Stairways everywhere!

Dang it, I am doing it again - forgetting to blog about the house. Christmas is almost here and we are trying to wrap up the renovation. At the same time, I have committed myself to baking 20 loaves of banana bread. While I am totally diggin' the holiday spirit, multitasking between baking, designing, renovating, working, traveling (outer island), and cleaning has taken a toll on me. I have been sleeping much less and exerting more energy during the day to get everything done.

The paint job is almost done so I will be posting pictures of the final look later on. As for the backyard, it is a mess. But we did manage to squeeze in a small staircase to the yard. The guys that build this are awesome!

Enough about the exterior of the house. Let's take a look at the inside and what was done. Below is a picture of the upstairs area. We demolished the straight staircase and covered the puka with plywood. The family area is much more spacious now.

Below is a picture of the downstairs area with the straight staircase on the far left. The wall in the middle separated this area into two small sections - freakin' weird!

So, we took the wall down along with the staircase to open up the family area.

More to come later...

Transforming the Front of the House

This will be an exciting post. Here is how the house originally looks. Now, don't blink!

In converting the front carport into a bedroom, concrete is poured at the base of the new front wall so rain won't seep into the room. The photo shows the framing for the concrete. The window on the side is also changed into a bigger one, by mistake. Our contractor bought the wrong size window. Instead of returning it, he ended up cutting a bigger hole and installing the larger window. That is good for us because it lets in more light into the downstairs area.

The front bedroom will have two 3 x 3 feet window looking out into the street and the neighbor's dog, Marley :)

This is our supercool front entry. Instead of entering the house downstairs through the now non-existent carport, we enter the house from the upstairs.

Viola! A new look for the front of the house. The actual front door was not delivered yet so we temporarily installed the back door so we could have some security.