Early November

We get walls inside the house in order to protect the interior when the outer walls come off for the new addition. The house is full of dust, but it is liveable. The only drawback is the kitchen, where the makeshift plywood wall takes half the door opening, so we need to get in the kitchen by sliding in sideways.

The house outside still feels like it has a moat.

The brown wall that separated the pool from the house comes off and we can finally use it.

October - Getting there

October - the house feels more real. Walls and floors are put in and the rooms now have a real dimension. We can visualize them.

The front --still the standard-issue Coral Gables entrances-- is built and the house takes a more "grown up" quality.

In the back, we can now see the shell of a bathroom, the closets, the laundry room, the extra walk-in closet and the garage. We now realize that we might have built too many closets and could have made the bathroom larger.

However, for the first time we can walk around and get a sense of what it will be to live here.

September - Back in Action

August was a complete wash thanks to the inability of the architect and engineer to come up with a beam that was acceptable both to the engineers and to the city. After weeks of doing nothing, they finally came up with the blue beams that you see here.

In September, the new beams are installed and the tie beams tied, so we are ready to go. The General Contractor is dying to get out of there so we see some real speed. Workers show up in numbers and work long days.

We can now begin getting a true sense of what the house will look like. The new entrance comes up (the typical, standard issue Coral Gables entrance); the back looks real, with the new living room getting dimension. Soon we will begin seeing interior partitions.

We are still living well inside the house as all of the construction is happening outside.

We are surrounded by noise, workers and inspectors. Overall, however, we have not had a single problem with inspectors, as the GC knows the regulations and works well within them.