Although week 20 of the remodel brought a number of significant changes, as you’ll see in this week’s gallery, progress from week to week is getting a bit harder to see from the street, as more of the work moves indoors to the infrastructure and mechanical systems of the house.

Two things you can see from the outside are work on the roof and exterior trim. There was a team installing shingles on the second floor roof while we were at the house on Saturday—hence, we all work masks during our visit. And earlier in the week, the crew had begun preparing the exterior walls for the application of stucco, though none had been applied as of Saturday.

The Saturday roofing work led to a bit of drama: in San José, residential construction is not allowed on weekends, so the roofers’ presence led to some noise complaints from our neighbors. I’m not sure whether there was any fallout from the city—or even if roofing technically qualifies as construction—but the roofers haven’t been back on the weekend since.

This week also brought the installation of furnaces, upstairs and down, along with ducts running to various parts of the house. It’s still something of an open question as to what challenges having these units in the attic and crawlspace, respectively, will present, but we weren’t left with many good options that didn’t eat up a big chunk of storage.

Finally, we were very excited to see that our new patio doors were installed during the week. Better access to the backyard is a key component of the new layout: Julie has long lamented that our backyard has been under-utilized because having to go through our (admittedly very messy) garage was a pain, so seeing those doors in place felt like a big step. We actually picked out the specific model we went with all the way back in June of 2018, so this moment has been a very long time coming.

Gallery: Week 20: Shingles, Ducts, and Doors