The "A" is up!

And my loves are happy...

That makes me happy :)

Hot Friday!

HOT! HOT! HOT! 

Too hot to even finish the A Frame up front!

So work began a little closer to the ground....  They're about to lay off the area for the back porch posts in the pictures below.

More OSB on the top

The OSB on the front is finished.  The front is now ready for the gable to be built on the top and the front porch too.  After that, the rest of the 4' overhang can be built on the front of the house.

The back side is coming along nicely too! This is where they were when I left them at lunch.   

Once all the OSB is on the back side, then we'll be set to build the side porch (once the brackets and posts arrive) and then the back porch and steps as well. 

Monday and Tuesday

The rafters are now up over the middle section of the house, the collar beams are in, the end wall to the living room is in, the OSB has been put on the North end wall, and OSB is starting to go on the roof in the middle.  Hurricane hangers have been installed, ceiling joists put in over the upstairs bathroom, and little odds and in all throughout the house have been finished now.  I'll just let the pictures do the talking :)

GLU-lam is UP! With Rafters to follow!

Last night, before we moved all those rafters (and smashed fingers....) Jeffrey had spent the afternoon devising a way to hoist the GLU-lam ridge beam into place.  Pretty much it consisted of man handling the beast up to the loft, then again up on some staging, but how to get it 8 more feet into the air was perplexing.  That's when he devised this.  Basically it's a 2x8 support framed and braced to the end wall that was raised with a series of cables and pulleys pulled by the tractor.  Once they hoisted the beam in place, the support board was then fastened to the wall along with many other support pieces and they started to put the rafters on.  I just wanted to say Kudos to Jeffrey for getting this done without anyone making a trip to the E.R.  :) 

So - Lunchtime Progress:  One happy husband!  He had just finished handing Jeff and Ken the last rafter for the back side of the house and he was ready for lunch, lol.  The plan was to finish all the rafters on the beam, and then set up some minor jobs for us to finish this weekend!  Hopefully the weather won't be a complete washout and we'll get to do a little work :)

 

Working after hours

On most days, I rush home at 5:00, grab a quick snack and little britches and we head straight out to the lot.  It's hard for me to contemplate just how tired Jeffrey probably is, being out there at 6:30 every morning, and then I come when I can and we work till 8:00 or 9:00.  There's not a whole lot we can do each day, but the little tasks add up and we can certainly make it easier for the guys when they get there in the mornings.  Most days, it's just little projects, like the retaining wall steps, or picking up blocks, sweeping the floor.  Today it was moving rafters and building a pulley system to hoist that huge ridge beam into place in the morning.  It wasn't terribly hard work, but the rafters were long and heavy, and we had to load them in the truck 12 at a time (3 loads), then unload them on the porch, then move them inside the house, and then hoist 20 of them upstairs.  whew.  Well I got my first battle scar anyway.  Word of advice - keep your fingers from between concrete porch and end of rafter - ouch. 

As painful as that was (is), I couldn't be happier helping to build the house.  I would be miserable if I had to endure this whole process without getting my hands in it somewhere, and the little one is the same way.  Regardless of whatever it is we're doing, we always have help.  Some days she likes to bring us water, ice, or nails, frogs, bugs, or blocks (whatever she can find/catch to bring us).  Sometimes she likes to help 'dig holes' (usually where we don't need them); but today she was going to help dada nail his boards :)

Bedrooms!

Lunchtime Progress: Bedrooms :)

Yesterday, the guys were able to set the upstairs hallway wall and this morning they have put in the ceiling joists on the rafters and were working on framing the bedroom walls.  When I left, they were starting to frame up the closets for each bedroom.  I'll try to describe what you're seeing in the pictures below, but honestly, it just looks like a jumbled mess, lol.

 Above:  I'm standing in the bonus room looking back towards the loft area; The room I'm in is not a bedroom at this point, because there is no closet. I'm serioulsy thinking about adding one - and soon! The open section you see on the left room (beside the nail gun) is where the closet is about to be installed.  That's the doorway in the hall that leads back to the loft.  You can also see from this picture how the ceiling is not going to be completely flat in these rooms.  Right above the window, you can see where the rafters and ceiling joist meet, and the ceiling to the bedrooms will follow that angle. 

Below:  The bedroom opposite of the one in the first picture.  Structurally it's going to be a mirrored image of the one across the hall, sloped ceiling and all.  Ken is working on the closet in this one.  I'm standing on the loft, taking the picture across the stairwell and through the wall.

Below:  I'm standing in the exact same place as the picture above, but turned to look across the loft.  The doorway you see framed is for the bathroom, and eventually this section will have rafters over it that will do the same as the bedrooms (sloped back wall).  The rest of the loft will have the open cathedral ceiling up to the point of the collar beams (yet to be determined...)

More Rafters and Electrical Boxes

Lunchtime Progress:  Rafters.

At least the guys said there was a breeze today :) despite the fact that the heat index is back in the triple digits.  They weren't quite half way through the middle section of the house, but they were to the part where they have to switch over to a GLU-lam for the ridge beam because of the cathedral ceiling.  So when I was about to leave after lunch, they were starting to take down the staging and start putting in the bedroom walls upstairs.  I'm guessing that the rest of the rafters will have to wait to go in until those upstairs walls and the ceiling joists are finished.

Mack (our electrician) came in earlier this week while I was there at lunch, and we marked where all the recepticles and switches were going to be in the basement.  Today, he and Cordie came after lunch and placed all those boxes.  We'll mark the two other stories once the framing is completed.  Once the house is dried in, they'll be able to pull the wires.

More OSB

Lunchtime Progress:  The OSB on the front of the house is completed! 

Now - Moving along to the back of the house requires a little different setup with the staging and ladders!  I didn't get to witness it after it was put together, but the staging looked a little scary to me being way up there like that!

End of Day Progress: The OSB on the back of the house is completed! 

OSB on the roof!

Lunchtime progress:  The section of roof that is in place, now has a layer of OSB to help hold it in place!  By afternoon, both front and back where completed!  And YES - they wore harnesses!

Retaining Wall

After all the rain we've been having, we had to do something. So we decided to install a reataining wall using a plan I found online, and information from the building inspector.  Chris and Kerstin came over today and helped us out tremendously!  There is still right much to be done here, including a set of steps, and another wall terraced above and behind the one here.  I hope this holds the rain and sand back for now though!

Views from the top

Everybody had to go their seperate ways today, so there was no work done on the house.  I thought it would be neat to show you guys what the views are like from the top.  I realize these are a little pre-mature (no OSB to cover the gaps yet) but I think you'll get the picture ;)

This one is looking out of the bonus room above the master bedroom suite.  The views from the master bedroom and master bath are pretty much the same.

This one is from the window on the loft right as you come up the stairs.  You can pretty much see the entire driveway from here.

This one is looking through the window right next to the one above.  This one is also partially over the loft, and overlooks the driveway as well, but from the right angle you can see the pond pretty well.

I'm sure they'll be more "views to come" in the future!  Stay tuned :)

End Wall Framing

Lunchtime progress:  End Wall Framing to help support the rafters.  Waiting on Basnight to deliver more lumber so the ceiling joists can go in next!

Rafters are going in!

Today at lunch, I was unable to get any pictures due to a dead battery in my camera, however as we were driving up I saw Jeffrey wrestling with the first two rafters trying to get the right measurements and make sure they were in place.  During my visit there, it seemed like a whole lot of up and down up and down, measure, re-measure and the such.  So when I came back out this afternoon, I wasn't exactly sure what I'd see. I was tickled to see this! 

The section you see installed above is the 14' section over the bonus room (garage end of house).  The rafters are Douglas Fir and are beautiful!  They are really going to be pretty on the exposed underside of the overhang off the front of the house.

Upstairs (Today was the back wall)

Upstairs is taking shape!

Lunchtime Progress:  The 100+ degree heatwave we've had for the last week was supposed to be cooled off today by a cold front pushing through the area, however, when 90+ is considered "cooled off" it's still too darn hot!  This past Saturday, we came out to finish nailing down the subfloor for the upper story.  The heat was so bad at 9:00am I literally felt like I was going to pass out after an hour of working!  The heat and humidity today wasn't far from feeling like we were breathing hot water, but the guys were pushing on trying to get the upstairs walls built.  In the pictures below you can start to see the half windows for the 2nd story taking shape, and in the one below that, you can see the 17' 2x10 front wall going in!

OSB and 2nd Story Subfloor

The boys have been busy here lately!  Yesterday they finished up the first round of OSB sheathing on the sides of the house.  Today, they got the last GLU-lam and 2nd story subfloor in, and on top of that they laid off upstairs and put down all the base plates, cut the top plates and cut the some of the studs for the walls.  Next week we should see those last few walls go up, and maybe even see the roof start to take shape!

Framing Update (just pictures)