First Three Weeks

I have no idea where my cameras are. We "moved in" about the first of the month as it was too time consuming to get the children back and forth from the apartment we are renting to the house. Plus they decided they liked the new place better and refused to go home most nights. I started demolition on the main wall January 1st. It runs the length of the house opposite the big window seen below and effectively bisects half of the house. The weekend before last I removed most of the framing from it and installed headers (2x10s) just under the top plates to create two large openings from the living room into the kitchen and dining room. This wall is load bearing (but not by very much) so I had to install a temporary wall of 2x4s to support the weight while I installed the new framing. It is pretty difficult to do this kind of work on the weekend with the kids around: Henry (age 6) and May (age 2) but on good days, when everybody is not too tired, it makes it really pretty cool. When I installed the header leading into the dining room I got Henry to climb up on the ladder to help hold the tape for the measurement, and when we installed the beam, Mary held one end in place and Henry handed me up the framing nailer. We've had our friend Ronnie the plumber out to remove a radiator that was in the kitchen (most of it done in the crawl space with Henry helping) as well as my friend Don the electrician to help rework all the outlets various outlets and switches that I exposed and had laying around on the floor for two weeks. All of this has opened up the space considerably, it's probably the fastest and easiest improvement I think I've ever made to a house, and I'm surprised that none of the previous owners thought to do it. Last Sunday it was somewhere around twenty degrees outside and I napped on the couch in the living room for an hour or so. I don't think the furnace cut on once. I believe this is because of the sunlight coming in from the window is now able to warm the whole of the house and not just that one room. Of course now I have to figure out a way to keep it from cooking us in the summer, but I got a couple of ideas on that. All of this work will segue into the kitchen job, which has been cleaned, stabilized and put on temporary hold. I hope to get something on the subject of the kitchen as well as some pictures up soon. However we've got two rooms to finish up painting before we move the rest of our stuff in from the old apartment that we have to be completely gone from by the first. We need to get that security deposit back to be able to pay for material and tradespeople. Oh yeah, last thing, for some reason I've found myself while doing the majority of this work listening to the soundtrack to the movie Batman Begins. I strongly believe this is due to the fact that I'm the fucking Batman.