In the last week or so, a lot of progress has been made on our project to add a front porch & entry way to the house and re-pour the circle driveway.  At the start of the week, the contractors wrapped up the concrete work by pouring a new sidewalk to the door by the kitchen and also a small section of concrete, which will be a short sidewalk from the driveway to the new front porch.  With the rest of the concrete in place, John and Gary then worked to finish the rough grading of the area around the new driveway.  Here are some pictures:

The new sidewalk to the kitchen door.

Grading to the right of the circle driveway

Work on the New Driveway is Finished!

We were able to drive on the new driveway for the first time on Friday and we’re loving it!  The circle drive is so much easier to navigate than the old one was – it’s plenty wide and the lack of curbs is so much more forgiving than what we had before.  I think we’re also really going to like the larger parking area by the garage with enough room to back out without having to drive in the grass.  Overall, it’s taken about a month, but we’re so happy with the results!

With the work on the driveway pretty much wrapped up, Gary started working to frame up the walls for the entry way addition toward the end of last week.  The exterior walls are up and the area around the existing front door has been re-framed so that it can be opened up to the existing entry way area.  Here are some pictures of what’s been done so far:

The Exterior Walls of the New Addition

New Framing around the Old Front Door

When starting work on the framing this week, Gary also did some work to tear down the existing bead board ceiling in the area of the new addition so that it can be replaced with a new plaster ceiling.  We were really surprised to learn that the ceiling we thought was original was actually much newer, probably added in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s.  From the looks of the rafters for the original porch roof, the original ceiling was likely stucco, which suffered water damage at some point and was replaced with the bead board.

The bead board ceiling was installed below the original roof.

The lower roof structure was removed and the electricians came in on Friday to remove the old knob and tube wiring in preparation for re-wiring to add the new light fixtures.  Next week, Gary will work to frame in the new ceiling structure for the addition.  We’re excited, though, because this gives us the opportunity to raise the ceiling height for the new addition by another 4 or 5 inches.  We were really concerned that the ceiling would feel low in the new entry way, so we’re excited to be able to make it a little taller than we expected!

The Original Roof Structure

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