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

Second floor walls...

So, the previous post of today was a bit late in coming... sorry about that everyone!

Now this post is with today's progress!

The second floor walls are beginning to be framed up now. You can see the progress here...

In the next photo the room in the front up there is Rachel's bedroom. You can see the large opening in the middle, that's the window. Both girls' bedrooms have one good sized window each, as well as a small window seat in front of the window. That's why the section of stud wall bumps out a bit so that the window seat can be fit in there.

This next photo shows a similar view of Lyndsey's room wall framing.

 

In this next one you can see the "overlook" from the loft area upstairs down over the living room. The short angled piece of subflooring over on the left side of this photo is the overlook. The rest of that subflooring in this shot will be the edge of Lyndsey's bedroom.

Here's some shots of the front of the house. Now that alot of the first floor plywood sheathing is in place it's really beginning to look like our house from the street.

master bedroom and main entryway (left side of photo)

main entry (middle), den, and Rachel's room (left side)

Rachel's room, den, and garage

In anticipation of the open house this weekend, the girls and I thought it would be a good idea to add some color in place of last year's dead annuals in the front of the house.

More to come soon!

Paul

Second floor framing

The last few days have seen the second floor framing go up!

Once they got all the first floor stud walls framed up they were then able to begin installing the second floor joists and plywood subfloor. You can see the second floor framing sitting above the window and sticking out past the first floor wall a bit.

 It now looks alot different from the inside since the top is no longer all completely open to the sky above due to the second floor flooring.

...the stair stringers seeing their beginnings...

The floor framing for Rachel's bedroom.

 

 

 

The girls decided to take a break from all their hard exploring and smile for the camera....

The stairs should be going up soon... then we'll be able to get up on the second floor and nose around up there.

In news of our current house, we're having the first open house of "House for Sale, Part Deux" this Sunday... with any luck we'll find that real buyer soon.

Paul

A month has passed...

...since we got our house on the market.

We're having our 4th open house this Sunday and having our 5th private showing tonight. So far we've had several people say they're interested in our house but they all have homes they have to sell first, before they could buy ours.

So, the waiting game continues.

The banks can't give us a loan for our new place until we sell this one (we don't want to carry two mortgages anyway). The builder is itching to get going with all this warm weather we've had recently... but the worst part of that is this:  It's March and I have to mow the lawn this weekend! lol! Ack!

Hopefully the people coming through our house tonight will be interested... :)

We're just waiting for an offer to come in.. once it does we give the "go" word to our builder! :)

Paul

Open House #2 is in the books

We had our second open house today... last Sunday was our first one. We also had a private showing this past Monday and another one this past Saturday.

We're told there were quite a few people in the open house today, and the couple who had the private showing yesterday (Saturday) came again today and stayed for the entire open house (1 hour).

They also walked around the *outside* of the house (despite 4-6" of snow on the ground)....

Hopefully that means they're interested!

We don't have an open house schedule for this coming weekend, but there will probably be one for the following weekend.

Paul

D-Day is here

Well, today was the big day!

Our first open house was earlier this afternoon. The realtor tells us there were three couples that came thru, one of them gave her their information for future contact about the house.

It's been a long couple of months of packing up and decluttering things in the house but we finally got it all done.

Also today, Dad came out to our lot with a wood chipper and we spent the day getting rid of the massive piles of brush that were all sitting out there.

So now, basically, we can sit back and relax (a little) and wait for the house to sell.

Next month I'll start talking to lenders about getting the loan side of things going. Once the house sells we can have Dennis begin with the construction on our next place.

Paul

edit:  We had a call at about 2:30 Monday afternoon.. someone wanted a private showing at 5:30 that night!
So Robin and I left work a bit early and rushed home to get the place "open house" ready.
The couple apparently liked the house, but had another one they liked a bit better... so we're still waiting.

The next open house is scheduled for this coming Sunday and we've also been told that there's a woman who wants to set up a private showing as well.