Snowzilla

What can I say - Snowzilla has been a blast and it just keeps going.  No school since last Thursday and who knows when they'll go back.  Hank and Gus are in heaven!  We all are actually.  Matt has been outside playing with the boys all day everyday since it started snowing on Friday.  We've gone for walks outside that make us feel like we're in Vermont. We got about 23 inches and it has just been beautiful.  The city remains virtually at a standstill since they haven't plowed most neighborhoods yet (yes, this is 2 days later) so everyone is still stuck at home.  No complaints from our kids, big or small, although Maman won't mind everything finally goes back to "normal".  Knowing DC that won't be for a few more days so in the meantime we'll play in the snow! 

The Big House

So its been some time since I've updated the old blog with our progress on our new house project.   As you may recall, we purchased a home back in June of 2013 with the intention of doing a major renovation on it before we moved in. Well, we worked on a renovation plan for about 6 months before realizing that it ultimately did not make much sense to try and save the house.  So we scratched those plans and started all over again. Six months after that we had plans we loved enough to begin the bidding and permitting process.  That took some time as well.  We finally broke ground on the house in the summer of 2015 and we've been making slow but steady progress ever since.

Current expected move in date is end of 2016, although I am approaching this entire project with a great skepticism that does not allow me to believe that's possible.  We'll see.  What I can say for sure is that the house will be fabulous when it's done.  We've put a lot of thought into the design and we are so excited to see it coming together.  It will be a wonderful place for our family to grow up in and all of this waiting will be worth it in the end.

Below you can see some pics of the project so far - I promise to be better about documenting this process for here on out.

Phase 1:  The Teardown

Phase 2: The Big Dig

Phase 3:  The Foundation

The guest bedroom (where the ladder is)

The bay window in the dining room

The basement which looks massive like this...

Surveying his castle

Phase 4: Framing

The front entry

The second story going up

The house from the front, pre garage

The house from the front, now with the garage on the left

The kitchen, looking at the wall that will house our cabinets and range/oven.  

The double height family room, adjacent to the kitchen

The master bedroom.  The boys are in the bathroom and the closet is to Matt's left.