The Beginning

We talked about "Pop Topping" our house since we bought it. We went back and forth on whether or not we wanted to undertake such a big project and even looked at/made offers on homes for sale. We have always loved our house and it's location but we weren't sure if we could swing it and if we would want to deal with the entire construction process. Anyway this spring we decided we should do our due diligence and find out what the project would cost and what we could actually have built up there. Initially we had an engineer come out to casually look at the house to see if it would be doable without massive structural work. He said it looked good so we then chose an architect and paid to have Schematic drawings created. With those drawings we were able to get bids from a number of contractors. So 4 to 5 months later we have chosen a contractor and are getting this project underway (of course during the course of this we found out we are having a baby. So that makes this process even more interesting....) We spent the last month packing up the house so we could move out of it. We had to clear the entire first floor of all our belongings. We finished that project up last week and are now moved out. We took some before pictures which are posted here: http://picasaweb.google.com/LucyGoose06/HouseBefore?authkey=bxsfgicF8yM#

So far they installed a new electrical panel and much of this week was spent installing the "protection". This involved laying plywood over all our hardwood floors and putting some other kind of board over all our cabinets, counters and appliances. Yesterday the dumpster was delivered and we expect it to get put to use next week when then begin to tear off the roof. We are quite excited to see the roof come off. That will make it feel like things are really getting moving.