Insulation and Drywall

Kyle finished up the electrical last week, and the next day, we had the 4-way inspection, and a few days later, the insulation was done.  That same day, the drywall was delivered, and the framers came and covered the south wall with plywood (something to do with how much glass in on that wall).  

These are all kind of out of order, but here's looking up into the cooling chimney.  The exposed joists will be wrapped and painted to match the trim.

Standing in the kitchen, looking out to the living room.  The dry wallers only did the ceilings on the first floor on saturday.  Hopefully they'll come back on monday.  

The garage ceiling.  This picture also shows how the exterior wall insulation looks.  It's a plastic sheet, then they punched holes in it and blew in some sort of cellulose fill.  It's pretty cool.  Interior walls have the regular pink batting.  The insulators also sprayed foam in any cracks to seal the house up really well.  Joints on plywood, electrical boxes.  They were pretty thorough.

It's been awhile..

The water meter is in and the water line going to the house is down.  I'm not sure if it's actually connected up to the house yet or not...

We've had three or four different trenches dug up the entire length of the driveway.  It would have been nice if we could have just done one trench and been done with it, but all the different utilities needed their own trench apparently.  Now we're just waiting for gas or electric to come do their trench (I can't remember which one isn't done yet...).  Then we can cover everything up and be done digging up the driveway.

The rock guy has been prepping for putting the rock on.

The window came.

And were installed in an hour.  They were fast.  One window got broken during installation, so hopefully they come back and replace it soon.  There are two windows in the cooling chimney that we ordered from another company, so we could get them on an electric switch so we can open them by remote.  Cooling chimneys aren't very useful if you can't open the windows.

Just looking at the light coming through the windows makes me happy.  It was really warm in there even without the house being sealed up all the way.  The back corner was actually too warm.  That's why we have to have the layer of quickset and tile everywhere on the first floor- it will moderate the heat so it doesn't get too hot in the winter. I can't wait to see how it works, and if it affects our utility bills at all.

Kyle picked up the exterior doors, and Frank from our builder came and installed them.  This is the only one that was done when I walked home from school with CP.  This is the garage to outside door.  All the other doors are more interesting to look at.

The fire sprinkler people came and finished up in a day.  They still have to connect the system to the water source, but other than that, fire sprinklers are done.

Kyle finished framing the basement, including around all the hvac ducting.  

This is the shower for the guest bath, and in the background you can see my soaker tub.  Kyle's going to need it after all the work he's been doing.

They cut a floor in my living room and build a cement block wall to support the (future) fireplace.  It will all be covered up again, but it will be there down the road when we are ready to put in our fireplace.  

Kyle also ALMOST finished the roof.  He has to put a few pieces of flashing in, and shingle the top of the cooling chimney.  I think that's the plan for tonight, if he can get to it before it gets too dark..  Looks like rain and snow in the next few days, so hopefully he can get it all done.

The rock did get dropped off today, I'll have to go out and look later to see if they started putting it up.  

And then they did.

They finally put up the stairs, but not until the end of the day.

Cutting the stair's treads

One of the cut treads

We were hoping that we could have some type of secret passageway underneath the stair landing, but with how low it actually turned out, we may not be able to. I still harbor hope that we can do it, but it will be kind of challenging.

Stair landing

Finished stairs

 They didn't put the final tread on the stairs because they didn't want it to be ruined with all of the subs and everything.  We can finally get downstairs without a ladder!

We finally have stairs!

Interior walls completed

 The interior walls were completed.  We are kind of worried about the size of the great room sitting area. We will have to see when all of the furniture is placed.

Looking from the guest bedroom into the master bath

They still haven't done the stairs...

It's become a joke, that the stairs seem to be the last thing the framers are going to do.  It's okay because they've got a lot of other things done.

Roof extended over gable

I don't think the scaffolding is OSHA approved

Cooling chimney

Cooling chimney from inside

Finishing sheathing

Last sheathing to be placed

Basement Framing Finished (almost)

"All we need is paint!"  That is what CP exclaimed when we were putting all of the tools away Saturday night.  We had finished for the day and he was excited that we were that much closer to finishing the house.  Unfortunately, it is going to take a little more than paint to finish!

CP's Bedroom

He'll only get sunlight in the morning with this being a northeast bedroom. We are OK with that.

Hallway with Linen Closet

So I have a question for anyone who reads this: Should we make all of the door heights in the basement the same?  The doors to the left side of the hall are lower because of the beam needed for the load bearing wall.  The doors to the right are about 6 inches higher.  Should we worry about the difference in height? Would it look funny to have doors in the same hall different heights?  What about closets in the bedrooms?  Should they have the same heights?

Storage Room

One of the three storage rooms.  This will be a toy storage, for now, to keep the toys out of the family room (yah right - like THAT will happen).

Fmaily Room Looking at Hall and Bedrooms

I like the angled bedroom wall - it opens the hall a little bit and gives it more character.

The reason that the framing isn't complete is because we have yet to find out what we need to do to support the fireplace on the main floor.  It is going to go in between the two kids' bedrooms in the last photo.  So until we have the calculations and drawings from our engineer on what we need to do, this will have to suffice.

Trusses

The framers arrived at 7am, and got to work on the supports over the porch, and I'm not sure what else, but the crane was scheduled to arrive at noon to put up the trusses, so I'm sure they worked all morning getting ready for that.  By the time I got home at 1:30 the crane was just finishing up.  Here's the back view, you can see the porch and the garage.

Another back view- looking from south to north.  Once the crane is gone and the framers leave for the day, I'll go out and see if there's anything else exciting to post about.  :)

More Framing, Part Two

The front wall of the house is about ready to be tipped up, you can see the two windowboxes are framed and on the wall.

A few hours later, they have the north wall up, and the laundry room enclosed.

A wall in the garage getting close.

Close up of the window boxes.  

More Framing

We were happy to be woken up this morning to the sound of the framers working.  Our neighbors were maybe not so happy, but we'll have a party when we move in, and invite everyone as a way to say thank you for putting up with the construction mess and noise.

This picture shows the back porch, and the wall that was built last time but not tipped up yet.

They're building the north side of the house, right now he's working on the window box in our bathroom.  

This is the wall from the first picture (with the door that goes from the back porch into the kitchen) and a new wall that looks into the laundry/mud room.

Hopefully we'll update again tonight- they said they should get all of the exterior walls up today.

Main Floor Framing: Evening Edition

From the south, this shows the smaller kitchen window (over the sink), the dining area/great room, and master bedroom in the corner.

From the north, there's another wall ready to be put up next to Kyle's feet.  Tomorrow ought to be even more exciting.

Main Floor Framing - Morning Edition

The framers finally showed up and before I left for work this morning, they had put up one wall on the southeast corner of the house.

Bedroom and great room wall.

Those windows are HUGE!

So I guess we will see how much they do today - will post again tonight on the progress.

Basement Framing Party

 Kyle and several friends spent the day framing in the basement.  They started around 7 am and didn't stop until it got too dark to see.  The pictures don't do it justice, but it looks so great, that I almost want to just finish the basement and move in, even if they don't have the main floor framed yet.  We were hoping to see the upstairs framers on Thursday, then Friday, then today, but we were happy to see so many friends who came to help with the basement.

The window will be where CP's room is, then his closet, and a utility room, then a bathroom, then part of the family room.

This is the west wall of the family room, and the door to the stairs.

Here's another view of CP's room, and you can see where the missing wall to finish off the hallway.

This is the last wall of the family room- it got too dark to finish it tonight.

This is looking from the family room down the hall to the bathroom and bedrooms.

Framing...Finally

As a happy birthday to me, the framers finally came and stuck around all day on Saturday.  They framed the walls around the stairs and the main load bearing wall down the length of the basement, and set the huge beam that will allow us to have a nice large open family room.  Then they left again (really, all that took most of the day).  They came back today and got all of the floor joists, and plywood down.  It feels really neat to be in the basement now that it is enclosed more.  Kyle is thinking that he'll start framing the rest of the basement tomorrow or tuesday.

They had gotten all the floor joists in place at this point, and were finishing up the plywood around the edges and starting to lay the subfloor.

In the basement, the dark room is under the front porch.  All the framing in there is in preparation for pouring the floating slab that will be the front porch.  I'm really excited about this room, even without the cement poured, stepping into this room was noticeably cooler than the rest of the basement.  This will be the food storage room, and I'm picturing shelves for potatoes and onions and garlic and squash...  Also all the rows of canned foods.  :)

This framed area is where the stairs will be, as well as a closet and a door to the toy storage/kyle's home command center room, which has another door leading to another storage room behind the cement wall that will be for all our non-food storage.  We're debating putting the freezer in that room instead of the garage too- any suggestions on which would be the better location?

This picture shows the big beam and one side of the hallway.  The three doorways framed are (starting from the one closest) the bathroom, a mechanical room, and CP's room (and E's as soon as he's big enough to move downstairs).

We think they're coming back tomorrow so hopefully we'll have another update with the main floor rooms and the stairs all framed- that would be so cool.  Either that or we'll get cement poured for the garage floor.  Stay tuned.