The wiring is much of the way done in this picture. Julio has a tendency to really overdo wiring and run individual circuits for just about everything. On the plus side, though, we’ve never, ever tripped a breaker in this house. You can run a table saw or air compressor in just about any room;)

Notice the black ABS pipe in the lower right side of the picture. That was the washer drain for the previous owner, and you can see the dryer’s gas valve just next to it on the floor.

The long wall of the kitchen had been completely reframed by this point.  There was one stud (along the right edge of the plywood) that was untouched.  Every other stud had been moved or replaced to accommodate the new window openings.

Several people have commented on the size of the header.  Yes, a 12" header may be considered overkill for an opening that’s about 5.5′ across!  However, we had taken down the header that had divided the kitchen from the eating nook, so it was easy to recycle by cutting it to length and reusing it above the new windows.  While it may be excessive, at least we can be confident that it will never, ever sag…

The back windows was complete, and now the rest of the wall was opened up to start the re-framing of the one above the sink.  As a result of moving all the openings,  the plumbing venting had to be re-routed, since it used to go right up through where the new windows were going.

 View from the inside, just before the old window was ripped out.

The old framing was carefully dismantled, and most of it was reused as possible during the rest of the remodel.

Yet another place where we spent much more than we wanted to, but where it was worth it in the end.

We had originally planned to put in french doors, since we really preferred them to sliding patio doors. But once we really started thinking about how we would be using the doors, we realized that a sliding door would make more sense. Having a screen that you can slide into place is nice to have in the summertime, even though we really don’t get all that many insects here. In the end, we found these Marvin doors that were fiberglass outside and fir on the inside (”Woodclad”). Since we’d be able to stain them to match the rest of our fir trim, we thought that they would look fine in the kitchen. And they really do. We have had several people comment about how they didn’t think they liked sliding patio doors, but they really loved these.

Framing in progress for the new patio door.  The wall had to be rebuilt where the old window was on the left side.  The continous 12" header that was put in during the last remodel made this job as easy as it can be.