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

Lots more walls

As of today, all the interior stud walls on the first floor are roughed in!

It's a bit confusing to look at from photos now, as it just looks like a sea of vertical studs.. lol. But here's one big feature;  Robin's "wall of windows" as we've come to call it. In this photo you can see the framed openings for the large windows that will look out of the living room into the woods in the back yard. (as you can see, they have considerable bracing pieces holding it from falling over)

The following are some assorted photos of the interior stud walls now in place...

looking from the living room at the kitchen pantry

the soon to be tile shower in the master bathroom

looking thru the studs into the master bathroom

In this photo you can see the assembled stud walls for the garage laying on the ground inside the garage footprint. I'm assuming those will go up tomorrow then.

..and in this last photo you can see the second floor floor-joists in the foreground. With good weather forecast for the rest of week we find ourselves wondering if we'll see the upstairs floor getting installed this week.

We also had our meeting with the electrical subcontractor tonight. Getting all of his quantities and supplies lined up. Things are going to happen very quickly from here on out!

Paul

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