House in Progress Diary

As if we didn't have enough going on with the new back porch, new fence and the new basement stairwell, we have another project in the works: our basement.

The basement has never been finished, so for the first time we actually have a clean slate to work with...albeit one that's always been packed with quite a bit of stuff:

The good news is that this 'before' photo is from quite a while ago. In fact, the basement is now cleaned out. (That was the other big use for the dumpster we rented this summer.) We're guessing this is the first time that the basement has been this empty in it's 95 year history.

So, what's the plan for the space? Well...

Continue reading "And Now for Something Completely Different" »

Posted by aaron at 10:29 AM (12)

Work is now under way in ernest on our new back porch. We gave our friend and contractor TK the design a few weeks ago and in the past week he's gotten started on the project.

They've taken off the last remnants of the prior structure and put in new structural beams. They've also rebuilt the deck...we'd thought it might be salvageable but in the end it would have been more work to shim and correct it so we're just rebuilding it from scratch.

Things are moving pretty quickly now, so we'll have more photos to share next week including work on the new basement stairwell.

Posted by aaron at 10:06 AM (3)

Here's our submission for the DIY Drama contest currently running over at Houseblogs.net. We aren't technically eligible since we're also running the contest, but it gives us something to write about... ;-)

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Our latest (of many) lessons learned is also part of our latest project. (No surprise, I guess, since we seem to have one for every project.)It has to do with rebuilding our back porch.

We want to maximize the usable space on our porch. That's why in our new design we're moving the stairway from within the footprint of the porch to now be straight out the front.

That also means we need to eliminate space required by the old basement stairwell. The old stairwell came straight off the back of the house here.

Continue reading "Our DIY Drama (or Why Building a Porch to Relax on Can Be Very Stressful)" »

Posted by aaron at 8:28 AM (5)

Not only are we back to blogging again here at House in Progress, there's lots going on over at our site Houseblogs.net too. If you haven't been over there in the past month:

- You can now follow Houseblogs.net on Facebook and follow Houseblogs.net on Twitter.

- There's a new home page story on restoring old windows featuring houseblogger El Paso Foursquare. (A topic near and dear to our own hearts here at House in Progress).

- We're running a 'DIY Drama' contest for housebloggers with $900 in prizes.

Check those out while we pull together more updates on our own little houseblog to recap our summer DIY adventures.

Posted by aaron at 11:04 PM (0)

With the demo work on the old porch largely done a month ago, we've been playing with designs ever since. Actually, we'd been thinking about it quite a bit longer and we'd collected some photos for design ideas over the years. This was really just the first time we'd tried to put those random ideas in to a single design.

So, here's what our back porch is supposed to look like when all is said and done.

Continue reading "Back Porch Design" »

Posted by aaron at 8:40 PM (4)

OK, after coming out of blogging hibernation with a teaser photo a few weeks back we'll go ahead and start sharing what we've been up to for the past nine months. It's a number of projects, so it will need to be broken up in to a few blog posts.

To start with, the dumpster we rented was for a weekend project - we tore the old siding off our enclosed porch. No reason to wait - here's the money shot:

A few more photos and an explanation after the break...

Continue reading "Back Porch in Progress" »

Posted by aaron at 7:43 AM (1)

We received this email today. Is it me or does the first sentence undermine the first sentence of the second paragraph?

Hi there-

I'm dropping you a line to see if you accept guest bloggers on [name of blog]. I like to write about home improvement projects and thought an article about home improvement would be a good fit for your blog.

The post will be 100% original, written just for your blog and will not be posted elsewhere. I would appreciate an author bio with a followed live link back to my site, or link within content. If you're interested in this idea, please get back to me.

Thanks,
Name Withheld

Posted by aaron at 7:34 PM (12)