It was a miracle that I have a cousin who is an experienced carpenter.   It was an absolute God Sent that he was leaving Montana and heading for Tennessee for a couple months.  We hadn't see each other or been in each other's lives since we were very young kids.  The reunion was wonderful and it became even more memorable when he decided to stay and help us get started with the framing. 

The dimensions of the new section were just about the same as the part we removed, except we were going to raise it a full two stories and add a utility room and porch on to the back right side.   Originally the kitchen was in the old back section.  The new plan was to make a master bedroom downstairs with a bath and another bedroom and bath on the second floor. 

It took us some time to get the walls and ceiling joists up.  We were learning as we went and  it didn't help that the spring rains visited us for a solid month while this was going on.   But each day ended with such a feeling of accomplishment.   We usually closed the day by all of us walking  around the house,  stopping to look from every view.   Then we would sit on the old porch and talk about what we would do tomorrow and before you knew it we were back standing from our favorite view spot with a big smile. 

I was a bit nervous about the task of connecting the new roof to the old front section.  Since the roof peak from the old section that we removed didn't meet the top of the front section, we would have to completely remove a quarter of the front sections roof in order to tie in the new two story roof peak.    So this meant that we would have to build a temporary wall inside the front section that went from the bottom floor all the way to the peak in order to hold up the other side of the roof once the opposite quarter section was removed.    It went with out a hitch though the house looked quite strange for a few days until we had the two peaks connected. 

Once the new section was sheeted with plywood and the roof was covered with tar paper we moved on to the task of re-framing some of the front section's windows and doors.   We added three windows to the fireplace wall  and also restructured the front of the house from the two doors that were there to a door in the middle and two double windows on both sides.   

The vision was starting to come into focus.  It was so hard to show friends and family the old house or even the house at this stage because it definitely took an imagination to see what we saw.   We usually got that blank look or sometimes the words  "Wow!".    But at this point the skeleton of the house was there.   It had transformed from an old falling down farmhouse to an expression of ourselves, our time and our love.