99.9999% complete

From the family room















From the kitchen closet















From the garage door















A close look at the island

Hang'm High

Windows put back (thanks Steve O and Papi)
















After we got the windows all situated, it was time to start hanging cabinets (thanks Eric and Papi). Below are updated pictures.

View from the family room TV















View from the garage door.














View from the entry from the living room

Paint the town....yellow?

Well Christina, Jack, Andrew and I put the final coat of paint on the ceiling and the kitchen walls in preparation for installing the cabinets.



Don't be fooled by the other kids in the background...they didn't help at all that night!



Also, I had to include the picture below which Elizabeth sent me. It's a picture made by a photo booth at Chuck-E-Cheese. Stephen's smile is so funny.

Walk the walk...see the progress (updated 8/3/08)

30 sec walk through on 7/21/08


30 sec walk through on 7/25/08


30 sec walk through on 8/2/08

Demolitious (update 8/6/08)

July 19th, demolition day. Betty and I got up early and rented the tile buster at Home Depot then we arrived home at 8am to get set up for the big day. We had previously had a large city dumpster delivered to collect the waste we created and when I saw it I thought, "man, that's big, I don't think we'll fill that up". Well, I was wrong, we filled it. Notice the glove on the side of the dumpster in this photo, it's huge. Anyway, we finished and then started working on the remodeling. Here are a series of photo's from different locations in the house.

Picture from the Kitchen sink toward the dining room

These photo's are from the entry door from the garage.

These are pictures from the family room where the TV hangs.


















These are from our master bedroom door













These are from the front door.

4 days in a wind tunnel

After the second disaster, we decided it was time to call the insurance company. Thinking we wouldn't get far with the insurance company, due to the fact that my brilliance caused the wash out, we found out that we were covered and would be able to recover a lot of the cost to replace the damaged goods. The first step was to bring in Airescue. They come in and attempt to dry out your home. Two men, two high capacity blowers, two high capacity dehumidifiers and two large holes in our walls was all it would take. After preparing the area they kicked on the fans and dehumidifiers.

Has anyone ever been to MOSI in Tampa and experience the simulated hurricane winds? That's what our house sounded and felt like for over 4 days! At first, we'd try to talk to each other and then we'd be shouting and still you couldn't hear each other. We were continually tempted to turn them off but they had to run constantly. We eventually got used to the noise and proceeded with life. Betty and I actually started enjoying not being able to hear the kids screaming it the next room. And, after continuing to work on the roof, it was nice to come down and stand in front of the blower and cool off.

After allowing the roof to dry, Betty's dad, Michael, Andrew and I started replacing the roof. It started out nice in the morning, then around 10:30 it started to get hot, then it got hotter, until it was like working in molten lava. We finally got the main roof down and all that remained was the shingle line across both roofs. I decided then that I would only work up to 10:30 and then in the late afternoon when shade covered the roof. That first day, Betty's dad took off work to help out. He worked hard and was a big help but the sun got the best of him and he decided that living another day was better than helping his son-in-law. Michael, Andrew and I continued until the last shingle was paced.

A cloud with my name on it

So, as you may have heard, we had a lot of damage to our home, mainly in the kitchen, due to one rain cloud that decided to stall over our house for 15 minutes. The day before the catastrophe, the kids and I removed our flat roof. Not a small task, it measures 600 square feet. We worked all day removing the asphalt material, felt, some shingles and then replaced the damaged wood.

It's amazing what you find when you start tearing apart houses. The roof had apparently been re-surfaced before and instead of replacing rotted wood, they just tried to patch it up. Well, guess where the leaks were, right, directly below the areas where they did their nasty patch work. We worked through the day and finally got the roof ready for it's new surface. We didn't see a cloud all day, as a mater of fact we were praying for clouds to give us some shade but to no avail. The chance of rain was 10% so I opted not to spend the $150 on a tarp to cover the roof, we'd get up there the next day and surface it.

Sunday we got up for Mass and I checked the radar and the sky looked clear, not active Doppler that I could see. Well, while in Mass the clouds decided to build over my house and only my house. On the way home it started to rain, and rain, and rain. Did you know that AC vents can leak 10 gallons of water per hour? And microwave ovens, connected to the roof vend, can strain water through them at even a higher rate? Did you know that lights, ceiling, and walls are not completely water proof? So I flipped the power to keep our selves from being electrocuted and we started managing water flow. While we were singing in the rain, Betty ran to Home Depot to buy tarps. She got home just after the rain stopped. We continued to clean up the mess and later that day spread out the tarp to cover the roof.

We decided to keep the roof tarped at night then pulling it back during the day to allow it to dry out. We did this Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon Betty had to take kids to Dr. appointments so they left it tarped to protect if from more rain. Well, when she returned, the wind had turned up one corner of the tarp allowing more rain to flow into our home, this time no one was home.