A Nurse And A Nerd: Our Phase 2 Addition: in a nutshell

It may have been a long time since I have blogged, but that certainly doesn't mean that things have not been changing around here.

Last time I posted, I announced that we were embarking on a big addition....and it wasn't a baby. We planned to add on a mudroom and garage. But before I get into that, I thought I'd go way back to when we first bought our house to show you what it looked like.

Yikes! That looks pretty gloomy. And it was.

This was the first picture we ever took of our house. We first looked at it in December 2012 and didn't closed until that following May. It was quite the process, but I won't get into that.

Here are a few pictures we took the day we closed on the house.

Initial improvements included ripping out overgrown bushes, cutting down rotting trees, and replacing the windows and siding.

We knew we were going to eventually add on a garage and porch so we left some things as is. On the the old garage, we left the white siding and the front gutters. We also planned to replace the roof in the next phase so that the shingles would all match. The old wrought iron railing was scrapped and it was replaced with wood railing, that I painted white.

And that's pretty much how our home looked for 3 years before we started demolition last July.

Let's zoom on through with a little month by month update for you:

August:

Foundation and framing of garage

September:

More framing of garage

October:

Windows, porch framing

November:

Pour concrete, continue to frame porch

December:

Complete framing, new roof, garage door installation, start siding

January:

Complete siding, install lighting, railing and skirting

February/March:

Odds and ends getting finished up like the railing, post wraps, the driveway.

And here is today:
We still have a number of things to do... a few more post wraps, planting grass, stain the porch floor and stairs. And then of course there is one very obvious thing we need to do: The Landscaping... which we don't think will happen until next spring. But we do plan on working on putting in a stone retaining wall this summer (hopefully).

Here's a side-by-side comparison with the house when we first bought it:

Does it look like the same house?

No? I'm ok with that. :-)

Another side-by-side comparison for you.

I can't wait to get some flower boxes and some hanging ferns out this summer.

If you have followed this process closely, you may be wondering why we ended up adding the porch on.. because, going into this project that was not the plan. We thought we were just going to add on the mudroom and the garage and wait to add the porch later on down the road. Long story short, it just made sense to proceed with the porch now, considering some of the changes we were making to the house. And man am I glad we did.

It is amazing how much more enjoyment we are getting out of our home with our new addition... especially the porch. I knew that a big garage would be great, I am just a little surprised to the extent I love having a porch. I felt sort of trapped inside my house because there wasn't really any place to hang out outside since we bought it. And now my outdoor enjoyment at home has improved 100 fold! Abe loves to ride his cozy coupe around the drive while I sit on the porch, eating grapes, getting fanned by Michael. Except not that last part. Just seeing if you were still reading! ;-)

We are SO thankful for everyone that has helped us get to the (near) end of this construction project. We couldn't have done it without some key players: My parents, my Uncle Steve (remember Saint Steve from phase 1 renovation?!), and M2 construction. Big time thanks and hugs for all of them for helping us see this thing through!

So that's all for today folks! I haven't even gotten into sharing about the inside, there is a lot more to come and I will do my best at updating things more regularly as we progress. But in the mean time, I am much more apt to sharing via instagram. For the most up-to-date info, follow me there!