As I said the paperwork started in February.  By mid May the final plans were submitted to the Town of Truckee for permits.  To our dismay, they said it would be at least 3 weeks before the earliest approval.  With the July 4th holiday looming our start date of June 22 was not looking good.  Along with Truckee we had to have site plans and all exterior changes approved by the Tahoe Donner Homeowners association before any construction or exterior work could start.  Luckily we could start the Tahoe Donner process concurrently.  We had two meetings with them in June and met all their requirements and were just waiting for the final Truckee approval.  Truckee came back before July 4th and asked for some minor changes.  We worked with the Engineer to have the plans modified and quickly re-submitted.  Luckily the revised plans were approved on Friday, July 5th late in the day and the day after a holiday.  We were quite impressed with that response!  July 10th was the final approval meeting for Tahoe Donner and with approved plans and permits in hand; they also approved the project.  The official start date was July 11th.  Well, if you know Bob, he was counting on that approval and had already scheduled the tree cutter for 8 am on July 11th. and work began.

Below are the three (3) large trees which were very close to the house and had to be taken down for the new garage/workshop addition.

Big tree next to the deck.

A local tree cutting contractor came with his crew, chain saws, large truck with shredder and they went to work. Juan Estrada of Mountain Tree Services mountainje@hotmail.com and his crew were amazing!  I was in the SF Bay Area that morning but Bob described how Juan carefully climbed each tree with ropes and climbing gear.  He then proceeded to limb the entire tree, then he went back to the top and started carefully roping off and chain sawing sections which were each lowered down to his crew.  It was like an choreographed dance.  Each huge section carefully dropped so nothing touched either our house or the neighbors house which were both so close.  Each tree section was cut into a 16 inch round which was moved to the back of the house for Bob & I to split on Saturday.  They left the trees with about 5 feet still standing so that the excavating crew could pull the entire stumps out as the stumps would be too close to the addition to leave in the ground. They did a wonderful job and cleaned up everything.  For the big tree by the deck, it was cut close to the ground and the stump will be ‘ground out’ later.  If that stump was pulled out; our driveway would also be pulled out!

Rounds to be split and the 2 tree stumps marked for removal.

Saturday, July 13th Bob rented a wood splitter and we split all but 25 of the largest rounds.  It took all day and of course, it was part of the heat wave time!  During the next week Bob stacked the wood and estimated that we have 3 1/2 cords stacked!

Split wood and remaining rounds.

Bob with the stacked wood, there are 3 rows!  Hopefully, enough pine for 3 winters.  We still need to rent a vertical splitter for the large rounds.

Can you tell, he looks a little tired?  More happened during those few days but that is another post.  We had a wonderful dinner Saturday night at Las Panchitas in Kings Beach, CA

Now, here is where I say ‘we’ but you all know that the real work is done by Bob.  I help as much as I can but Bob is the real doer and scheduler!  First we had to empty main floor area (the kitchen, living room, dining room and bedroom). Then we emptied and consolidated the 1st floor area to use for storage and prepare for dismantling the 1st floor mud room/ laundry (which would be completely torn apart for the new foundation work).  Next Bob tore out the sheetrock, carpet and interior wood trim. We hauled it all down the stair to fill many pick-up truck loads for the dump. This went on for many of our trips to Truckee starting after Memorial Day.

The pictures below will update you on how it looked, the demo and where we are as of July 7th, 2013.

Old wood stove

New wood stove

The first items was to replace the old wood stove with a new, environmentally friendly Quadra-fire stove.  This stove can hold larger logs, banks better and will hold a fire all night long for the winter months.

Next was the removal of items, tearing out carpet and moving the washer and dryer from the 1st floor to the 3rd floor for the duration of the work.  Below show the changes to the kitchen dining room area.

Dining & kitchen before remodel.

Dining & kitchen going

Dining opened to atrium

Kitchen wall which will come down

Below shows the atrium area becoming part of the main house.

Atrium looking towards existing main entry.

Atrium windows trim removed

Atrium windows and dining wall removed

Atrium opened fully and tile removed.

The wall you see in the last picture is structural hence it is still standing.  The contractor and structural engineer have a plan to remove this wall and this space will be open without any header beam showing in the ceiling.

From this point on we have had help while Bob continues to work each day along with the carpenters and contractors.  I am commuting from Hayward to and from Truckee each week to do what I can to help.  More later…

We decided to do all the major items we wanted done:

• New metal roof
• Add a 3rd car garage space for a workshop
• Extend the deck over the new workshop space
• Add windows and sky lights (3) to bring more light into the kitchen, dining and living rooms
• Put in natural gas lines to the second floor
• Put in a new wood stove
• Move the front door to the area of the existing sliding door & make a formal entry area with closets
• Change out any remaining windows in the house with new windows
• Create a new dining room space & add a sliding door to the deck from the dining room
• Build a new kitchen
• Put in new entry doors on main floor and ground floor

This was going to be a much bigger job than the remodel we did in Waikiki last year and we were going to need contractors and help.  The work begins to locate contractors, carpenters and scheduling in detail starting in March 2013.

It was a rare snowy February day in 2013 when we went to Steve Miller’s office, a Structural Engineer in Truckee, CA.  We took in the original and our modified blue prints for the Fuxagufer West.  We wanted to remove the walls between the kitchen and dining areas and a large passive solar atrium that went all the way across the front of the house.  He quickly informed us that the walls we want to take out are ‘structural’ so it will mean tearing out existing foundation from an area we had not planned to remodel and could be costly.  Of course we said, how bad could it be? We need to do this!  So it begins…