Last year we began dreaming and thinking of adding a garden room onto the front of our house. We wanted or needed to do this for several reasons. One reason was due to some questionable building practices there was some water damage and dry rot. Another reason was that we needed a room that could be a secured area from a boy who has autism. Imagine not being able to leave a paper document, book or electronic device on a table for fear it might get ripped up, go sailing across the room, or worse yet...eaten! It is our hope that this room will help to provide a remedy to this problem. 
As you probably guessed there is a lot of work involved in any building project and we have chosen to do the bulk of the work ourselves. We simply don't have the resources to hire it done and having to do so would have made it impossible. Fortunately we have some good friends and family who have pitched in to help! My friend Wally Hyde donated a week of his time to help me build the concrete forms and install the rebar grid. What a blessing that was! I should also mention that we enjoyed nearly a month of beautiful weather during the month of December which allowed us to progress as far as we have.
Uncle Marv graciously gave up a weekend to come down and be in charge of the concrete pour. He made it look pretty easy but believe me...I know better! Shoving cement around is hard work and making it look pretty is even harder. That being said Marv did a great job!
Next on the agenda was to remove our bay window which had lost it's seal and was all cloudy on the inside. It made me a little nervous to expose such a large opening in our house but we just run the pellet stove more these days and are heating the neighborhood as well!
Laurie and I removed the bay window ourselves and were hoping not to break it in the process in order to avoid a mess. As it turned out it was kind of like chopping down a big tree. When it started to go it was way too heavy for us so we had no choice but to quickly get out of the way! I nearly put her in the hospital running over her!
This shows the hole we created which I believe is about 7'x 8'ft. I know that there are many places is the country where doing this in the winter would not be advised but thanks a mild winter, some sheeting material and tar paper we are keeping the weather outside for now.
With most of the destruction done it's finally time to do some construction. Our plans called for a 20' 6x10 beam to be installed in our house where the new room will attach. This thing weighs several hundred pounds so we had a boom truck deliver it from the lumber yard. Again I had to rely on some good neighbors to help with getting it into our house and out of the rain.
We hired the man who drew up the plans for us to come over and I helped him place the beam into it's final resting place on the wall. Boy was I glad when that was done especially since the roof didn't fall in during the process! Hopefully we will have some framing pictures soon posted. I'm learning a lot and looking forward to this next phase. Stay tuned!
