Exile and the Bridge of Khazad-dûm

So it is my Friday off, and due to the destruction still occurring at the house, I am exiled to my favorite coffee shop until it warms up enough to go for a bike ride today. I am on my 3rd cup of coffee, so if this posts sounds like I have taken up crack cocaine for a hobby, please forgive.

Work on the house is progressing pretty quickly. All remnants of the kitchen are gone, including the 5 floors (they found another one when excavating). The whole kitchen is just a smoldering crater now, including a 4' wide chasm running from the front door through the whole kitchen. They are using this for easy access to the crawl space where they are pouring 2 concrete footers to support the new beam. This gaping hole makes life difficult, as now the poor kitties are penned in our room until the floor is sealed up so that they don't explore the wilderness of the "crawl space of death" (as I like to call it).

Below is left is the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-dûm as we refer to the crossing in the kitchen (editor's note: there really is no "we" involved in this, and accuracy of descriptions in this post are being actively disputed). Below right is the new front stoop, which hopefully they will get inspected and poured today.

We hit our first snafu in the form of the framing of the old patio roof. This will require a little redo of the roof (which we had hoped to avoid) and another plan to be approved by the city. Hopefully it won't slow down the framing too much. On the plus side, the demo stage is almost finish so we may be able to beat back the ubiquitous dust that multiplies everyday. Finally, the photo below shows what we think is the original wall paper in the kitchen. Is it a bad sign that I sort of like it?