In which we turn our focus on the East Side!

The East Side of the Ocean House

We frustratingly ran out of siding this week. The company sent a new batch on Friday morning, which the boys unloaded by boom truck onto the third floor only to realize it was the wrong siding about half way through unloading!  The company sent the grained siding rather than the plain flat siding that we have been using.  I was so looking forward to no more blue board!  

I gotta remember that anything is better than this...right? 

HA!  I love this photo!!

What the boys did focus on was completing the molding on the gable end, which has been missing for years. 

The framework is in for the waterview balcony off the first floor bedroom of the apartment.  This will be a great place to watch the fireworks during the Celtic Festival....if the boys can get it finished by then.

The base coat for the lower level continues to dry.  I kind of like the gray color, but we will snazz it up a bit with the final float coat finish color.  The ole' girl looks like she should be on a Boston side street or something....

Maybe if we all think good thoughts, the back ordered roofing materials will magically appear this week and we can get started on the roof!  Special thanks go to Thomas Kittridge, the Economic Development Director of the Town of Belfast for working so hard for us on the roofing project. 

In which it is Throwback Thursday!

Take a turn back in time with me as we look at the evolution of the lower level of the Ocean House.

Here we are again at the beginning, before we bought the property.  The lower level consists of plywood and cardboard walls with 150 year old cedar tree trunks as support posts

Here we are about 5 months into owning the building and I finally get around to ripping down the cardboard and plastic walls and making an opening in the plywood wall.  This new door was in place for probably 4 months. 

I kind of miss my piles of broken rock and concrete that got me through the fall and early winter

What we'll do for headroom, huh?  I love this photo below, it shows the bowed out front foundation wall that crumbled when D & S Jacking raised the building.  Notice the wall of salvaged boards that doubled as a foundation wall for about 15 years before we came along.  Note also that I still have about a foot and a half to dig down underneath that pile of rock.

The magic of walls!

...and door and window frames!

Looking straight and true,  I was so proud!

Yesterday's view!  We have a base coat for the stucco foundation wall.  No. More. Blue. Board.

The cement color is so much better than the blueboard!

A quick lower level recap.  This is what the space looked like right after we took possession of the building....or rather it took possession of us!

This wall crumbled immediately when the building was lifted in the air.  

 See previous photos to get the outside view on the same day!

my diabetes cure!  I can't believe I worked down here before new support beams were added.  

Bear with me here, this gets good soon!  The cross beams here had about a 6' clearance.  I gave the cedar posts to Ron Cowan for his totem carvings.

Aaaaand, through the magic of the space / time continuum comes photos of the current state of the lower level!  Hard to believe, but this photo is taken from almost the same angle as the one above.

 yessah!

In which there are some nice new photos

A couple of nice photos showing the progress on the exterior.  The masons started yesterday on the ground level, taping the blue board and adding a mesh screening for the stucco.  We have two color choices, so I won't reveal until we choose.  I've ordered a decorative bracket for the porch front on the building, it should be here in a few days and we will see if it works so that we can order the rest, or move onto something else.  The taping and mudding of the lower level space is going along smoothly.  So things are progressing!

Hopefully, the roof should get started soon too.  

look at all this light!

In which there are some more photos of the Sheet Rock!

The actual putting up of drywall is done throughout the building.  Now a different guy will come today to start taping.  I don't know if he muds as well, but I am sure to find out.  My only regret was in not asking them to keep the most usable scraps so that we could donate to Habitat for Humanity or something.  I bet an entire house of useable scraps were thrown out.  Unfortunately, I didn't think about it until I saw the dumpster filled with broken scraps thrown into the dumpster from the windows.  

Here are some photos of the first floor space where Brambles will move in September.  I can't wait for the glass to come in for the front windows.  

 The space looks very Country French to me today.

The lower level is full of light!

I just can't believe that this space exists.  It is the biggest change to the building for me.  The height of the ceiling is 7'2" now.  When we started, I couldn't stand up straight in here.  

In which small steps of progress are good!

The boys finally finished up the last bit of siding on the South side of the main building.  They had to wait for the electric company to come and move the wires for the building.  I say that even that little bit really makes a difference.  Here is to hoping they made some progress on the back of the building. Let's hope the dormers get finished soon!  

In which things are starting to take shape indoors.

When I left for parts South last Wednesday, I had this idea in my head that the sheet rocking would be done before I got back.  Perhaps I thought this because the sheet rocker said that each floor would take a day.  So, five working days later, the dude just got down off the third floor, which was actually his second floor.  I was pretty shocked to see the transformation when I returned.  No longer did I have views to every window and every room from where I stood.  The apartment seems smaller to me, but at times much bigger...does that make any sense at all??

This is going to be a hard apartment to photograph when it is done.  A view from the kitchen to the living room.

The view to the kitchen.  Our plan is to make the finished kitchen fairly industrial.

First floor bedroom

 Even with the walls, there is still a lot of light here.

I think I was told 8 days total for putting up, sanding and mudding...I think 18 days is probably more like it.  At least the weather forecast calls for showers for the next month or so.  

In which we have a shameless plug for ourselves.

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In which we play take-me-back-Tuesday

I am back from my travels.  I took lots of photos of the sheet rocking progress, however the files were corrupted on my phone for some reason, so you will have to contend with my take-me-back-Tuesday photos.  

Before:  This was taken about October 2012, before we bought the Ocean House

A year ago, in June 2013 after removing the barn.  Notice the shape of the foundation...if you can call it that.  You can see the outline of the old barn on the side of the building. 

October or so, 2013.  Note that you can see all the way through the building in places, also note that in some places, there is no building to impede your view, because it is so rotted in places.  The only way we had access to the third floor was through that white door 

building the addition.  

This was my view coming down Pendleton Lane this afternoon.  The boys will be able to finish that one last stretch where you can see blue board as soon as CMP comes to move the power line to the roof of the addition.  

I really like this view.  I worked out better than I thought it would.