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."

The Grove Foundation

Legos for grownups!

Mario's crew have been busy setting the cinderblocks for the crawlspace foundation - this view is from what will be the garage looking across the house towards the kitchen and breakfast nook.