Back of the House

Just in case you're interested, I thought I'd also post a pic from the back yard. We had transplanted some plants into a little garden way back behind the house, so I took this image from the knee-high grass in the back.

Anyone know a good lawnmower repair person? If so, send me a name and number please.

It's really taking shape...

I just keep getting more excited as I see the house finally taking shape. You can probably tell a lot more what it will look like now that the roof is coming along nicely. I think this pic was taken last Wednesday evening, the 21st, so I imagine that between Thursday and Friday they got the rest of the trusses set and hopefully covered. You can see a pallet of roofing felt in the front of the house, so I assume that's next on the agenda.

I'm sure that between today and Monday, even with gas nearing $4, my curiosity will hit its peak and I'll have to run back out there. As usual, I'll post another pic then.

By the way, Philip says no to Christmas lights on this roof (something about it being too steep, blah, blah, blah). I don't know if I can make it through a Holiday season without my Christmas lights on the house. Wonder how much it is to rent a cherry picker???

Roofing underway

Just wanted to update you with a pic of the roof trusses going up. They've been working on these for a couple days. They still have the uppermost point to go. I think he was waiting on the crane to come back to help get those up there, LOL.

Rooms.....

Now that most of the walls are up, it's very neat to see how the rooms are all going to be laid out. There have been a couple surprises, like how big the laundry room is and yet how small the powder room next to it is going to be. The stairs to the basement ended up not needing as much headroom as allowed in the plans, so we have some extra space that we could have used to either extend the pantry or make into a closet for the dining room/office. We chose to make it into a closet for that room. I can think of a hundred uses for that extra space, and it's neat to have.

I keep worrying about kitchen space, making sure I have enough, that is. So far it looks plenty roomy. I hope it stays that way. We keep going through phases where everything looks big, and then it looks small, and then it looks big again. Everyone warned me that would happen at different points during construction.

To explain these pics, the first one is the view from the entry way, looking down the foyer. To the left will be the office and a coat closet, straight ahead is the great room, and to the right are one of the bedrooms and the kids' bathroom. The next photo is another one from the front yard, this one showing a little different from the pic last week in that it shows the true window opening size. I'm a little worried about some of those, too. I really like big windows, and they all looked fine in the elevations we had, but I was afraid of their being too small. In the end I asked Brad to size up wherever he could. I think he did that, but some of the bedroom windows still seem small. I'm just trying to go with the flow and not agonize over things like that.

When we were out there on Thursday, they were setting the roof trusses, but I forgot my camera, and I didn't even have my phone with me to take a quick pic either because its battery was super dead. I thought I'd be out there again for sure this weekend to have another opportunity for more pics, but I haven't had a reason to be over that way yet. Maybe tomorrow...

Walls...

We have walls. I love walls. Somehow a house just isn't a home without them! I know it's hard to tell what these pics are without the in-person tour (which you are welcome to at any time, by the way), but the first pic is the front of the house from the vantage point of the driveway or thereabouts. The second pic is looking from approx. the laundry room, through the kitchen and great room over towards the kids' bathroom and bedrooms and the master bedroom.

They've only been at it since Monday, so there are still some walls missing, like everything that will eventually be where I'm standing in that second picture, and the windows and door openings aren't fully cut out yet in the top picture. That being said, it's still exciting to actually be able to walk in and around the layout of our new home!

The weather has been cooperating with us as well lately, and depending on that, the schedule is for roof trusses to be delivered on Monday and for those to be set next week. Today we were given the chore of perusing the brochures for brick, shingles, and front doors. Decisions, decisions. As many of you know, it's a little difficult to pick out brick from a 2-in. picture. We'll be doing some driving around this weekend, I'm sure. We know what we want, but I can't figure out what that would be in the pictures. Maybe we'll visit the brick showroom this weekend, too. So far, I'm pleased that we basically agreed fairly easily on the brick and roofing we want and even on the front door styles we like. Wonder how long that will last?

Floor Trusses and Subflooring

Sorry I haven't posted this week, but needless to say, the end of a term for me is always crunch time, and add to that baseball and dance, and you can see why I haven't had time to get the pics off the camera and onto here lately.

We did get some wood laid on the foundation this week. They started by framing up the load-bearing wall that bisects the basment, and then set the floor trusses once that was in place. I was hoping to see some walls going up near the end of the week, but that didn't happen. I'm wondering if something didn't get delivered as planned. I honestly haven't had time to call Brad to check. I've only been out twice this week, and I was quite happy with what had been done.....no time to complain, certainly. These pics are in reverse order, by the way; the first pic is Friday evening, and the second pic was taken the Wednesday before.

Maybe when the semester ends I'll have more time to post, so until then, keep wishing me nice weather for a while...no, not another drought, just a couple weeks of rain only late at night!