Well this past weekend (actually five days since last Thursday) was super productive.  Sarah and I managed to fit in a little fun with a kayaking trip and a bbq with some friends, but this break was mostly about getting a good chunk of work done downstairs.  The contractor was also back to help, and he took care of pouring the footings for the columns holding the wall we're taking out, and adding new floor joists to the kitchen.  Sarah and I finally got the permit from the city, had an inspection for the footings and spent the first day or two working outside on the porch.  Sunday and Monday we focused on refinishing the doors going into the front foyer.  This was no small task...first we had to remove all the window stops, scrape all the loose paint, fill any holes, get new glass cut, install the glass, replace all the stops and finally prime and paint.  These doors are going to be the finishing touch to the foyer so spending so much time on one task wasn't all so bad.

Here's one of the doors...and this was after spending a day working on them.  Unfortunately the drunk Irishman who built the door 100 years ago didn't make all the lites the same size.

Sarah working hard on the door trim pieces.  We have to wear respirators for a lot of the work since there's lead paint everywhere.

And here are the doors after two days working on them (in 95 degree heat and humidity).  The last thing to do is scrape the paint from the glass and then we are DONE.

This is the temporary wall the contractor built to shore up the floor above.  Some of the studs had to be removed to pour the new footing.

The new footing's covered in plastic on the bottom left.  All the joists there are brand new and we can finally see some semblance of a kitchen floor!

Another side project from this weekend was to create new corbels for the front porch to replace rotten ones. We used the originals to create a template...and saved several hundred $$ in the process.

This past Sunday (after the big wedding on Saturday) Sarah and I continued working on the front porch, hoping that it'd be a day of just painting.   But as is the case with these old houses, the simple painting project turned into a bigger one after we uncovered some significant rot in the porch's box beam.  After tearing out the rotten board and blocking and making a quick Lowe's run we spent the rest of the day cutting, priming and nailing in the new board.  It wasn't as easy as I was thinking and took the rest of the afternoon to finish (plus there's more for next weekend).  When 6:30 came around we were pretty much out of gas so decided to end the weekend with the first barbeque with our new grill.

The bracket on the corner is a complete goner but luckily the column is rot free.

One of the main things we wanted to fix with this house is the front entry area.  Right now it's, well, about as inviting as a funeral home...dark, with ugly doors and no character.  We've been shopping around for doors for a while but never found anything that really excited us, and the price of new doors can be pretty outrageous.  A few weeks ago while talking with a coworker who just recently renovated an old house, we were offered a chance to pick through some old doors they didn't need.  We ended up with a few solid wood doors...a 24" we can use for the bathroom, and two 32" for the two bedrooms.  The biggest find was two pocket doors, with each leaf 36" wide and 8 feet tall and glass inserts they can make the perfect front doors into each apartment.  But of course with everything there's work involved, from sanding and scraping to replacing the broken glass, but it'll be worth it in the end.

This one actually has most of the glass still left...the other only has one pane left.

Today we finally finished the majority of the exterior painting that we have to do, so now all that's left is to finish up the front porch and the window trim around the house.  We finished painting the siding on one side just in time for a huge thunderstorm....hopefully the paint dried in time!