Porch ceiling and floor

Lots of exciting things in the past couple days...  It's really been a hive of activity!  Wednesday was electrical day: the electrician came and roughed in the new wiring for the porch lights and ceiling fans, as well as a new back door light, a new driveway motion detector light, and a couple new exterior plugs.  He also rerouted the TV cable to the upstairs, which had previously just been hanging in the outside of our old siding (lazy cable installers).  No exciting photos of wires to show.  Thursday and Friday have seen lots of work on the porch trim, porch roof shingles, and siding in the back.

The porch as it looks now!

Mom and I had the inaugural "first cup of coffee" on the porch. 

The kids wanted to join in the fun, now that it's safer to be up there.

We picked out Azek decking boards for the porch.  Should be almost maintenance free, and they feel very solid.

A shot of the almost-finished porch ceiling.  It's split into three parts with false beams in between, to accentuate the entryway over the front door, as separated from the rectangular areas on either side of the entryway.  In the center over the doorway is a junction box for a hanging entry light.  In the center of each side rectangle is a junction box for a ceiling fan, flanked by dimmable canister lights in either side.

Here's the part that was giving us all headaches to figure out how it gets put together in 3-D.  This is where attention to detail really pays off.  Tony's suggestion of how to finish off the rake boards looks very nice, and you can see that they wrap around where the end of the gutter will eventually go.  There was also a big discussion about how to finish off the bottom of the boards that cover the bottom part of the gable end.  The funny thing is that we thought of several possibilities, and then when the carpenters finished it with something that was slightly different than what we discussed, it just looked so right that I didn't even notice the change until they pointed it out.  A few decorative brackets will be added here before it's all done.

I was hoping to have a picture of our new front door installed.  Unfortunately, it arrived damaged last week, so they sent it back, and now the door is expected to arrive Monday.  But to prepare for the door installation, Tony built a temporary wall in our front hall.  It's just held in by friction on rubber pads so it doesn't damage our paint or newly refinished floors.  In a couple days, the old cracked wooden door and lead-paint-peeling-sidelights will be torn out, and the whole bay will be replaced with a new, nicer, insulated door and sidelights.

Meanwhile, siding installation continues around the back of the house.

A closeup of the library window, with the roughed-in electrical boxes for a plug below and driveway motion-detector light above.

The siding now extends around to the kitchen bow window.