Week 10

Monday

Today the framers worked on the roof.  This is the view from the front.  The tree on the right kind of blocks the view of the garage peak and a lot of the second story, but it's there. 

This view is from the back- the room to the left is the master bedroom and the room to the right with the three windows is the dining room. 

Also the back... The middle section is the living room and the room to the right is Hudson's room.

They also framed in the window over the front door.  It'll be another great way to let light into the living room area. 

Tuesday/Wednesday

More of the same... adding the soffits to the outside on the roofline...

Thursday

They continued work on the soffits and the windows were delivered today!  I'm not sure they would get around to putting them in, but by the end of the day, they had part of the front of the house done.  This is the living room... our Christmas Tree is gonna go smack in the middle of that big window!  I've always wanted a big window on the front of the house so we can see the Christmas tree when we drive up.  (It'll be nice the other days of the year too.) :)  

 The window in Reed's room...

My cute little pantry window...

And my favorite...the one I've been waiting for... my kitchen window.  I puffy heart LOVE this thing!  This is from the front porch.  It's white on the outside and wood on the inside so we can stain it to go with the rest of the kitchen.

Friday

There was quite a lot accomplished today... we had lots of people here.  It's starting to really take shape!

They taped the windows and you can really see the shape of the kitchen window.  I love it. Did I say that already? :)

They got almost all the downstairs windows in, minus a couple that were broken.  They'll have those by next week.  These are the living room windows on the back of the house.

Dining room...

Our bedroom...

The view from the garage side.  We were counting windows and had an extra that we couldn't figure out where it went... then we noticed tonight that there is a window opening missing over the first garage stall.

A pic of what the shape of the living room ceiling will look like. This is from the office opening upstairs.

We also had a couple of other people out today... the electrician came and started putting lights in the soffits above the garage...

...and Shorty came and poured the concrete for the upstairs balcony.

Some weeks it seems like its going slow, but then when I look back from how it looked from the first of the week to the last of the week and the difference is huge. It's very exciting!

Week 9

Monday

It was raining Monday morning, and Reed and I had his Field day during the day.  Luckily it quit before field day, but then it came a flood that afternoon rained all afternoon into the evening, so I didn't get out to get pictures until Tuesday morning.  They had framed up all the walls for the second floor.  The second floor will only be over the garage/kitchen area.

  
The living room ceiling will be vaulted.  The big open spot you see here on the second floor is the office opening to the living room.

If you look closely (towards the middle of the framed second floor area), you can see a doorway on the second floor.  That's the door to the outdoor porch/balcony.

This is from the side above the garage - the room on the left is my craft room, the room on the right is the movie room.

Tuesday

It was super muddy on Tuesday, but the framers came out late that morning to get a "lesson" on how to put on the siding... Not that they don't know how to put on siding, but they kind of siding we are using is Artisan Hardie board. If it's not installed correctly, they won't guarantee it. Anyway, the rep came out and they spent a while out there doing their thing. After the rep left, one guy stayed and I wondered what one guy was actually getting accomplished.  Well, the school called and Reed was sick. So I went and picked up the boys.  I got Reed situated in bed and he fell asleep pretty quickly. Hudson and I went out to see what was new...

Stairs!!! Yay!  Come to find out, Brian had mentioned to the guys that I wasn't going to go back up on the second story until there were actual stairs there, so Jerry stayed to finish them.  I thought that was super nice of him. :)  I made sure to tell him thank you when I saw him... it was SO much better than climbing up a questionable ladder propped against a wall!  So we climbed the new stairs to look at the rooms now that they had walls.

I was still a little nervous, but it was nothing compared to NO walls. 

This is the office.  I made Hudson promise to stand absolutely still until I got back over to him to hold his hand. Behind him is a big window overlooking the tank.

Check this kid out. He wanted to be in every picture. :). This is the upstairs bathroom. 

My craft room. 

The movie room. 

Wednesday

They worked more on ceilings.  This is a shot of our bedroom ceiling.  It's vaulted, just not a super steep vault. I. Love. It.

This is our bedroom from the back.  You can see where the ceiling is below the roofline.

This is the ceiling in the living room.  Not the roof, the ceiling.  I didn't know it would be quite this tall.  It's going to be such a pretty room, though!

This is a shot from the front of the house.  You can see how tall the living room ceiling is... the roof will be a good 6 or 7 feet above that.  Wow.

Thursday

We are really starting to see the progress!

The ceiling for the second story has been framed.  Now we just need the living room ceiling and calling over the boys room (that will be the majority of the attic space).

The porch ceiling was also framed.

 From the front...

Week 8

This last week seemed to have a lot of momentum.  Every day when I went out to look at the house, there were obvious visual differences.  This post will be quite picture heavy, and some of them are hard to tell what's what, but I wanted to document it... so here ya go. :)

Monday
Monday started with more framing of the first floor.  We can now see the rooms taking shape and it's so cool to actually walk through and see the paper plans come to life.  

This is the mud bench area.  I guess it means you're old when you get excited about a mud bench.  But I'm excited. :)

 This is the laundry room.  The doorway on the other side leads straight into my closet.  I'm also very excited about that.  :)

 This is the master bedroom.  Very excited about the vaulted ceilings and fireplace.

Tuesday

The next day they started on the ceilings... 

And they framed in the bottom of the windows.  This is my little window in my closet to let in some natural light...

This is the window in the hallway to our bedroom.  Our bathroom door is directly across from it and since the bathroom has no outside walls, this window will be a good way to let some light.

The kitchen window...  

This is the front wall of the living room.  The open space to the left is the front door and the rest are windows.  

I didn't realize how much of our living room walls were windows, but the back wall almost looks the same with the exception of the fireplace.  It's going to have a LOT of natural light, that's for sure! It's going to be beautiful!

Wednesday
 Work continued on the ceilings and in plywood put up on the exterior walls.  You can tell a lot more about the actual rooms now.  This is the half bath off the mud room/garage entry.

The windows in the dining room.

My kitchen window.  It looks straight out onto the tank.

The boys' bathroom.

Reed's room.  The boys' rooms are mirror images of each other - I love how they each have a nice big window.

They also framed up the garage door stalls.

Thursday

It was rainy/sprinkling so I thought not much would happen (or the framers wouldn't even show), but the garage plywood and ceiling was finished...

They also finished the top of the walls with the plywood. This is the side of our master bedroom/bath. 

Friday

Today they worked on putting the plywood on the ceilings of the kitchen...

and garage...

and left open in between the garage and pantry where the staircase will go.

Brian came in for dinner and told me that they had put down the boards to start framing the upstairs so you could see the layout of the rooms.  I really wanted to see it, so against my better judgment, I climbed up the sad little floppy-feeling ladder to look.  Brian said he thought it would be fine for the boys to come up too. The ENTIRE time I was up there I was a nervous wreck.  Hudson is a hot mess and I just knew he was going to act silly and fall.  Brian had his hands on him pretty much the whole time.  I'm glad I got pictures, but I couldn't wait to come down. 

Here is Reed stressing me out. The "hole" in front of him will be the stairs.  You'll come up, take a right and go up a couple of steps and that will be the office.  We have plans for it to be all wood and have a coffered ceiling... very library-ish.

If you come up the stairs and take 2 lefts, you would be in the movie room.  The boys are super excited about this. :)

If you took a left then  right, you would be in my craft room (with the sawhorse you see in front of you).  I cannot wait to have storage for all my fabric, paper, etc.  It's gonna be AWESOME.

This is the upstairs bathroom - the only bathroom with a tub. People think I'm crazy, but none of us take baths anywhere close to regularly and I don't want to clean bathtubs that we don't need!  So, we just decided to do nice showers downstairs and have a really plain utilitarian tub upstairs just in case we ever need one.

Brian and Hudson are standing at the edge of the office balcony.  The office is right on top of the kitchen and we are planning to have an opening that overlooks into the living room.

Getting down off of the second floor was pretty scary too - I was very annoyed at how scared I was!  I told Brian I would not be going back up until there was stairs and walls.  I'm such a wienie. 

More next week!