Time for interiors....

Monday arrived and so did several new areas of work on our new home...

In preparation for today's work, I was spent an hour and a half at the house on Sunday evening hanging some insulation in the walls between the master bathroom and the master bedroom. This particular insulation was installed just for a bit of sound deadening. This way hopefully one of us can be taking a shower or getting ready in the bathroom without waking the other one up when such a situation arises.

The yellow insulation is the stuff I put in... it's also the *very* itchy fiberglass stuff.

Once the insulation contractor showed up on Monday he went and did all the exterior walls. He put in the pink insulation everywhere and then placed a plastic sheet over that. The plastic sheet is to serve as a vapor barrier between the differing moisture levels from outside the house to inside the house.

master bedroom

den

living room

kitchen/dining area

looking down from the loft to front door

Lyndsey's room

 

Rachel's room

We were all amazed at just how different walking around inside the house feels now. Rather than ceilings that went up and up thru the exposed trusses, you now get a much better sense of exactly how big the spaces will be since the insulation covers walls and ceilings, etc.

While the insulation guys were doing their thing, the concrete company was here pouring both the garage floor slab and the front porch. The photos below show the concrete in both places about 5 hours after pouring. You can see it still looks pretty wet.

The last two windows we were waiting for (they were on backorder) also arrived on Monday. The arched windows above the front door and at the top of the Wall of Windows. Due to the concrete being poured that day they couldn't install the window above the front door yet, but the one in the living room got installed.

front entry window waiting to be installed

Wall of Windows complete!

the view from the loft thru the top of the Wall of Windows

Also Monday, the siding and trim pieces showed up on site. A very small area of siding got installed as well, but I don't have any pics of that as yet.

the boxes of siding and trim pieces

Also on Monday I began the search for someone to seed a new lawn (one of the requirements of being the Parade of Homes), and am also continuing to talk with several concrete contractors about pouring the driveway (another Parade requirement).

The well drillers also took their truck off the site where it's been sitting since late last week. They're officially done drilling the well now, only the hookups to the house and the pressure tank in the basement remain. The well driller called me and told me the well was drilled to a depth of 200', and his estimate from 6 months ago came in $4 (yeah, that's 4 dollars) more expensive than the amount he'd quoted me back then.. lol

More of the siding went up today (Tuesday) and several other things happened as well, but unfortunately I don't have the photos yet. Today's happenings will show up in my next post.

Paul

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

The walls have been poured!

First, up go the forms.. then the walls are poured!

I stopped by the lot yesterday after work and was talking to the concrete guys as they were putting up the concrete forms. It turns out it takes them most of a day to put the forms up for a house like this and half a day to take them down.

So they had said they'd come back this morning and finish putting up the forms and figured they'd be pouring the walls by 11am or so.

So after work tonight Robin and I stopped out there and lo and behold we have basement walls!

 

The front entry and porch in the foreground...

You can see the freshly poured concrete sandwiched in between the forms all around the perimeter of the house.

Looking from the back of the house

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the lower left corner of this photo you can see the cutout for the doorway that'll be in the side wall of the garage.

That's the garage we're looking at here.

The stairs from the garage to the basement...

 The concrete forms will have to stay on the walls overnight. Then they'll come back tomorrow and remove the forms and just the bare concrete walls will be left standing.

Once the concrete has been "curing" (hardening) for about a week, the excavators will come back and backfill against the walls with the massive dirt piles laying around. Then the framers can come in and begin their work!

Paul