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

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