Busy! Busy!

Sorry everyone.. it's been a bit longer than I wanted since I wrote last... so I'm going to put a few days into one post ;)

Friday saw the framers get the plywood subfloor installed on top of the floor joists that were in place already. Dennis (the builder) tells me the subfloor plywood is designed to be able to sit submerged underwater for 30 days before the water begins to ruin it. Good thing too, since we've gotten alot of rain around here since it's been installed! lol

The square area in the middle with the wooden "handrail" around it is the opening that will eventually be the stairways to the basement and to the upstairs.

In the garage-to-basement stairway opening (shown in the last photo above) there was a ladder, so I took a few shots down in the basement.

You can see the steel posts that are supporting the pre-lam wood beams that hold up the flooring system. At the bottom of each post is a small concrete footing poured in the gravel bottom. You can also see a basic stud wall system in place below the stair opening from the first floor. Those will eventually be the walls on both sides of the stairway.

Looking up at the stair opening

After a wet and rainy weekend (and now a couple of inches or water on the gravel in the basement) Monday saw new progress:  Walls!

About 3/4's of the first floor exterior walls are now framed up! You can also see the plywood sheathing on the outside of alot of the framed walls already in place. Insulation will eventually go inside the studs of the walls and the siding will be installed on the outside of the sheathing.

The 2"x6" exterior studs are spaced at 24" on-center. The framed openings that don't go all the way down to the floor level are window openings, while any framed openings that do go all the way down are door openings.

Doorway from the garage to the house

Window about kitchen sink, and patio doorway

Unframed corner of the living room. All 1 1/2 story walls here

Master bedroom / bathroom walls

Den wall and the stair opening

Tuesday brought even more progress! Not only are most of the exterior walls now framed up, but about half of the interior walls as well!

 The next photo has me standing near the doorway between the garage and the house (it's just to my right) and Rachel is standing in front of the den window. The photo after that swings around a bit to show the "back hallway" and the kitchen area (window and patio doors).

see the framed up, but not installed, wall segments laying on the floor?

The next two photos show that they've begun to put up the 1 1/2 story walls in the living room...

Here we see the master bedroom/bathroom framing. I'm guessing they'll leave this area for last until after they get the living room tall walls framed up.

...and next up are some people acting goofy for the camera.. ;)

Lyndsey posing in the front entryway

Rachel checking out the half-bathroom

...and... well.....yeah, I got nuthin'....

The rains came to the area mid to late afternoon today, but the next couple of days say clear skies so it should be interesting to see how far they can get by the end of the week.

Also today, we had our first private showing (totally unannounced and thus, a complete surprise to us) of our house since it went back up on the market. It just so happens it's a guy who Robin used to work with. We should get a "showing report" from our realtor tomorrow on what they said about our house after going thru it.

Tomorrow night we have our first meeting with the electrician. We'll be going over stuff like quantities of the recessed "can" lights he'll be installing, etc.

Paul

Let the framing begin...!

Even several inches of rain won't stop it...

In the last couple of days there's been several things worthy of mentioning here.

The framers begin their work before the heavy rains came. They were able to get all the floor joists installed, along with the beams below that hold up the floor. In the following photos you can see that they have the entire first floor area now covered with the wood joists. The area not covered by the joists is the garage. In the first two photos you can see the framed out opening where our stairway will be. The third photo below shows the opening for the stairs that'll go from the garage to the basement.

...Robin took a shot of me down in the basement as I was going to take some photos down there...

In the basement you can see the steel posts (in red) that will support the pre-lam beams that support the floor joists. You can also see the bracing against the concrete walls are still in place.

The next thing to go into place will be the plywood subfloor on top of the joists...

In news of our current house, unfortunately (maybe fortunately tho... it's that whole silver lining thing) the couple who was going to buy our house screwed up (from the facts we've been able to learn, they had two things working against them;  they had chosen an online mortgage lender who really didn't give a rats-butt about them or their offer to purchase our home... and they were just plain a bit dumb.).... they went out and took out a car loan last month (along with several other issues that crushed their credit worthiness) and so no longer qualify to purchase our home.

So as of yesterday (Thursday) our house is back on the market...

The silver lining to this is that so long as the house sells in the next 5-7 weeks (it "sold" in 4 weeks the first time around) we're actually better off than if the previous sale had gone thru;

• We only have to move once, rather than twice
• We don't have to waste money renting
• By staying in our current house we're still gaining equity in our property
• All our neighbors are still our neighbors for longer, rather than knowing no one at an apartment
• We can keep the girls riding the bus to and from school for the rest of the year, rather than one of us having to drive them to school every day.

So for the next offer that comes in we'll simply put on there that the closing date cannot be before August 19th (when the Parade is over and we're able to move into our new house).

Paul

Two days?

Yup, only two days have passed and alot has happened!

Monday saw the excavator come out and backfill around the foundation walls. Alot of the massive piles of dirt are now gone...

Once the dirt piles in front of the house were mostly gone they were able to extend the gravel driveway up to the front of what will eventually be the garage.

You're now able to walk around the entire perimeter of the concrete foundation without the 10 foot deep trenches everywhere. In this photo you can see how the inside of the garage walls have also been filled with dirt. Eventually the garage slab will be poured over it after they add a layer of gravel first.

Once Monday was over, Tuesday brought on the beginnings of some new developments;  the framing.

The first thing they need to do is fasten a toe board to the top of the foundation walls. They'll fasten the subfloor structure (floor joints, plywood subfloor, prelaminated beams, etc) to these toe boards.

As the materials for the framing begin to appear on-site, our house will eventually begin to take on a more recognizable shape.

The framers have set up shop in the garage area... here they'll cut any pieces they need to do the actual framing and any other work that can be done above grade.

The first appearance by a subcontractor who does something other than moving dirt or building walls is the electrical sub. He's installed the beginnings of what will be the electrical service meter on the outside wall and the breaker panel down in the basement.

I believe the long yellow piece of wood in the next photo is one of the prelam beams that'll hold up the first floor of our house. The few darker long pieces of wood I'm not as sure about. I think they must be beams of some sort as well, but I'm not exactly certain where they go. It'll be interesting to watch it all come together.

Meanwhile... in the "back 40"....  ;)

The above is the fire circle of what we've come to call the "girls' play area". It's a clearing in the woods that they've adopted as their own area.

Well, today while rummaging around in the tall grassy area behind their play area the girls scared up some of these:

We think they're cranes, but we're not exactly sure. One thing IS for certain tho;  they get really ticked when you stumble upon their nest with babies in it! (and very loud too, as the girls quickly found out!)

Weather permitting things will begin changing appearance very quickly as the floor framing goes on and the walls begin to be framed up. I figure I'll be able to post updates here every other day typically, unless something happens on-site that I want to post the day-of, so keep on tuning into this same bat-channel at this same bat-time! :)

Paul

It's been a busy couple of days...

...both at the lot and for us!

Friday saw the forms come off of the concrete foundation walls and the plastic vapor barrier and exterior insulation board (styrofoam) get put into place. 

You can see the light blue insulation board, and the clear plastic vapor barrier sheeting behind it.Also, you can see the ends of the rebar (steel reinforcing running inside the concrete walls for strength) sticking up on top of the concrete walls.

In the pic below you can see all of this as well as you can now clearly see the cutouts for the garage doors.

Saturday the concrete guys visited the site again and added bracing to make sure the concrete walls don't fall over while they're curing (hardening) for the next 5-7 days or so.

Also on Saturday they installed the drain tile around the perimeter of the basement walls... the drain tile is flexible plastic piping that's intended to help collect any ground water (either from natural ground water tables, or heavy rainfalls/snow melts, etc) and direct it toward the sump pump that will eventually be installed in the basement floor. (you can see the drain tile piping mostly buried in the gravel on the bottom of the hole)

...and of course the girls are having fun climbing around the massive piles of dirt that are all around the site for now (until they backfill next week).

While the above was taking place Saturday at the lot, the four of us were busy running around up to Green Bay first and then back down to Appleton for meetings with the cabinet supplier and then the flooring supplier.

After about 8 hours of driving, meeting, making decisions, we arrived back home with most of the decisions made for our cabinets and the flooring for each of the rooms.

You can see in the following photo all of the material samples we came home with... 

The items in the above pic are:

• The cabinet door.. maple with a glazed "monarch" stain. That will be the finish on all of the woodwork throughout the house.
• The stone sample is the stone that will be both on the exterior of the house and on the fireplace from floor up to mantle
• There will be tile flooring in the master bathroom and the front entry.The master bath with also have a walk-in tile shower that we chose the materials for too.
• A laminate-like flooring in the kitchen, dining, and back hallway. As well as in the laundry room and the half bath downstairs, and the girls bathroom upstairs.
• Carpeting will be in the girls bedrooms, our bedroom, the den, and the living room.

The girls had a large say in the carpeting that will be going into their bedrooms.. and in this photo you can see their selections...

We only have one initial supplier meeting left. The lighting supplier. That one is a couple of weeks away yet.

In the meantime we have to get most of our "final selections" on materials and other items back to all the suppliers we've met with over the course of the last 3+ weeks.

One thing we're still waiting to find out (hopefully this coming week) is if, with the Parade discounts included, we'll be able to afford granite countertops in the kitchen.

Once we find that out, and get the revised bid back from the cabinet supplier meeting, we can go ahead and use the materials selected at the flooring meeting to meet a second time with the cabinet supplier to pick out all of our countertops (laminate and/or granite).

Next week should (weather permitting) see the backfilling of the foundation walls (that's when they'll move all that dirt back up against the foundation walls and we'll actually be able to walk around the exterior house without the huge trenches all around.), and then right after that the framing should be starting.

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

Surprised on Saturday...

Robin and I stopped out at the lot yesterday and were pleasantly surprised to see this....

Yup, the concrete trucks were out Saturday morning and poured the footings for our basement (first pic) and our garage (second pic). Dennis said they might surprise us and show up yesterday to try and get caught up from the rain late last week, but he figured they wouldn't pour the footings until Monday. Well, now that the footings are poured this should mean that they'll be back on Monday to pour the foundation/basement walls!

You can see in the first pic all the gravel in the bottom of the hole. That's mainly there so the workers don't have to stand/work/set things in the mud or dirt. You can also see all the long 2X pieces of wood laying around. Those are the forms for the concrete footings. They place those in the proper locations, forming a hollow "frame", and then fill that frame (or "forms) with concrete. Once the concrete has dried enough they strip away the forms and we have what you see above.

The forms for pouring the concrete walls tomorrow are more of the same, except they'll be anywhere from 4 feet to 10 feet in height, depending on the wall they're pouring.

Once the foundation/basement walls are poured, not much will happen on the site for the rest of the week (a couple small things will probably be going on, but nothing really noticeable) as they allow the concrete to cure. Once that has happened, then things will begin to look different almost daily for the rest of the life of this project.

We had our meeting early yesterday morning with the supplier of the fireplace and the exterior stone on our house. We got all our decisions made there. We haven't actually seen our selected stone since last fall's Parade home that Dennis used it on, so it was nice to get to see what we'd picked again.

This coming Saturday are two big meetings:  The cabinet supplier and the flooring supplier. Once those two are done we're almost done with sub contractor meetings, having only the lighting supplier left about 2 weeks after that.

Paul

Dig dig dig!

Houston, we have a hole!

The excavator came out this morning with the intention of starting to dig the hole for the basement.... the problem was that it was raining.

So he decided to come back after the rain stopped.

In the early afternoon, after the rain ended, I got the call that he was starting! So I ran out there to get some pics of the progress....

Here's some shots of the "first scoop" when he was beginning the hole.

After he got going, the dirt really began piling up as the hole got bigger and bigger...

Terry is the guy running the bucket, while Larry is the guy holding the long stick...

Larry's job is to measure the depth of the hole at all times and in all areas of the hole. They need the hole to be at a certain depth (determined via GPS) and completely flat on the bottom.

All the above photos were taken in the afternoon. The next few photos were taken after work... it's amazing what a difference a few hours can make!

You can see the laser level that they use to set the depth of the hole. Larry told me that due to the slope of the natural grade on the lot, the hole they're digging will be about 7'-8" on the front side and nearly 10'-0" deep on the back side.

They were still digging when we left the lot at about 5:45 for our meeting with the plumbing sub-contractor.

There's rain in the forecast for tomorrow afternoon, so the excavators figured they'd get a good start on it today and finish in the morning. The concrete trucks are still scheduled to arrive Friday to begin pouring the basement footings and walls.

There's a massive amount of dirt piled up around the hole, alot of which is going to be used to raise the overall grade in the front yard. (there's roughly a four foot difference in grade from the back of the house to the front of the house, and it slopes downhill more yet from there to the roadway)

More to come soon!

Paul