See-through

I can no longer pretend that our house looks pretty much the same from the front as it used to.

It's probably also (past) time for me to take the key to the front door off of my keychain.  Though I'm not doing that tonight.

I feel very strange about our house being open to the front like this.  On one hand, it's been totally open from the back for quite a while now, so any sense of privacy or security was illusory.  At the same time, the removal of that illusion is kind of shocking.  I hope they get that new wall up with a quickness, because it feels too nekkid this way.

Let's explore the nekkidness.  It'll be fun, in a going-to-therapy kind of way.  

When the house was built, we think, it had an L-shaped porch (Facing south and east, because, as I learned while being a big dork the other day and staying up late reading about my neighborhood on the internet, prevailing winds in Houston blow in from the Gulf--to the southeast.)  So the old porch is everything in the picture below that's NOT interior--both the white ceiling and the gray.    That square that's kind of surrounded by the porch was the entryway--East-facing door, south-facing door from the entryway into the living room.  That new piece of wood is where the wall between the bedroom and the porch/entryway was.

At some point, someone made most of the South part of the L and half of the entryway into a walk-in closet for the bedroom, so we had a skinny entryway and a smaller porch.  The gray part of the ceiling was the part that became a closet.

And now, on the way to having a big, square porch and a South-facing front door that pops right into the living room (the theory being that the porch will be our entryway), we have a very open bedroom and a gaping, muddy hole where the entryway used to be.

In addition, most of our windows are gone.  They have lovely new frames for the lovely new windows, but I'm a little worried about our house tonight.  It seems very unprotected, though if anyone wants to tote a cast-iron bathtub past the security fence, I guess they've earned it.  But they better not.

Fortunately, there were lots of other exciting things to distract me from the missing front-of-house.  Stairwell windows!  About five feet tall and above my head when I'm standing on the landing.  So I can go all out on a family photo extravaganza snaking up the stairs.  

Dogtrot Roof!  It ties the house together looking at it from the outside.  And, more practically, means I'll never have to carry groceries to the house in the rain again.  Detached garages are the norm in the Heights, and this little roof means the path from my car to my kitchen is no longer plagued with slippery deck boards, mosquitoes, and torrential rain.  That's why it even gets an artsy picture.

Artsy!

Strap thingys!  I've tried to find out more about these, but there's not much about them on the internet except where to buy them.  I know some straps are used as structural support, and some are used to help prevent my house from washing or blowing away in a hurricane.  Either way, thumbs up!

All this was done on a rainy day, by the way.  I'm starting to expect to come by one morning and they've been working all night and the house is finished.  I'd have no objections.

And finally, some chili peppers in the wall.  For a snack or to put some juju on our house?  I don't know.  If they're not gone soon I'm bringing holy water.