We're on the "eve of construction"

Well, it's hard to believe we've gone through this much damage, er, improvement in just under a week. The entire first floor is gutted except for Kitchen.

View from Front Door into Living Room, and view from stairwell looking towards Front Door:

Closeup view of stairwell, the current "challenge"

View from office entrance door:

View from the Dining Room, through a wall that doesn't exist anymore, and a wall that doesn't exist yet.

View from center of Kitchen, and from office entrance, looking through into Kitchen:

From here, it gets SO MUCH better!

I haven't even talked about the exterior...

This is what should be happening in the next few days:

• city inspector to review and approve site for concrete pour of driveway and footpath (this AM, hopefully), going all the way around to back patio.concrete truck and crew to pour the driveway and footpath and base for new wooden steps at front porch. We then need to stay off it by foot for several days and the car has to stay off it for several WEEKS.
• build forms for concrete stairwell base in basement
• work on new load-bearing walls, which will take part of load of stairwell
• build actual stairway

If all this comes to pass, the only way to get into house for several days will be through the hole in fence between our house and neighbor's, and going through the French door at west end of kitchen. The main door, garage, side entrance and sliding door at Office will all be blocked with new concrete. There is also a small gate on the street behind the lot by the old Garage. However, there are mounds of mud that have been excavated so they could put in the patio (actually, it's just a walkway around to the office entrance.

Regardless, this past weekend and the next few days will probably be the most challenging. I got the kitchen cleaned up a little bit and L thinks the worst of the demolition / perpetual dust is over.