Though we were a bit sad it wasn't a white Christmas here in Chicago, the warmer weather has helped move the construction along. New windows are in and the brick work in the back is complete, except for around the back door which *fingers crossed* will be installed next week.

Here is a picture of the front of the house with the new windows. We are planning on refurbishing the front gate and the new stoop should be poured within the next couple of weeks.

The new stairs with the landing are finished! We moved the stairs back about 3 more feet to make more room in the master bedroom which can be seen in the third picture below.

The original stairs led directly upstairs; since we moved them back we put in a landing with a turn and two more steps to get to the second floor.  The original second floor hallway was very wide with much wasted space.  We made the hallway smaller and this helped with making all three bedrooms a little larger in size.

Here is a picture of the kitchen with the utility closet to the left. The original plan was to have one double hung window in the kitchen, but we wanted to make sure we had a lot of light throughout the first floor, so we decided to add another window at the expense of cabinet space.

And another picture of the kitchen with the powder room to the right.

And the back of the house with the new windows. Love it!! Please excuse the pile of trash...

The renovation is really starting to come along! The interior walls are almost all framed and we are hoping to have the new windows installed before the end of the week.

The most amazing transformation so far has been the back of the house. The brick was a mess where the addition had been and our mason tried his best to fix the brick between the two windows upstairs, but the brick was so brittle this was about as good as it was going to get:

Our mason suggested that we use a thin brick material and reface the entire back of the house given the poor state of the existing brick. Here is the back of the house today:

It is still a work in progress, but what a difference!

And the work begins...again!

We are about one month into the renovation and not much work has been done since our last post. There have been a few delays due to design/permitting issues but we are back on track and the work has started again! Let's hope it's not another month before our next update! 

Here is a view of the future kitchen from the living room. On the right you can see the new plumbing stack. Nothing too exciting...

View of the living room from the future kitchen. Again, nothing too exciting here.

View looking up to the reinforced floor joists 

Yeah walls!!! This is view of the guest bedroom looking into the future den.

View of the reinforced floor joists from upstairs

VIew of the master bedroom from the den

View from the master bedroom toward the future master and guest bathrooms

Again, another picture of the floor joists...

Den to the left, guest bedroom to right and Andy.

Here is a view of the back of the house. Where do I start??? The addition has been removed but the boiler remains in place. Let's hope this gets taken care of before it snows...