You know what's going to make this house, don't you?





Windows by PlyGem



Installation begins



Front porch



Here is a panoramic shot from the work room toward the breakfast room on the left and the living room on the right.







The breakfast room close up.



...it's the windows.  That's what Philip said, and he's absolutely right.  These gorgeous windows with dark sashes are what make this house so striking!  Ever since they've been in, people driving by have noticed the house and said, "Oh!  Yours is the one with the windows!"  Yep.  We love them.  We cut back on other things so we could have them and stay in budget, and they're worth it!  Several companies make them;  ours are from PlyGem. 

We got shingles! (not the skin condition)

Shingles!

In the last few days most of the interior and rooflines have been finished, and tar paper, flashing and shingles have been applied to much of the roof (except the ridgeline and exterior openings).  It's really starting to look like a house now!

The garage is almost done and tied in!

This view shows the south side of the house with the garage structure complete.  The garage roof pitch is half that of the main house to take things easy on the eyes.  Looks like it was designed that way, right?  Not so much.

Close-up of the shingle color/pattern.

The shingle tint/color is officially called "Weathered Wood" and it has brown and blu-ish shale tints in it.  This picture doesn't do it justice, but it looks really sharp!

The garage!  Love it!

Last, but not least, John's favorite room: the garage.  You can start to see the size of things here.  We're gonna need an extension ladder just to change bulbs in the light fixtures!

A moment to reflect on scale

Some reference for scale: Christian is 4' 3" tall!

Not much progress today, so a good day to put things into perspective.  This photo is of the main window looking SE out of the breakfast room, and should give you some idea of scale on the main floor.  The exterior windows are 8 feet tall (6 feet with a 2-foot transom) and the ceilings are 11 feet high.  So the house, though it looks a normal size, is kind of like a picture enlarged at 120% - it's just bigger.  Take the next picture for instance...

Wee man in the big boys' room...

Here's Christian (again for scale purposes) standing in the corner of the garage.  The ceilings are 12 feet high in the garage (the crossbeam for the trusses is not yet installed) so there will be tons of room for storage up high if needed.  The base dimensions of the garage are 36 feet by 23 feet, so there should be plenty of car space and workshop area for Dad!

Framing Progress

Starting to frame the Garage...

The framing crew have been busy as they are largely done with the main house and are now starting to frame up the garage.  The garage slab was poured on Pearl Harbor Day and has set enough that they can bolt the walls down and frame away!  The garage roof will have to be tied in to the house which is why the corner of the roof doesn't look finished...

The front facade

A peek-a-boo view of the front of the house in the late morning sun.  The main windows of the breakfast room point almost directly at the rising sun and the front porch will enjoy sun in the morning and shade in the afternoon.

Is this...right?

 

Hmmm.  So we came to the construction site the other day and found this little connundrum.  Um, Philip?  What's this?  Of course, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. The framers framed the wall before they put up the rafters, and are going to remove the part that sticks out now that they know where the slope of the roofline falls.  It was all part of the master plan (and all according to the plans!) it just looked funny when we saw it.  Thank goodness for a builder who is available to answer all of our many, many questions and is on the job so he knows exactly what we're talking about!

 

Now for some more images of the rafters going up...

 

Ahhhh, the beautiful symmetry.

 

Going UP

 

John has a picture that he takes from the back of the garage toward the front of the house.  He takes it often to watch how the home is progressing.  I'll post a series of those in the next few days.  This will be my recurring shot, as it will be a place where I'll spend a lot of time.  This is standing in the kitchen looking toward the dining and living rooms, taken on Dec. 10.

 

And here you can see the second story being framed.  The kids can hardly stand the wait until they can go up and check out their rooms!

 

Playing With Concrete

Got a call yesterday that the concrete truck would be on site first thing in the morning.  We had wanted to leave our mark in the garage floor, so the kids came out to watch the process.  They were out if school half the day, but in the end they have a little more sense of ownership and involvement than they did yesterday.

Christian in awe of the concrete truck.

Getting messy.

The backbreaking labor of smoothing it out.

The nearly finished product.

Meanwhile, Hannah & Christian were troopers.

Into the concrete we added shells and sand from Hawaii as well as wishing rocks from West Beach on Whidbey Island.  The kids left hand prints and we all wrote our initials and the date.

 

Changes afoot.

There have been significant changes over the weekend... can anyone spot them?

We have a ceiling, or rather they've begun to install the sub floor for the second floor.  A few days' pause awaiting inspection and they'll be off again. 

It's a house!!!

We don't mean to have neglected the blog, it's just that things have been fast and furious around here, between the Thanksgiving holidays and actually meeting with Philip, visiting the house, picking out things like shingles and tiles, and general Life.  But here is a rundown of what has happened over the last few weeks: 

The arrival of lumber at the worksite meant that framing was soon to commence.  And it didn't take any time at all before these few token boards turned into this

We had fun guessing where rooms began and ended based on where reinforcements were in the floor.  The next day it had turned into this

 

And then we had rooms!  

 

 

 



Over the course of a week we watched the first floor take shape.  Through it all we kept up a steady communication with Philip in order to ensure that any discrepancies we saw were resolved to prevent change orders later, and to stay one step ahead in terms of the next decisions we needed to make.  This week we picked out shingle colors and interior doors.  Windows, which will be a major feature of the house, have already been ordered and will be installed soon. 

These pictures show progress on the front and rear porches.  Yep.  We're not messing around!

In the meantime, Hannah keeps a close eye on the inspection schedule, and Christian left messages for the builders. 

It said, "Dear Workmen who are building our house.  Thank you, from the son who owns this house."