The major change in my last post and this week is the hard work the masons have done. As you can see below the fireplace/chimney is almost complete. I figure one more day and they should have it done. The building inspector came on Tuesday and said that we have to brick up some of the door for the "crawlspace" or we have to put up a concrete floor, sheet rock, etc under there. The masons will close a bit more off as we are only allowed a 4 foot opening and not a garage door size opening. This will keep us from putting Brad's boat under the house but hopefully everything else will still go under there. Today our builder, Tom, cut out the old doorway going to the old laundry room and took out the wall. He isn't going to take out the laundry wall and the rest of the kitchen wall until the sheet rock gets put up in the new addition to prevent a ton of dust coming through. We are still waiting on the electrical inspector to come check everything out and then the sheet rock can go up. The electrical inspector was supposed to be here yesterday but no sign of him yet. If the inspector can get here we can get the insulation and the sheet rock up this week and hopefully start painting next week. Everything seems to be moving along good. We'll keep you posted with new photos and updates.

at the end of day 1 of the chimney

day 3 of the chimney/fireplace

day 3 of the chimney/fireplace (the little black door on the side of the chimney is a place where you get the ashes out from the outside. there is a trap door in the fireplace that you push the ashes to and it falls down to a little shelf where you access it from the outside of the house)

the kitchen wall before Tom touched it

the kitchen wall after Tom took the door out and part of the wall - the room is now opened up completely to show the old laundry room which will not just be an entry way. The light switches will be moved by the electrician to be on the small part of wall where right above the existing outlet (a small wall will remain to keep the roof from falling in)