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...)