Catching up...

I have been delinquent in posting! Sorry guys. Recovery from the roof project has taken longer than expected (but as of tonight all the debris has been cleared!! yay!) My work has also been pretty busy and taking up a lot of my energy (I'm looking forward to August when Congress is in recess).

Anyhow, I thought I could break up some of my missing posts and make it easier to catch up :) Two weekends ago, we went to a wedding of one of Jim's fraternity brothers in Richmond. We also had a visit to the construction zone from Ben and Erin, our friends in New Hampshire, who also came down for the wedding. Fun times were had by all (and all work was put on hold for the weekend!) Here's some pictures from our weekend.

Ben and Dave hanging out at our place. I think Dave wanted to do some demo instead of playing games ;)

Jim and I at the wedding

The group of fraternity brothers (plus the bride and groom--Kate and Jon!)

Of course, Chip still keeps us laughing. He puts himself in lots of weird positions to sleep and we always laugh about how uncomfortable it looks!

Knock, knock

We finally have a bathroom door! I thought this occasion was momentous enough to document on here. (Ben--Just in time for your visit!)

Chip also gave Jim a hand with cleaning up the caulk in the bathtub.
We are going to a friend's wedding in Richmond this weekend, so we'll get a small break from housework after spending the whole week cleaning up from our last project.

Raise the Roof

We undertook a giant project this weekend and thanks to our many helpers, we successfully tore out the roof over our kitchen, replaced a lot of old and damaged structural wood and reinstalled a new roof! Special thanks to both our dads and Matt and Mary...we couldn't have done it without you guys!!!

Here's a glimpse into our weekend....although the pictures don't really illustrate how hot it was!!

Beginning of Day 1

The shingles start coming off the roof, we discovered that there were about 6 layers. Technically there should only be a maximum of 3 layers of shingles.

The open air kitchen...all of the old roof has been removed! On the right, you can also see that the wall between the kitchen and basement stairs has been removed.

Big ole pile of scraps!

Starting to put in the new framing.

Matt and Jim start to put in the new stringers. We replaced all the old ones to provide extension so we can move the load bearing wall to make our kitchen bigger (a future project).

We also replaced some of the roof rafters as well and put in supports for all the others. You can also see the beginning of some plywood being installed at the top.

Beginning of Day 2.
Plywood is done!

A view from the inside.

The tar paper is down.

The first shingles are installed.

I actually helped install the shingles too. I even used the nail gun.

20+ hours of work later....SUCCESS!!!!

We finished just in time for a giant thunderstorm (with a TON of rain) to roll through.

On Saturday, Mary helped me with moving all our plants in the front of the house to the backyard. This is in preparation for demo-ing the front porch.

Starting to move the bushes.

Mary digging in the backyard.

The front of the house without bushes. Note: the really cool painted-on "faux brick." I know we'll all be sad to see this go.

And all the bushes, now relocated in the backyard.

Lastly, Chip had a really rough weekend too ;)

Red, White and Blue all over...

I hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend! We certainly did :) We spent another weekend at Lake Anna and had fun with friends on the boat...swimming, tubing, wakeboarding, and jet skiing too. A good time was had by all!

Mary and I in our patriotic swimsuits...Mary's is a throwback from swim practice days ;)

Even the boat was decorated for the 4th!

Buster: the swimming puppy

Robbie and Thomas on the Donaldson's jetski, which we all had fun riding!

Matt and Mary

Then our 4th of July got really interesting when "nature's fireworks" interrupted our boat ride home... We took shelter under this bridge for a good 20-30 minutes while a heavy thunderstorm passed through. A little scary, but we survived!

We also spent some more time this weekend trying to get Chip and Buster to be friends. Chip was afraid of Buster when they first met, but the more time they spend together, the more curious he gets and I think they are finally getting along! It was pretty cute watching them interact.

Playing nice

Dogs like cat toys too!

On Sunday, we were back home to accomplish some house work. We spent a good part of our morning shopping for some of our upcoming projects. We bought exterior paint, so I can get to work on painting the outside of our house soon. We also started buying materials for our big roof project (which, weather permitting, will happen this coming weekend). Our kitchen is starting to look like a lumber yard!

I also started moving some of the plants from the front yard to the back yard and demo-ing the plant boxes out front. This is to prepare for eventually taking down the sides of our front porch (which are ugly and poorly constructed from cinderblocks).

Lastly, we clipped Chip's claws for the first time this weekend. They say when you clip a cat's claws you should give them a special treat. We decided a little bit of tuna would be good. It was so funny to watch him dive right in the second I put the bowl down and not stop until it was licked clean.

And then about 20 minutes later, he found the rinsed out tuna can waiting to go out to recycling and started licking that too...which I had to capture on film before the can was removed ;)