As you can see in this week’s gallery, there wasn’t as much obvious progress in week eight as in previous weeks. The most visible changes were the installation of additional subfloor in the new sections of the house and further demolition in the living room and in our master bedroom. Notably, the last section of the old garage wall, which had been left standing because it was where our main electrical panel was mounted, was finally removed and left lying face-down in the grass.

It looks as though they’re in the initial phases of starting work on the second floor. Last week, they took out the ceiling in the living room. This week, they cut through the ceiling joists—adding additional temporary supports in the process—and marked out areas on the floor where new beams are to be installed, as you can see in this photo.

They also removed the ceiling from the short hallway in our master bedroom, presumably to allow them to add support for Julia’s bedroom, which will sit over our master bath. We’re still a little down about losing the skylight in that room, a change made even more bittersweet by the extraordinary light we have in the bathroom in the rental house.

We made some long-delayed infrastructure decisions over the last week; unfortunately, they were largely the kind that results in us spending more money. We elected to go forward with a water softener in view of the staggering hardness of our water, and we decided to add on a recirculation line to keep hot water available on-demand at the taps throughout the house. I had long been frustrated by the length of time it took to get hot water in some sections of the house—minutes in the case of the front bathroom—and in my fuzzy, vague memories of childhood didn’t remember that being the case in our house growing up. That disconnect motivated me to press for the recirculation line, but I’ve since been informed that my memories on this front might be somewhat rose-tinted. C’est la vie.

We also elected to add spray foam insulation under the floors of both the old and new sections of the house, a particularly labor-intensive procedure that requires the installer to lie on his or her back and direct the insulation up, between the floor joists. The idea is that this will make the house envelope more airtight, reducing heating and cooling expenses in the long term. However, I expect the effectiveness of this approach will be partially compromised by the fact that we’re not adding new insulation to the existing walls. Neverthless, we felt that this was the sort of thing that’s easiest to do now, when the house is open to the environmet anyway, so we decided to bite the bullet and have it taken care of.

We plan to meet with the architect and contractor this week to resolve the shear wall question once and for all. To move it, we’ll have to go back to the city to have the changes to the structural plans approved, but Enzo tells us it won’t impact the project schedule: at this stage, there are plenty of other problems to tackle.

Gallery: Week 8: Floors and More