Goodbye Deck

Last week was a big day in all kinds of ways. We removed the wall between the kitchen and dining room and brought in a support beam. A beautiful parallam beam that'll look amazing when it's stained. A parallam beam is engineered wood that's made from wood strands and bonded together. It ends up being stronger than trees. It has a beautiful woven pattern that looks both manufactured and natural all at the same time.

A cross-section view of the intertwined wood strands that make up our beam.

The beam in place.

 The beam really helped to transform the vibe of the room. Where before it was always two separate spaces, the beam has unified the rooms into a single grand living space. It's going to be the most inviting room of the house.

And the deck. That thing was rotting and ready to come down with a good strong wind or a determined big bad wolf.

It had to come down. And so, last week our deck wizards came in and started stripping away the old deck to make way for the new --

Going...

...going...

...gone.

The poor thing looks naked now. For the next 6 weeks, we'll be deckless. Next steps, a new water line is coming in from the city. We're working from old lead pipes that require filtering so we're getting an upgrade to proper, safer lines. Hopefully we won't need to filter our water anymore. Once the water line's been run, the deck can get started.

Big Day

Yesterday was a big day at the house. In fact a lot has happened but we've been so busy that our blog posts have been wanting. Okay so here goes.

Our contractors have started the work to rebuild our demo'd house into a beautiful home. And yesterday, two big things happened. First, our unbearable mess of a jungle out front has been stripped away. 

We can now see a house where before it was just 3 meter bush. This was primarily done to give the City access to upgrade our water lines, but this was also a great opportunity for us to open up the house and give it some breathing room. We're announcing to the neighbourhood...this won't be the scary house on the block anymore!

Next was the beam...

Our contractor's team hoisted the support beam to our dining room/kitchen area. And it truly is a beautiful thing. Over 400lbs, their whole team were all hands on deck for that. I was hoping to be there to watch it go up but these guys were fast. It was all done by the time I got back from work.

The kitchen's now competely open and for the first time, we get a good sense of what the space will be like.

There've been lots more changes and updates but I'll have to leave them for another post. Gotta run. More to come...