Excitement on the Street

A wall?!  Now that is some real progress.  The basement looked small but when I opened our current back door and looked out to see the new rooms in progress - woo hoo!  Exciting.

But we have to take a little bad with the good.  Amazingly, after a slow start, the crew seems to be ahead of schedule, which means they want us to move out about two weeks earlier than originally planned.  We will sort something out, but yikes, at the end of the school year the last thing we wanted to do was uproot everyone.  But, if this might mean we move back into a finished house ahead of schedule, we don't want to hold up the works. 

In other news... have I mentioned what a great street we live on?  Probably once or twice. We all came together this week after a big electrical storm  hit Ottawa.  This tree came down on Wednesday night and when it took power out in our neighbourhood, we had a pizza party organized lickety split. 






And after dinner we set up lawn chairs to watch the firefighters close off the intersection and  the hydro workers use two cherry pickers to get the tree of the wires.

  Love the hood!

Best street EVER!!!

This week has been busy and very exciting!  Work has been going on every day, all day and where there once was a hole, we now have what is clearly the beginnings of our addition dream.
(FYI We are using Durisol insulated concrete forms.)

The cement truck is coming this week, by end of the day Monday we should have a floor, and framing should start on Tuesday, weather permitting!
But we remain ever mindful that while our family is looking out the back window watching all the excitement, this is what our neighbours have to look at in the front...

Piles of building materials, a POD and a port-a-potty.  All of our friends on the street are such good sports, so far, and we want to keep them that way.  One neighbour joked that her children will no longer be permitted to use their indoor facilities, hopefully keeping her bathrooms sparkling while her boys use the outhouse perched on our front lawn!  Brilliant!


Our neighbours' thoughtfulness has extended to offers of beds while they are on holiday, or even, crazy people, while they are still at home!  While the crew and building materials have taken over our driveway, our street friends have let us park in front of their homes.  Most seem unfazed by the noise, dust, big trucks and unattractive additions to the street view. We are even lucky enough to have been asked to "house sit" for a generous family two doors down for the month of July while we need to get out of our house.  (Thanks, K and D!!)

We are so fortunate.  Everyone is being very understanding and we want to keep it that way. It is going to be a long summer! That is why I have started baking...