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n January 17, 2007 during a 2 day power outage, I had a chimney/partition fire which could have been a lot worse than it was. At 4am, I awoke to see a tiny hole in the wall which was glowing red. I promptly called 911 after ripping off some of the drywall and seeing the fire was up into the next floor. The firefighters showed up in 20 minutes. They ended up having to cut a hole in the roof next to the masonry chimney and put another hole in the side of my house. They also had to gut some of the wall in the guest bedroom above the living room. Luckily the insulation slowed the fire down but it wasn't far from getting into the attic, where I am told, it would have gotten out of control. They said 15 minutes more and the house would have been history.

Apparently my chimney, which was built back in 1968, was built incorrectly. It didn't have a proper 8 inches of brick around it's smoke chamber (the hottest part of a chimney). To make things worse, who ever framed around it, put normal plywood right up against the brick instead of leaving the proper 2 inches of space and using a fire rated material.

The insurance company was pretty fast in getting over to the scene (within 48 hours) and the adjustor printed me off a check right then and there. Interestingly enough, they gave me enough money to redo the whole front roof of my house. This set the wheels in my mind going about doing extra stuff. After I had the roof done 2 1/2 years ago, I regretted not doing dormers on the front of the house a few months later. I thought, here was my chance. I got a quote from one of the fire fighter, Frank, who does construction and it seemed very reasonable.

The quote included my idea of doing two 4 foot wide dormers but it also included his idea of doing a third one in the middle that would be 8 foot wide. I gave him the go ahead and worked began on January 24, 2007. I also got a quote from him for putting in a master bathroom. Unfortuately, I will had to move the closet I built previously. It just made a lot more sense to put a new bathroom in where the dormer would go. It just seemed like a waste to put a dormer with a window inside a closet.

Frank drew me up some plans for the bathroom layout which got changed a few times. I think in the end, the best plans won out. At first I planned on doing a separate bath tub and shower but in the end went with a one piece with better fixtures.

<- Here is a picture of what I thought it might look like.

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Start date of reconstruction: 1/24/2007
Completion date: 3/3/2007