Has it already been a week since my last post?

Well- there has certainly been enough construction progress to report on, but since my friend deb, god bless her honesty, flat out told me that these construction pics were boring the hell out of her, I've decided to post some classic photo's of her instead- followed, of course, by progress pictures of construction...

Just kidding deb, ha, sorry- I just don't really have anything else going on at the moment to share with everyone.  I do anticipate, however, that the project should be wrapped up before the end of March, at which point my posts will likely become more frequent again and contain more than just images of construction work since Ill be back on the road and passing through some interesting places.

I've been feeling good this past week, better than the first week.  My body is starting to adjust to 8 hours of physical work followed by a few hours at the gym each day, and Im feeling more energetic and healthy than I have in a while.  I hope I can keep this up- but Im sure once Im back on the road it will be hard to do- though hopefully I can remain active as the climate warms up out on my bike or just being outside.

Joe and I finally made it to Chicago this weekend to get some food and drinks- so that is fun to report as well, but sadly, aside from the few pictures I posted from my phone to twitter, I dont have much to report other than we had a great meal/ drinks at a place called Brasserie Jo and enjoyed a night out on the town (I decided it would be a bad idea to bring the big camera to a new place for a night of drinking...)

Here are some images from the past week:

What do Joe and Lucy have in common?  (quiz of the week...)  

I'll give you one clue... neither of them uses a brush...

and now, for the ever so exciting -construction status pictures

this is a view looking at the entrance of the old walk in closet (opposite side of the room as the new bathroom, which was also formerly a closet space...)

This is the inside of the old closet- which we need to double in size in order to create space for his/her storage.

We snapped a line in chalk and started off by cutting out the carpet in what will become the new space.

Pulling up old carpet.

Ever wonder  what contractors do when they are taking their coffee breaks?   HopScotch... apparently (this was an amusing discovery- joe said that there are usually always funny things written on framing members under the drywall.  We made sure to add some of our own notes to the new framing in the bathroom.

Tearing down the old plaster around part of the closet- this section of the house is 125 years old- the line where the addition (which was built 30 years ago) starts is near the middle of the master bedroom.

What a mess.  I realized that I haven't included many pictures of what it looks like when we are in the middle of the work- i always show the "after clean up" pictures...

Me with my mask on.  I usually wear it out after work- most people compliment me on my fashion sense.

The new space after our first day of demolition. 

The miserable sub floor that was responsible for my second least favorite day of work (since scraping glue off 2x4's) each sheet had about 25 nails- each one had to be pulled out using a tool called a bear claw.  What a pain.

Some puppies want snacks given to them from under the table.  Not lucy- she just wants your socks.

The new wall (built directly above the old exterior wall of the house) 

We had a few inches of snow here- nothing like what people got back east, but it was nice to know that my commute the next morning was only a 5 second walk from my room to the master bedroom.

This is what the closet looks like now.  The recessed wall, seen here, which will have a door in it, is going to have custom hard wood shelves built into it with lights above each shelf.  We also left a 16" gap above the wall so that some of the natural light from the closet can penetrate into the new master bedroom entry hall.

New power in the bathroom (we worked from 9-430 on saturday... at which point Joe's dad, Arthur (Arty), picked up for us and wrapped up the work with the electrician around 9pm.)

Arty running wire.

Me at the end of a long saturday of work.

A few pictures of my room (well, technically Kaitlins room, but I am borrowing it for the time being) If you look at the digital frame (which was a great gift from my brother this Christmas) you will see that Matt LoPresto was up on the rotation.  The frame is linked to my Flickr account so it goes through so many pictures.  I love having it on in the background- Im always being reminded of all the amazing friends and family I have in my life!

Thats it for now.

Ill try to get some non-libertyville/construction pictures up next week, but I cant make any promises!