Eastward Expansion

 Three years ago we noted that the concrete slab on which our house sits extends out to form the floor of our front porch. The second floor overhangs it, giving the front door and windows some shelter from the elements, but we decided to try to keep the house warmer in the winter by inserting panels between the porch columns. The result was a set of makeshift walls that could be set up in the winter:

 and then taken down in the summer:

 About a year ago, we began to dream of having enough room for a proper dining table in our kitchen. The current configuration of walls would not allow that. We figured, however, if we pushed the front wall on the first floor out over the porch so that the whole slab was inside, we'd hit two birds with one stone. First, we'd get more kitchen space (the kitchen is the front room on the first floor of the house). Second, we'd have the whole slab covered by heated space, so lose less heat through the floor in the winter. When we got an estimate for the construction to do so, the number came in significantly lower than we'd thought. So in July, Colwell Brothers construction (Windsor, NY) came in and gave us 120 new square feet inside and this look outside:

 They pushed out our retaining wall, making room for garbage and recycling bins as well as keeping groundwater away from the house walls:

 Inside, we got more kitchen floor space and a bigger window in the front (ahem, this is before the window was inserted). We found out, however, that the porch actually was a separate slab. Oh, well.

 Opposite the kitchen, where the south end of the porch used to be, we got a mud room and a "pantry," or, more to the truth, a new storage space for all of Sara's candle stuff:

 Now instead of running into the front door as soon as you hit the bottom of the stairs, you have room to breathe, put on your coat, sit down for a snack, or meditate on the complexities of life--not necessarily in that order:

 When LeWayne Colwell was arranging the estimate with me, he asked if I'd be doing the joint work myself. I thought for only a half second before remembering that I despise spackling and sanding. I told him that I'd gladly pay them to have it done. (The work is actually so specialized now that general contractors rarely do it themselves; it's cheaper and faster for them to hire out to someone who does it forty-plus hours per week.)

 Thanks, Colwell Brothers, for a great new space! You do good work. The proof is that my daughter had fun helping to paint the walls of the mud room:

 To match the old part of the kitchen, we got more of the cream and red paint. I'll be taking the old window and door trim and making a chair rail soon. (And really, there is a window there now--made by Madison Vinyl in Bainbridge, who made every other window in our house.)

A few days after the construction was complete, we got a good dose of rain. The dirt patch outside the retaining wall slid pretty well down in front of our door, so I gathered up all the stones I had removed before they did the construction and built a little retaining wall of my own, punctuated with hens-and-chicks harvested from the south side of the house:

Note in the above photo that the electric meter is not hooked up. We found out that until the utility guys hook up the meter again (you can't do it yourself), you get free electricity! Run that dehumidifier with the windows open--Boo-yah!

~ emrys