Out with the old (porch) and in with the new!!

Things inside are still coming along.  The drywall continues to go up.  It is such a huge job and the guys are working constantly!  Outside things are starting to pick up!  The front porch project is underway and moving quickly!  We are having to use a different entrance because the old porch is gone!  So exciting!  The posts are wooden and wrapped with cedar and then painted and sealed at the shop and then will have minor touch ups done after the entire porch is complete.  This will make it a lot easier to finish rather than painting it all at the end.

  

 Here the first post is going up!  It was quite a chore to get it up there.  Each post is 16ft long and is very very heavy.  

 

 

Here is a view from the top of the stairs that lead down to the bunker.  We will have 6 posts across the front like the original structure.

 2 posts up!  And as you can see the front porch is gone!  It now sits out in the yard!

 Another angle of the missing front porch.  The area looks so much bigger and it will be great to have a huge porch across the front!

 The lonely front door with lower entrance below.

 As you can see in this picture, we will have 2 posts flanking the front door and the front stairs will be the entire length between those 2 posts.  I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but I can already picture decorating the front porch for Christmas!  It will be beautiful!

Slowly moving forward!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post but you can only get excited about drywall pictures a few times before you are over it! lol  Work still continues at the house, it's just nothing too exciting.  The plumbers are still working, the electricians are still working, and the drywall is still going up!  These are all great things, but nothing to take pictures of really! But new, more exciting things are just around the corner!  The excavating for the garage is getting started - they had to wait until the electric company came by and relocated the overhead electrical lines to underground and that is happening today!  Also the front porch project is about to get started!  I am SO excited about the porch!  It will really look amazing when it is finished.  It all will, but the idea of it looking like it did back in 1867 is pretty cool.  Our cabinet sample is finished and I love how it turned out as well!

 

 This is the location of the garage.  The back of the garage will be even with the back of the house.  The driveway will come straight out and meet up with the circle drive in the front of the house.  The light pole on the left of the picture and the overhead wires will be in the way, not to mention aren't very appealing to look at! 

 Today the guys from OGE came to bury the lines!

If you remember from previous pictures, the stairs in the back were about 6-8ft away from the side of the house.  This is where the garage will be so the stairs had to be moved.

 

The stairs consisted of HUGE stones and we wanted to keep them so Spencer and his team made new stairs out of concrete and then are placing the old stone steps on top.  They will look like they have been there all along.  We need the stairs there because there will be a narrow (6ft wide) walkway between the house and the side of the garage and this will be the path from the front of the house to the back, and also access from the garage down to the back door.

 

 This is what our porch will look like!  We will have 6 square columns and a wooden porch that extends the entire front of the house.  Well, almost the entire length.  Remember there is a bunker area that leads to the basement level.  This will be under the porch so we have to shorten the porch a little so you can walk down the stairs without having to duck or hit your head.  So from the front of the house the porch will look as it originally did, but from the sides there will be a cut out so you can walk down the stairs on both sides.  Not sure if that makes sense but I will post pics as it takes shape!  We figure that the stairs going down to the bunker area were moved/changed from the original design because the original porch looks to extend the entire way across.  Either that or they ducked down to get to the basement area.

This is a zoomed in picture of the original porch to show the details on the columns that we will duplicate.  The columns and railing will be painted white and the decking you walk on will be stained and sealed.  The windows across the front(and the back) open up like doors so that will be a nice feature to be able to walk out onto the front deck from any room!

Here is our cabinet choice!  It's kinda hard to tell the dimensions on it but it's white with antiqued edges.  This will be on all of the kitchen cabinets, except on the island, which will be stained to match the wood in the house.  These cabinets are also going to be in the master bathroom, laundry room, and basement bathroom.  The upstairs bathroom will have a different cabinet style.