First the roof came off. Then it poured rain all weekend. Of course.
There were tarps up, but they leaked. It could have been worse. We lost a light fixture. Some old drywall got wet in a few places and will eventually need to be replaced. The bathroom mats were sopping. The house survived.
It set us back about three weeks and cost a lot of money, but the asbestos is gone, and the renovation is moving ahead again.
The new roof went up. And the old part of the roof got two skylights and a new skin of dark grey shingles. The addition has dramatically changed the overall appearance of the house. It’s not longer a squat 1940s gable-and-shed-roofed block. Now the roofline appears more interesting and broken up from all angles.


As the crew throws up partition walls and roughs in for fixtures, we’re starting to get a sense of how the interior will feel. The airy height of the staircase and hallway is great. We’ll probably be tucking a reading/study area in against the wall, which will eventually have a row of four small windows under the eaves on the right.
We’re now at the point of ordering tile and flooring, which is exciting. It will be another couple of weeks before it goes down, but reaching this point was enough to inspire me to start assembling the IKEA cabinetry.
The stairs themselves feel immense. They used to be narrow, enclosed and more ladder-like, with lean-back-and-duck head clearance and irregularly-sized treads. Now they are completely to code, which makes them about 50% longer and a dream to climb. They also have natural light from the skylight, and are open to the living room for the bottom five steps which also gives them a sense of spaciousness. Getting upstairs no longer feels like a trip to a maltreated servant’s garret.
The bathroom is harder to appreciate properly at this point without the fixtures, cabinets or window. It seems much bigger than it will be eventually.

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