Up In The Air, Part 5

Not much visible has happened in the past few days. By peering through the openings in the basement where the girders still protrude, I can see that some of the interior drain tile has been laid, and there are a few odd 2x4s that appear to be getting ready to help hold us up until the microlam beams and posts are in and the girders are out. When that will be is as yet unknown.

Outside, concrete footings have been poured for the pillars of our front porch, the roof of which is still with us, resting on temporary posts on the girders. I think that will eventually come off and be rebuilt. I used to have a hammock chair screwed into a beam of the old porch roof; the hook pulled out of the beam and pulled part of a ceiling board down, and I landed hard on my keester. I wouldn't be sorry to see that board and beam replaced.

And we have an enclosure at the back door. We have had an open porch, with a step up about halfway along it. We collected snow, rain, snowment and blown oak leaves, but it was light and airy outside the kitchen door. The elevation of the house has changed; we are about a foot and a half higher, and by the time a floor is established on this new porch we have a couple of steps outside and a step up onto the porch. We have walls that weren't there before. There appears to be a big window coming (maybe 3'x3') and a door, which needs to have a lot of glass. The north wall doesn't have a window, but it will need at least a narrow one so we can see the garage. The immediate benefit is that we now have our back door available to use for the first time in two weeks; Lucy the dog is pretty happy.

Wendy won't like it. She fears that the back entry will seem to be a cave, and although the window will help, the door and the addition of a north view will be crucial to the final acceptance of this change. The enclosure is important, since the basement now extends beneath the back entry and a porch enclosure will keep rain and snow off of what amounts to the basement ceiling.
The enclosed area is long and narrow, so its main benefit will be weather protection rather than storage of any kind. We have no plans to finish or insulate it, although that may come later; I envision the eventual new door as being open most of the time except in crappy weather, and our current storm door staying in place. But, although most of our weather systems come in from some variant of the west, a lot of the actual rain and snow blow from the east or swirl around, and it will be a very nice thing to not get nailed by cold wet right outside the kitchen.

Wendy is out of town, and on her trip home she ran afoul of closures of the Interstates due to flooding. She found her way onto a detour that was awfully slow, and then lucked into finding another detour that has aimed her toward home rather than making her backtrack. The southern part of the state is coming out of the rain but continues to suffer from flooding. Iowa gets the news, because theirs is worse, but we have some raspy conditions. See an earlier rant.

Tiger Woods seems to be recovering nicely from his knee surgery. Tim Russert died today. The weekend is upon us. Enjoy.