October 29, 2007

Well, the weekend was fabulous. Lots of work done, and five gorgeous days to work on the house was a blessing. I'm really bummed though ....my camera was dropped yesterday and it doesn't work anymore. The pictures are on there, not uploaded yet to the computer. Mike is working on a way to figure out how to fix the camera, or we might have to replace it. Things are still moving at a remarkable speed. So much was accomplished this week, it's amazing. So over five days, the house grew...the second floor was set, as well as the exterior and interior walls upstairs. I went "upstairs" the other day and nearly passed out. There are no steps in the house yet, only ladders. I did not know how I was going to get down. I was freaking out! I did finally make it down, though I don't know how. The spot where the balcony will go is completely open to the great room below, as is where the stairwell will be. The stairs and rails will come later.... The kids wanted to go up and see where their rooms will be, and Mike carried them up one at a time. I couldn't even watch them up there...I didn't realize I was so afraid of heights!! Also over the weekend, the roof trusses were placed and set. And yesterday, they started sheeting the roof. Yep, the roof! It looks so different in just a week, and it's unbelievable how it's changed in a couple weeks. It sounds like they hope to shingle the roof in a couple weeks or so. After that comes windows!!!! I can't wait to post pictures from the weekend!

WOWSERS!

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Though Friday was pretty crummy weather, Saturday and Sunday were unseasonably sunny and warm. Great days for working on the house!! Well, so much has changed in a short amount of time. I will post lots of pictures!! The kids and I went out there and brought the guys lunch Sat. and Sun. It's a great excuse for me to go take tons of pictures. I have lots of scrapbooking to do...

I never thought a pile of wood would make me emotional, but seeing our walls stacked on our driveway Friday, I was so excited!! I felt like jumping up and down, doing a happy dance, cartwheels, whatever. I seriously felt like I won the grand showcase on The Price Is Right or something! I get butterflies driving to see the house when I go to see how far they've come on it.

This morning, Maddie and I walked through it. All exterior and interior walls of the first floor are set. The garage isn't up yet, so all the pictures I post do not show a garage. It was so strange to walk through the house we pretty much designed ourselves (with help from Mike's Dad and an architect!). We never walked through a model of our home, we walked through lots of models and tried to take all the ideas we liked and put it into one house. Then we tried to fit all of that into that picture I found in the magazine. So once our plan was drawn up, we saw it on paper for so long and just had to visualize what we thought it would look like, or what we hope it would look like! But now to walk through and see where the walls are and say "this is a good sized closet, this is the bathroom, oh sure I'll have plenty of room for a desk here". It is so strange. I've been told that it seems much smaller than it is when it is in this stage which seems ridiculous, but it is hard to actually picture it all finished & drywalled (which we are months away from!!). I am still in shock that we will live there, I think!!

We (I mean, I) have so much to pick out yet. Mike pretty much put me in charge of that "small" task (haha!). If he doesn't like what I pick, he'll let me know : ) We are going with all white woodwork and doors in the house. I know, we must be crazy fools to have white everywhere with 3 small children, but I don't care!! We have the idea of the cabinets in the kitchen picked out (they are going to be stained maple with some kind of glaze over them) and that needs to be finalized and they need to be ordered relatively soon. I have the cabinet layout drawn out of the kitchen, even a head on look at what I want each wall to look like. I am just not sure on a couple of the things...like how many drawers do I want in the island?? Do I want the pull out garbage here or there? Such minor things to think about, but it has to be done...I think I could draw our plan to scale with my eyes closed. Especially the kitchen. I've drawn and redrawn it so many times...I should become a designer, I swear. We still have to get a kitchen sink picked out, too. And appliances. I'm still fighting for my double built-in ovens, which Mike is attempting to veto. I'll fight till the end : ) So also I have to decide if I want white cabinets in the laundry room or not. I always wanted white cabinets, and since we aren't doing them in the kitchen, I thought the laundry room would be a good spot to do that. I have ideas for paint colors in every room, though we are pretty far away from that, too. I find that I have a really hard time not thinking about the designing aspect (like what pictures will fit on which walls) and that is really not important right now. Gotta decide things like what carpet, what tile, what hardwood floors....while I am searching the internet for cute ideas for kids bathrooms. Oh well : )

It's a beautiful day...

...to sit in the house and read a book, or maybe watch a movie. It's one of those chilly, dreary, October days with a fine misty rain. They say scattered showers, but with the looks of the sky, it seems like it could be one of those all day rains.

But, the guys are out working anyhow, today! Pretty sure Mike said it's not good for the floor trusses to be sitting in a pile, especially in the rain. So today they are setting the columns and steel beams that will hold up the house. Amazing! Once that is done, they can start the floors trusses. After lunch, the walls and the floor board will be delivered (I'm not sure what the floor part is called. I don't know if it's OSB, if not it's something like it--whatever it is that you can actually walk on). Maybe they'll get the trusses and the floor down. It's probably too dang windy to do anything else. I hope it stops raining! It can't be much fun to work in this kind of weather. Thankfully, it's supposed to be a really nice, sunny & warm weekend. If the weatherman is right, that is!!

Rain rain go away!

Well, last night it rained literally all night. I'm not sure how much we ended up getting, but the weatherman was predicting 1.25 inches of rain over night. I don't think we got that much, but it certainly rained all night. They were predicting rain for most of the day today and severe weather for this afternoon, as well. It ended up being partly sunny, but very windy most of the day. It did rain late afternoon, today. Anyhow, all the rain last night prevented any work happening today, unfortunately. It was pretty wet and muddy out at the lot, so it would've been difficult to maneuver the equipment used to set the floor. Mike mentioned today he thought walls might be delivered tomorrow! WOW! If the weather cooperates tomorrow, and it's not too windy, maybe we could have a floor and some real WALLS up by the end of the day Friday!!

computers, ugh!

So it appears it wasn't me...the problem was with the site, because everything has been running smoothly today! Ugh...so all the time I spent trying to upload and post, and thinking I was doing something wrong when really the entire time the site was having problems!

Well, the forecast is calling for rain tomorrow and Friday and that's a huge bummer. Hopefully they are wrong, as they often are.

Hopefully we'll have pictures with more progress soon! : )

Ready for the floor!

Unfortunately, I am having problems with this site. I've been attempting to upload recent pictures for days and it's just not working. So I'm pretty frustrated! I may have to find a new site.

Anyhow, on the home front...we had over FIFTY loads of stone brought in to fill the garage and driveway. That's ALOT of stone!! So we can now actually stand in the garage!! After doing this, the excavator also moved most of the dirt back against the foundation and the garage. The yard now looks relatively close to what it will look like when the house is done. There were an awful lot of dirt piles before...the yard was looking small, which I know sounds ridiculous for an acre+ lot. But now with the dirt moved back, it makes more sense! This past weekend the walls of the basement were finished. So if I can get the pictures to upload, you will see the exposed part of the basement where we will have 4 windows. It's hard for me to imagine that a first and second floor will be above these windows yet!! And very hard to imagine that the end of the wrap around porch will end ABOVE the basement windows on the side of the house!! So lots of steps will be built going down to the yard from the porch. The basement windows will look to the back yard. The house is also now ready for the floor trusses, which were delivered today. So provided the weather cooperates, that will be the work for the weekend! Also I think the stair well from the garage to the basement will be done, too. We also found out that our walls will be built afterall! This is what we had planned on, but last week we got word we may have to stick build the first floor ourselves. Not sure when the walls will be ready, but I think once the floor trusses are set, the house is ready for the first story walls when the walls are ready for us! Hopefully the weather will cooperate...it is supposed to storm Thursday, and Mike had planned on taking off of work Thursday and Friday to work on the house, as well as the weekend. I am really hoping the computer allows me to upload the pictures!!

Foundation is finished!

I can't believe how quickly things look so different!! There are walls! Basement walls, but walls nonetheless. It's so exciting! Sometime this week, fill (and lots of it!) will be brought in to cover most of the visible portions of the basement walls. Once that is done, Mike and his Dad will work on building the wood portion of the basement walls where there is exposure and where we will have windows. It will start looking like a house in no time!!