It's after Christmas now, and our house has a lot of work done already.  The guys got the windows in before the holiday weekend, so we're able to get a nice idea of what things are going to look like. The interior walls still need to be drywalled though, so there will be a few major changes to go yet.  Looking at the front of the house below gives a nice approximation, but the garage door and porch slab are going to change things pretty drastically, as I'm sure will the siding and paint job (done by yours truly). It was a gorgeous day today so I spent some time this afternoon taking some measurements, scavenging scrap wood from the throwaway piles, stashing it in the crawl space, and just generally hanging out and enjoying some privacy in my new house.

Taken on Friday, a nice sunny day.

Limei just couldn't wait to start cleaning her new house :)  We wanted to get the snow out before it warmed up this weekend so it wouldn't melt into our crawlspace.

Here's the back of the house, with part of a lovely sunset reflected in our bay window.

Milestone

Well, that's it.  The house is framed, the plywood is up making the exterior walls and ceilings.  The windows are starting to get cut out, and tar paper is going on the roof.  I feel a sense of relief at this stage.  We know that the changes we made have become a more or less permanent part of the house, and when we walk through it now it's starting to look and feel like a home.  I've already got visions of Limei and I running around in circles as soon as we sign the papers and get the place to ourselves! 

The biggest accomplishment today though was the construction of the garage overhang.  In the pic below the left side is fully completed, the supporting beam just needs to be knocked down on the right side.  In the end it looks like none of us really knew how that thing was going to fit in there until it was actually put in.  We didn't think it would fit under the porch roof and still have enough of a pitch to be visible, but, there it is.  A handful of kneebraces for show on the front of the roof and a couple of eyebrows on the side and the woodwork is pretty much done.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have a Roof!

I went skiing yesterday, got back thinking I would get some nice pics of the roof going up and they were already done!
I asked them to take one of the trusses down and put it back up again, but they just gave me a funny look.

They're almost to the point where they're going to have to decide what to do with that pesky garage beam.  Jesse changed his mind again today, and is going with the original design I came up with months ago :)

Here's an interior shot of the main living area with the vaulted ceiling.  Turning the vault line to the north was one of the changes I made to the original floorplan.  Hopefully it doesn't lead the chi straight out the back door.

Things are again moving quickly.  Last week I was at the build site three times one day, and it was a good thing too.  The master shower wall needed to be moved out half an inch so we could fit a 5 ft shower pan in, I discovered this slight error while out for my morning jog.  When I got home from my jog I got a nagging feeling that the framers were going to miss some changes we had penciled in on the plans, so after drawing up a  quick  floor  plan  with  the  changed  measurements I hopped on my  mountain bike and headed back over.

The benefits of frequently visiting
your job site - a free hoodie!

By this time it was noon, and as I feared they were all gone on their lunch break. So, I appropriated a tape measure from the nearest abandoned tool belt and got to measuring. Sure enough they neglected to extend our master bath and closet a foot into the bedroom.  We had added three feet to the original plans and wanted to split the extra room between the bath and bedroom portions of the master suite.  I had hoped to catch them before they put up the wall dividing the two portions but they must have put it up right before going on lunch break.  On top of that, the west facing window in the bedroom was pushed way off to one side, they had never adjusted their measurements to make it centered based on the new wall length.  I found a bent nail lying on the ground and appropriated (I love that word :) a hammer from the afore-mentioned abandoned tool belt, and tacked my hastily drawn dimensions to the wall that needed to be moved.  Right about when I was getting ready to leave one of the framers came back so I was able to explain everything to him.  He mentioned that the foreman had mentioned something about missing some penciled in changes, so they knew what was up.  I visited the site one more time that afternoon....

 ...and it was a good thing I did.  I had wanted the doorway to our bedroom moved out a little bit.  The original plans called for it to be recessed in an "L" shaped hallway that served no purpose, so by backing it out of the little leg of the "L" we were able to appropriate (there it is again, maybe I should break out a thesaurus?) that little bit of hallway for the door to open up into, instead of it intruding on the actual bedroom.  I had to have that poor framer move that wall twice.  Sorry for being a pain, but that's where we wanted it.  Actually, maybe just an inch farther back...

One of my favorite features on this house will be the rough sawn fir timbers used to frame the front porch, knee braces, and garage overhang.  You can see the garage overhang timber in the picture below.  Right now where this timber is supposed to go is our biggest question mark.  We had added it after the plans were drawn up, so other than the idea that we wanted an overhang over the garage and an example picture (seen in a much earlier post) taken from another house we didn't have much to go on.  The problem is that the roof over the porch actually overlaps the edge of the garage.  So either the overhang has to run into the roof next to it, in which case it's a foot or so higher than currently pictured, or it needs to tuck under the roof next to it.  We're still not sure exactly how that is gong to work out, Jesse said to wait until the trusses are up and we'll have a better idea of what is going on up there.  

And finally, as if I hadn't wasted enough of your time already, here is a quick video walk-through of the house:

Aaaannnnd Up Go The Walls!

When Limei got home from work today she said we had a doorway.  By the time we got their we had a doorway and both front and back walls too!  Things are happening really fast now, and after spending 15 minutes at the build site I can see why.  These guys move fast!  Still, they didn't manage to get the side walls up by the end of the day.  We can't wait to see what tomorrow brings :)

The biggest surprise here was how big the windows are - the north wall is almost all window, with stunning views from each of them.

Limei is inspecting her bay window - the view is exactly what we were hoping for.

Finishing Foundation Stuff

A lot has happened in the past 9 days since my last post, so to catch up I'm just going to write in some captions:

Hey, where did all of the workers go?  Things finally warmed up enough for them to pour the garage slab.  Don't let all of the snow fool you, the week they poured it was above freezing during the afternoons.  I got over there after all of the work was done already that day.

Last Friday they started work on the crawlspace.  It's not quite a basement, but we should be able to get some storage space out of it.  It's about 4 or 5 feet deep.  Sitting on top are the floor joists, ready to go.

Hey!  Get back to work!  Jesse, in the front, is our contractor.  His phone rings all. the. time.

Here's a nice shot of the joists.  I couldn't believe it, but they are made out of a wood composite.  They must use some really strong glue to hold those wood chips together!  Jesse said that they are really nice because they are all perfectly straight, and they have good protection against deterioration.

Snow. Everywhere.

In my last post I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep the blog up with the builders, but Mother Nature gave me a hand.  Our building site is buried in about 6 inches of snow and it has been cold.  Really cold.  Almost as cold as where we moved from in North Dakota.  Apparently we got the foundation in just in time.  The backfill still needs to be packed, and the garage slab needs to be poured.  They've got an insulated tarp over the garage area now, and a ground heater (yes, they actually heat the ground when it gets too cold) just in case.  The weather is supposed to be warmed up a bit this week so I am hoping to see some action tomorrow.