Roof trusses!

Thursday arrived and we were not disappointed, the roof trusses went up today...

(note: I added two posts today.. this one and the one before it, so please check out both of them... thanks!)

I took off of work around 11:00 and sat our at the site and took photos and shot a video of the trusses going up. It was pretty cool to watch.

This is the first time we've been at the site while there's been activity going on since way back when they were first digging the hole for the basement.

In the above photo you can begin to see the roof lines taking shape. It's starting to really look like a house now.

In the next series of photos, they're installed a small-ish truss that will live at the entry to the future bonus room.

The crane grabbing the truss from the pile on the right

Moving the truss into position

Installing the truss in its new home.

One of the garage / bonus room trusses being installed is the next photo.

You can find a 3 minute long video shot about this time here at youtube:

http://youtu.be/c6LXTgudJV8

You can see how many vehicles are around when there's activity going on.

Here's some photos from inside the house now, with the trusses mostly installed.

Trusses over the master bedroom (viewed from upstairs)

..over the living room (from "overlook" upstairs)

Bonus room trusses over the garage

Some closer-up views for the exterior of the house with almost all of the trusses in place.

Just before we left today Lyndsey did some exploring and found these items:

She dubbed this one her "baby truss"

..and this is the hole that they'll dump the concrete down for pouring the basement floor

As I was watching them today I had the chance to talk to two of the concrete guys, who were working in the basement at the same time as the framing crews were installing the roof trusses. They told me that tomorrow (Friday), while the plywood roof sheathing is being installed over the roof trusses, they'll be pouring the basement floor slab.

You can see in the following photo that they poured a portion of the slab beneath what will eventually be the stairway from the garage to the basement (so that they have somewhere stable to place their ladder tomorrow).

They've also poured the portion of the basement slab that's directly beneath what will be the stairway from the first floor down. I can only assume that means that stairway will be built soon as well.

So by the end of the day tomorrow we should have the beginnings of a rooftop and a basement floor slab in the house. The day after that, the slab will be fit for walking on.

Also, in news of our current home, we have our first open house this Sunday since putting the house back on the market. Wish us luck everyone!

Paul

Framing is complete!

Wow! Alot has happened in the last few days.. so I'm going to break it into two posts;  one for Tuesday and Wednesday (when not as much visibly was happening), and today.

On Tuesday the framing crews were working on the wall framing... by the end of the day they had it mostly complete.

You can see above that most of the walls that are framed up now also have the plywood sheathing on them as well... it's a small step closer to having the house all enclosed.

...but... the biggest addition of the day was the stairway to get us upstairs! The girls have been itching to walk in their new rooms since the floor framing went up....

The girls jumped at the chance to finally see out their windows....

Lyndsey with her window looking into the woods...

Rachel with her window looking out in front of the house...

Here's a couple more photos from the second floor....

From the "overlook" looking down into the living room

 Above you can see Robin's "Wall of Windows" on the left and one of the small transom windows in the wall on the right that'll be above the built-in cabinets and on either side of the fireplace.

From the other "overlook" down into the main entry foyer

The photo above has two large openings;  the bottom one is for the entry doorway and the top one is for the large window that will go above it.

Wednesday brings along two new developments....  the roof trusses have arrived on-site in preparation for installation on Thursday, and the house is seeing the beginnings of the vapor barrier wrapping on the exterior of the plywood sheathing.

First, the wrapping.. You can see it's the light blue paper wrapped about the right side of the house. It's there to kind of regulate the transmission of air and moisture within the wall structure.

The view from the back of the house with wrapping...

From inside the patio doors... one of the workers has a sense of humor!

The trusses, stacked up and awaiting the arrival of the crane. Joe (Dennis' construction manager on-site) told me on Wednesday that the trusses would have been installed on Wednesday except that they couldn't get the crane that day. 

The trusses are scheduled to be installed on Thursday. The house will look tons different when that happens!

Also, I'd spoken with the plumbing sub a couple days ago and he'd said he was down in the basement (and the garage) installed the underfloor plumbing. Things like the piping for a future bathroom, the part of the septic system that is inside the house, and floor drains.

floor drain and water heater/softener hookups

the "sewage ejector"

plumbing rough-ins for the future bathroom

More to come in the next post... Thursday will be a big day!

Paul