Major Milestone -- no more stairs!

The crew has been making steady progress since the steel arrived. On Friday, the stairs were finally removed! Now moving between the two floors is a bit more inconvenient unless you want to risk the ladder. But, since the key insight (or, some would say, folly) that started this remodel was the idea of moving the stairs to a different location to allow the kitchen to be opened up, removing the old stairs is a major major milestone.

On other fronts, the steel welding continues. Each steel I-beam has a two by six bolted in, so that drywall, or windows or whatever can then be attached to it. So the steel goes up, then the wood goes in. In some places, like the framing for the office floor, now that it's covered with wood, you really don't realize that the steel is there.

Downstairs, there is a temporary "wall" holding up the floor above. It's interesting how they have to frame up temporary supports as they move the walls around. I'm sure I've said it before, but this whole project is like a big jigsaw puzzle... it's fascinating to watch!

Because our entire house is so poorly constructed, and they're having to redo framing we hadn't intended to do, we've moved to a time and materials basis for the framing (over our original fixed-price bid). I'm hoping that it doesn't turn out to be as bad as it might and that we aren't too much over our original price. Our contractor has been really good about letting us know these things in advance and trying to work it so we can minimize the overruns.

The kitchen demolition is going to happen early this week. Habitat for Humanity will pick up the old kitchen on Thursday... there's no turning back!

For a complete set of pictures, you can go here or here.