Before & After

Happy Easter! Yesterday morning we were invited to a party for our neighbors' son's 2nd birthday. It was raining, so we drove over and were surprised to see the plumber's van parked in our driveway -- on a Saturday. He was just coming out of the house as we arrived, and explained that he was trying to fix a leak and needed to run out and get some equipment, but would be back soon. We went on to the party, grateful that we had such dedicated people working on our house.

There were several other neighbors in attendance at the birthday party, so we ended up discussing the renovation with them, since they've been seeing all the progress from the outside. It just so happens that Jeremy & Alison's house (where the party was) has an almost identical floor plan to our house, pre-renovation. They were built at the same time by the same builder -- and even have the same family room and mud room/pantry added on to the back. It provided a great visual aid when describing all the changes to the inside of the house. ("So we took out this wall here, opened up this part of the kitchen, moved the stairs from here to there, and expanded this room out by 5 feet.")

As the birthday festivities were winding down, we issued an open invitation to anyone who wanted a tour of our house, and headed over with a few of our neighbors. I had mentioned to Steve W. on Friday that we would be giving some tours over the weekend -- we had also arranged to meet our friend Elizabeth and her parents there yesterday afternoon -- so he told the crew to make sure they cleaned up after themselves at the end of the day. They aren't particularly messy, but they do tend to leave coffee cups, soda cans, water bottles, etc. around the house. I was pleased to see that they had taken the trouble to get rid of all the trash and put most of their tools and equipment away, so the house looked pretty good. Our neighbors seemed impressed -- as did Elizabeth's parents -- with the layout of the house as well as all the 'green' elements and the workmanship of our builders.

We still have a long way to go, but it's really starting to feel like a real house -- and after the stucco guys are done with it, it should start looking more like a real house, too. I hear they will be getting started this week!