I've been planning to take out the chimney in the loft. This is a free standing chimney in the center of a 13 by 28 foot room. It once had a woodstove attached to it, but I don't like wood heat and it was definitely not to code with the stair rising over it. I had planned to leave the chimney downstairs to provide a sort of room divider, but now it's down through the roof, it is rather unstable.

They can brace it in the loft floor, but I think I want to take it all the way down. It will mean living with a floor patch for awhile, and once the firebrick woodstove pad is removed as well, I'll have to replace the entire floor. Which is something I've been looking for an excuse to do.

I have no idea how the chimney removal will affect the furniture arrangement. I have a lot of stuff clustered around the chimney now (tv, armoire, harps, cd cabinets), but I think I'll like the visual open space removing it will bring, which will probably require some rearrangement. The ladder stair to the loft will remain, so that will still limit furniture arrangement.

More windows are going in tomorrow. Today they are finishing off the roof prep. Shingles may start going on tomorrow. The electrician came by this morning to get my ideas about lights and add his own. I never would have thought of daylight bulb potlights, 2!, above the loom in the dormer. I will love that.

The old kitchen door is gone and replaced with a window, I really like that. The bathroom window has gone in and two of the biggest windows are in. We've decided to leave the diamond shaped window opening in the loft as is and pop the new window in slantwise. They think it might rack over time, but it is small, so probably not much and it will save a lot of charm and some time on reframing.

They plan to hide my small window AC unit behind the south wall of the dormer and bring it in through the wall, rather than taking up window space. I really love that idea.

Soon the major work will be done. They'll wrap the house and leave until spring or summer when I have the money for the siding and deck. I ought to be able to punch out a bit of the finish work each month and hope to move into the new bedroom pretty quickly, even if I have to wait awhile for the laundry unit, lights, flooring and arbor/deck.

Ellen