Dry!

We are finally dried in! We have all of the windows and exterior doors in place and the roof is complete! Very exciting!

Murphy's Law #17832

As states this particular law of Murphy's (whoever he is) no house shall be dried in without a little rain.

We actually had to drill holes in the subfloor to get rid of the water. Not good for plywood...

Interior sheathing

Here are a few pictures of the interior all closed off. This is one of the back bedrooms.

This wall is where the ridiculous amount of kitchen cabinents will go...

Here is the south facing wall. That piece in the middle is for our fireplace and above it is a nice huge spot for a TV. Yeah...it probably won't be used to its full capacity until we sell the house to some rich people...

No more creative climbing

At long last, we have stairs! Unfortuately, the ones you see go only from the second floor to the third. We are still working on the ground to second floor stairs...

Stairs to nowhere...anyone who had visited our Reading house should know what we're talking about...we always seem to end up with a house with stairs to nowhere- tell you what, head on up...we'll meet you up there!

Monte, however, has no problem.

Getting down -sadly- is a whole different story...

Sheathing

Here they have started sheathing the house.

Yet more roof shots

A new roof

More roofing

Today, Wednesday, we have a roof...almost a complete roof. There are still a few "holes" to fill but the house seems to really be taking shape.


A little side view from Billy's (our best neighbor) house.

The roof, the roof...

The roof is now being framed. Here is the north side view.

Here is the front elevation of the house with the second floor roof lines.

The first shots of the third floor

Third floor decking

Here the third floor decking is mostly complete. We are only missing a few subfloor panels because we are still waiting for a 32 foot LVL beam we had to reorder.

To scale

Here are some pictures to help put the size of things in perspective. Here Ian is standing on the first part of the thrid floor decking...

From the same height...look how small that F350 looks in the background...we realize there are issues with perspective, but either way...it seems that the house is going to be pretty tall...

This should give some perspective of the depth of the joists...without stairs it really is a challenge getting to that third floor!

More fun

We are just having a little more artistic fun with our over designed joist system...

New views

Here is the North side of the house.

The stairs with the third floor joists...

Now we're just having fun being artistic...

Second Floor Framing

Here the framers have finished the stringers for the deck. The 2x12 beam that you see across the front will be the top of the deck.


Here the guys are starting the joists and beams for the third floor. The guy in the white shirt is the main framer that is on site daily, Fernando. He and his guys are just great! They are efficient and friendly; we couldn't ask for a nicer group of guys to work on our first house.

This is a picture of when the guys started to lay the decking for the thrid floor.

We've got walls!

Our framers rock! I realize we are only posting this now, Saturday, but this is actually what we came home to last Wednesday. They completed the second floor exterior and interior walls in one day. Not too bad.

Here you can see the main entrance to the house and the front door. The three windows to the left will sit in the kitchen over the sink. Ian thinks if I have a better view, I won't complain so much about washing the dishes...

These are a few interior walls. On the left you are actually looking at a half bath and on the right you are looking at what will be the office.

Just another shot of the front of the house here, complete with Ian stringer hopping.