ready for a roof

The weather has not cooperated for me to get pictures the past few days. Every afternoon as I leave school, we have had a tremendous thunderstorm. (Courtesy of Hurricane Ernesto or just August in Georgia?) Walton went over after dinner and homework tonight and took these while I got the boys ready for bed. It was just about dark, so the quality isn't great, but the changes are definitely noticeable.

Walton came back to the rental house after taking the pictures to get a big utility broom because there was standing water on the subfloors from the storm today. He wanted to sweep it out of there so it won't damage the OSB. He just got home from sweeping. He's a little concerned about the water causing damage if it stands for long. The roofers are going to come Saturday and get started, so hopefully we won't have much more rain before they finish. Our windows are in at the lumber yard - they will deliver them as soon as Mike the framing contractor calls for them. Then, at least things will be a little more water-tight.

over the weekend

All of the roof trusses are up now, and the framing guys started working on putting the roof decking in place this afternoon. There were only 3 guys working today, so they didn't get as much done as they did during the first part of last week. There are still no stairs (they climb up and down with ladders), so the boys and I haven't been "upstairs" yet. Here is what things look like at this point:

This is the roof of the screened porch - there is no floor deck to it yet. It's kind of hanging out in space.

movin' on up

We just got in from a quick trip over to the new house after dinner. (It's 7:30 p.m.) The framers are still there working. I'm sure it's easier to work in the cooler part of the day. Walton went by there at about 2:30 this afternoon to ask the crew leader about putting Tyvek on the house for us, and he was taking a siesta in the tornado shelter! The rest of the crew was playing cards. I'm sure they had earned a break. They have some kind of interesting system of high-pitched whistling that they use to get each other's attention. One of them working up top will whistle a certain way and one of the guys on the ground will take him some nails. Or another kind of whistle seems to mean that the air hose for the nail gun needs to be untangled. I was trying to figure it out - I think it's easier to hear a whistle over the compressors than it is to hear someone yelling.

As of this evening, they have notched and angled all of the boards for the roof framing, and a lot of the bonus room/boys' bedroom area has the subfloor down now. Walton went upstairs to take some pictures of what was happening.

The rail you see below is what these guys built for themselves to stand on while they put the roof trusses in place.

The open area below this will be a screened porch off of our bedroom.

Here is Walton's friend Mr. Siesta back at work this evening.

And here he is balancing on that rail you saw earlier.

And finally, the window openings in the bedrooms have been cut out:

not so much change

Today's work didn't seem to be as visible as yesterday's. Mainly, the framers put up the floor joists for the bonus room & the boys' room upstairs. You can see the I-beams sitting on top of the garage.

Here are a couple of views from the backyard looking at the back of the house. The basement will remain unfinished for now. The framers had a microwave for their lunches set up down there today. They hop around on those beams like mountain goats. Scary!

Walton and Will went over and took these pictures while Kyle and I were cooking dinner tonight. I like this shot of them. :-)

looking more like a house...

I didn't put up a new post here yesterday because we were busy celebrating Will's 9th birthday. I also didn't invest a lot of energy in a making a "pretty" birthday cake since the oven at our rental is so unpredictable. The cake still tasted good! ;-) Here is the boy blowing out his candles:

When we went over to the new house tonight after work and school, it was great to see that the main floor was close to completely framed.

In this picture, Will is standing next to the front porch. The front door will be in the big opening to Walton's left. Kyle chose to stay home and do homework this afternoon, so he's not in any of these pictures.

This shot is looking into the guest bedroom.

Here is Walton trying to communicate w/ one of the framers about the rectangular windows that will go here. (Yes, the rectangular window won out over the arched one.) The guy gave up and went to get his English-speaking friend after a minute of watching Walton wave his hands around.

Here are Walton and Will enjoying the view out back from the family room window. This will be a triple window.

This is the configuration of glass & muntins we chose for all of the windows in the house:

That's all for tonight. I'm sure there will be more to see tomorrow.

big changes today

We went from this at 4:30 yesterday afternoon (no basement walls):


---Hey - shouldn't that kid's Mom tell him to get away from the edge?---

To this at noon today (all basement walls framed):


To this at 4:30 p.m. today (all main level floor joists in place):

Only 4 guys were working yesterday and 5 today. Wow! Here are a few more pictures of how things look right now.

basement walls

All of this lumber was delivered first thing this morning. They came out with it on a flat bed semi, not realizing how long our driveway was (or that it was a gravel driveway.) Since there was no way to back that big truck down the long gravel drive, they had to go back to the lumberyard and load it onto 2 smaller trucks to get it to the home site.

When we went by after school, there was a crew of 4 guys working on framing the basement walls. They didn't have as much done as I thought they would, but Walton tells me he's sure they had to spend a bunch of time this morning looking at the blueprints and getting organized to start framing. We did see them put up the wall with the opening for the garage door to Walton's workshop in the basement. I once again drew stares from the Hispanic work crew when I yelled "woo-hoo!" as they pushed it into place. (Mr. Middle School Kyle was of course embarassed by my crazy behavior. I earned a "MOM!" from him.) I was just excited to see progress happening right in front of my eyes! At least none of Kyle's friends were around to hear me. ;-)

The crew leader told Walton that they will work all day tomorrow, and that he expects it to take 2 weeks to do all the framing. We didn't think it would take quite that long - but we also didn't expect them to work today and tomorrow.

opinions, please

We are thinking of changing the arched window on the front of the house. It's drawn to look like this:

But Mom & I saw this window while she was here for a visit this summer and I really like the look of it.

Anybody have any input for us?

better slab pics and a good development

Here are some better pictures of the slab - without the camera foggy lens.


































The last picture is from inside the tornado shelter. Creepy.

I noticed today that the electric co-op installed the transformer box. Walton said it has been there for about a week. He picked up the temporary power pole today so we can get the temporary electrical service hooked up.

In other news, our advertising sign count is now up to 4. The latest addition is from our bank. I guess their inspector put it up today when he came to check the progress so we could get a draw on our loan.

And finally, the good development. The framer called Walton today and said that Williams Brothers has our materials ready to go - could his crew start framing Friday morning? As in tomorrow. So we should have something that looks more like a house tomorrow at this time.