This is Olive. She's in her "princess" pose on one of the couches at the rental. We almost lost her to smoke in the fire, but the EMTs had the canine oxygen mask, plus mouth to nose resuscitation by me and my husband, and she pulled through. The few times we've taken her back to the house it's as if she never left - checking out all the construction and people (and their dogs).

A lot of progress has been made! This is the front room, framed and now sheathed in plywood. The wall behind the chair originally had shelves where Tim had pictures of his family. Now, it's part of the closet in the hallway.

Even with all of this detail work - these metal plates are on both sides of the notches in these joists - I'm guessing that the work is almost 50% complete. In addition to these plates the structural engineer required daughter boards be screwed into place at the ends of most of these joists - that's at least eight screws per side! Now they're trying to make sure that the bottom of the joists are even so the plywood and then the sheetrock will be smooth. Yep, plywood is going up next on the ceiling just like the walls.

And this is the demolition of the upstairs hearth. We're going to replace this with an electric fireplace that will be flat on the wall with a nice mantle. We were originally going to put a small electric stove in the corner, but opted for this location instead. We don't heat the upstairs, but the lightshow of the fire will be nice to have.