and texture, paper was put down on the walkways and plastic put up to trap the dust.

It was just the rest of the house that got to feeling more like a construction zone instead of a home.  And even through they tried, the dust still went everywhere.  The kitchen was well protected… and not very usable.

The new area of the bedroom was also isolated and plastic put over most of the bed.

Only a little of the family room was outside the plastic wrap.

And finally when the sheeting came down and the paper on the floor came up — it was starting to look like home again.

The bedroom was a lot bigger without all the extra plastic wrap. The new area still needs work to level the floor. And the structural elements that were involved will complicate window coverings since that bump out at the top of the walls is about where the drapery rods would go.

One of these days we can go straight out the back door to the garden if we need some parsley or a couple carrots for the dinner. But it will be a while yet as the exterior needs to be finished as well.

By early April the new room closed to the outside and wrapped in preparation for stucco.  The upper deck also got closed in and wrapped.

There were several sliding doors in our original home construction that turned out not to work well and / or would not make sense with the decisions made for the sunroom.  The doors in the dining room and family room were removed and turned into windows.

Needless to say, these changes had to be made very quickly since they opened the house to the outside elements.

The sliding door on the deck above the garage was changed to a much nicer door.

Then it was time to open the house to the new sunroom.  The kitchen windows and doors on that side were removed and a window in the family room was changed so there was a door.

Likewise, the master bedroom was opened to where the deck had been.

Then it was time for rough electrical, heating, fire sprinkler modifications, insulation and all the other things that are inside the walls and need to get done before the drywall is put in place.

We never got around to building the deck. After experiencing the wind, bugs and country critters, we decided that bringing outdoors to the indoors was the best way to enjoy our “backyard”.  So early February, construction began on our new sunroom as well as a number of other smaller modifications to our home.

After the foundation walls were poured and the forms removed, they discovered that the plans had been misread for what needed to be attached at the corners. The repairs took longer than the initial set up as concrete had to be removed while leaving the rebar in place and additional reinforcement added. A week of nice weather was wasted.

The existing stucco had to be removed in the places where the new construction would attach to the house. Since rain was possible, the process was done leaving the wire and paper in place until the new pieces would connect. This procedure was a lot slower than what would have been done if it was summer and no chance of rain for weeks.

In early March, the windows and exterior doors were delivered, so things could get closed up as quickly as possible.  But a major series of storms were predicted, so plastic wrapping in an effort to protect the construction from the elements.

The winds were stronger than the plastic and things got rather damp.

The winds overnight with the last of that series were strong enough to tip over the port-a-potty.

Another area for the remodel was the deck off the master bedroom.  We decided that it should be enclosed and an extension of the bedroom.  Do the stucco was removed and the surfaces prepared for the changes.

As the process continued and three of the windows are in place it is beginning to see the room taking shape.

By late March the new room has been closed in from the outside.