A small bump in the road...or a river...or something

So you may have noticed the most striking thing in the last group of pictures was the bright blue sky visible from inside our house. Unfortunately that bright blue sky didn't last.   We went to the house today to check it out, and some things were lookin' pretty good:

The kitchen area...got some framing done - great.  The blue "sky" however isn't actually sky, it's huge tarps that they put up to keep the gale force winds and rain out that was pouring down all last night.  But all is looking pretty good from this angle, right?
Well, no.   Here is another angle of the living room.

At first glance it looks ok maybe.  Some boards holding up the walls, some framing done. Ok.  But wait, let's look to the right over the mantle.  What is that large sag in the tarp??  Let's get in for a closer look, shall we?

Yup, that's a gigantic bulge of water over our mantle.  For perspective, that's a 50 gallon garbage can.  What you can't quite tell from the picture is that the bulge wasn't just sitting there happily bulging - it was  leaking water at a rapid pace creating a small waterfall over our mantle, down the hearth, onto the floors and into the basement.   At this point I stopped taking pictures...  Rain is predicted pretty much all week...

Nothing prepares you for this!

So I drive up to the house and see this....

Hmm, ok - definitely something going on here.  Something doesn't look quite right around the chimney area and there is definitely parts of the roof missing.  But nothing prepared me for when I started to walk around!   Let's do a little before/after shot to give you the full picture of what's going on here..

Before:

After:

You may notice the addition of a sky-light.  Oh wait, that's not a sky-light, it's the fact I HAVE NO ROOF.   Let's look at a few more angles, shall we?

Keep in mind this shot is from what was formerly INSIDE the house:

The ladder is where the kitchen used to be.  To the left was the playroom:

 
Yup, that used to be our kitchen.  Now it is some boards, and a rubble pile of bricks that is holding on to the dream that it's still a wall:

Standing on the back patio.  The wall on the right side of the picture is part of the back outside wall of the house, and you're looking riiiiiiight through the entire house to the fireplace in the living room

From the backyard:

I don't even think the pictures do justice to quite how crazy it feels to walk into what used to be your home and have it look like a house in Chernobyl.
Supposedly by the end of the day the second floor floors will be put on, and a frame of the new roof will be up.  This will be necessary to nail the tarps to, since we are supposed to get rain all weekend.  Ahhhhhh!

Oh. Em. Gee.

Roof is comin' off!  I'll have more/better pictures soon, but thanks to our neighbors, here are some of the first views of bye-bye Ranch!

The roof gnomes have come to take our roof away!

To add to the full crack-house look, yes our windows are all boarded up too.  It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, I'm sure!
Framing of the second floor starts tomorrow and Lilah and I have a fieldtrip planned to take some pics. More to come....

Wow, things are heating up!

So we saw a few days back, walls had holes,  other walls were marked for removal.  But somehow I was still completely shocked walking into my house today to see this:

Yes, that used to be our kitchen.  Umm, where did my house go?   I think the shocking thing was how generally clean it was - there was no rubble!  It was like the walls and ceilings never existed!

Full living room into dining/play area and kitchen:

The room formerly known as the kitchen:

You can see into the garage from the front hallways!

I can't wait to see what it looks like by this weekend.  At this rate I'll be lucky if anything is still standing!

And so it begins...

First the signs showed up...

But when the Happy Can and the Double D show up, you know business is about to start!

Well - there goes the walls!

And the kitchen is getting started...

Looks like this wall is next!

So what have you done so far, you ask...?

Here are the renovations we've done so far.  Mostly cosmetic.  While making these small changes, we've been happily living in our little home for 6 years now.  I'm regretting not having pictures of the house right before we moved out, because most of these from a partially-finished state. But, you get the gist.

New Living Room, into kitchen - painted and kitchen floors replaced with wood/tile:

Cooper, modeling the new floors:

Very bad picture of half finished bedroom.  It's more of a grayish lavender color:

New hall bathroom:

A walk down memory lane

Since building doesn't begin until later this week, let's take a walk down memory lane.  Below are some pictures of our house from our initial walk-through (before we even moved in).

Our little brick home:

Living Room, before we moved in:

Kitchen (w/ linoleum floors):

Master Bedroom:

Last room that we did any major updates to, hall bathroom:

Why are you here?

...well, probably because we passed you the link to check out our house renovation :)  Thanks for coming.  So, lets set the stage here.  Tom and Michelle Monaco live happily with their awesome daughter Lilah, and two dogs, in Decatur, GA.  Tom and Michelle go temporarily insane and decide to do a major renovation on their house.  Our cute little 50's ranch (3 bed / 2 bath) will be expanded to include a master suite, two other bedrooms and a hall bath on a second floor.  Plus an updated kitchen.  'Cuz I mean, as long as we're going crazy, let's just take the insanity to the next level baby!

During this project, we'll be living in Dunwoody with my father, Hank.  I'm going to keep as quiet as possible on THAT subject here.  No one needs to read that drama.  Mostly this blog will be to share pictures as we go throughout the process - I hope you enjoy (and I hope we do too!)