Nothing Happens At Ten

They started putting up the siding today. They didn’t get it all up, but one end of the house looks pretty good.

That looks nice. It looks more blue and less gray when there is a whole wall of it. Nice choice of colors! (Pats self on back).

The front door looks good too.

That is the door’s natural color. It is a fiberglass door, and it comes white, ready to paint. But I kind of like it white. It matches the rest of the trim. And if it isn’t painted, then the paint won’t peel. I like that too.

Meanwhile, down in the basement, the floor is dry so we can go down there.

Ooooo spooky! It looks like a….. a…. basement. So far it is a dry basement. We shall see what happens after the monsoon rain storm tomorrow.

BTW I think that the jaggy, sawtooth pieces over on the right hand side are the stringers for the stairs that go up to the first floor. Right now, when you are in the basement you are sort of stuck there because there are no stairs. You will have to guess how I got in and out.

The windows and doors are in.

Below is a photo of the living room windows at the front of the house.

It looks like somebody has already moved in! I think that set is representative of the quality of furniture we will be able to afford after we pay for the house. I wonder it they would be willing to sell it to us and just leave it there.

The slider from the sun room to the outside is in place.

The next photo is of the kitchen windows.

The kitchen sink goes under the large picture window in the center. The small window on the left will sit over a peninsula that sticks out from the wall. We plan on sitting at the peninsula for breakfast, staring out the window at our back yard.

We can almost taste it.

The snow shovel is for…. well I am not sure what the snow shovel is for.

Shingles! We have shingles. No, not the illness! The roof!

It took the roofers one day to put on the shingles. In the morning no roof; in the afternoon, roof. Take a look.

Meanwhile, the chimney has been finished. Here is a long photo of our new chimney.

That is a tall chimney. You can see that the cage is on top too. That keeps the critters out of the chimney. Squirrels and birds have been known to build their nests in chimneys during the warm months, and then the nests can cause a chimney fire after a fire has been lit in the fireplace .

We have the best looking chimney in the neighborhood.

Also, the framers have built the interior walls on the second floor. Below is a photo of the closet in the master bedroom.

Here is another view of the interior.

Wow! That is a lot of boards. You can see that the strapping is in place on the ceiling too. The ceiling boards will be secured to the strapping.

Buried in all of that wood are the bathroom fixtures, one tub unit and one shower unit.

They have to frame the walls around the bath fixtures because they are one-piece units and are too big to go in through a door. We don’t want to mess that up, because once the walls are finished, the only way out is Sawzall®*

*I have no financial interest in Sawzall – I don’t even own one – I am just trying to be funny again.**

**Although I do hear through the grapevine that you can take anything apart with one of those.***

***But I have no personal experience of that.****

****Which doesn’t mean that it isn’t true.*****

*****I just don’t know that for certain myself.

We went over to the house to see what happened yesterday. The house is now wrapped in Tyvek®.

After the Tyvek comes windows and doors, followed by siding.

They have also put the Lally columns in the basement.

The Lally columns are bolted to the beam with lag screws at the top.

And they sit on plates on top of the footings at the bottom.

There are six columns down the center beam of the house. The floor of the basement will be poured around the feet of the Lally columns to keep them in place.

Speaking of beams, that monster beam in the garage attic has been jacked up into place beneath the rafters of the roof.

It now sits directly under the ridge of the roof so that it can take the load and put less stress on the knee walls.

Eventually there is supposed to be a beam at this end of the attic:

The attic pole should be right over the pole that they have already put into the garage.

I presume they will put the attic pole in later.

Yesterday and today they put the portico up around the front door. But first, they did a lot of other stuff as well. They built the roof over the garage.

After the roof is finished, they will jack up that huge beam so that the roof rests on it for support. The beam will then take the weight of the roof off of the side walls.

They built the eyebrow over the garage doors.

And the portico. They built the portico roof while it was sitting on the front porch and then lifted it into place with the fork lift.

The hearth has been laid in front of the fireplace.

Nice. We have a really gorgeous chimney. Look at this thing.

The mason put some really nice detailing on top.

Now it really looks like the house we designed.

Here is a shot from the other side.

The shingles have been delivered. The windows and doors will show up shortly. Can we move in yet?

They put the monster beam in the garage attic today. This thing is huge! Take a look at it:

I don’t know what the exact dimensions are, but the garage is 26 feet deep, so that is about how long the beam is. There are three Micro-Lam beams all nailed together there. It is heavy, so they picked it up with the fork lift.

They had to lift it wicked high because it goes in the attic.

They stuffed the beam into the garage attic sideways.

Then they lifted it with a strap so they could swing it around into position.

It is difficult to see in the photo above, but if you look closely you can see that they had to bend the gable ends out of the way to get the ends of the beam in place. First the back end.

Then, the front end.

And there it is…. the biggest beam in the house.

Our builder explained to me that the huge beam is required because the garage attic has knee walls on the sides. Those are the short walls on the sides of the garage up in the attic. Here is a photo of the guys putting up the outside knee wall.

Since the pressure from the roof will try to force the knee walls out, and there is no ceiling tying the tops of the walls together (like in the house attic), the huge beam is required to take the weight of the roof and keep it from flexing under the pressure. “It’s just simple physics”, he said.

OK. That’s all good. I’m a rocket scientist, not a Structural Engineer.

Meanwhile, the mason has been working on the chimney at the other end of the house. Take a look at this.

Is that gorgeous, or what? And inside, the fireplace is just as nice.

This is really looking good.

Below is a photo of the house with the gable ends up on the garage.

Lookin’ better every day!

The mason was at work yesterday, building our chimney and fireplace. Here is a photo of the fireplace.

The clay tube on the left is the flue for the oil burner. It is a separate flue that goes up the same chimney as the flue for the fireplace. Here is a closeup of the fireplace.

That is some complicated brick work. It looks very nicely done on the outside too.

The chimney is about 1/4 done now, from the looks of it.

While the mason was working on the chimney, they put the roof on the sun room.

They also have put in a window with some siding around it so we can see what it will look like.

The siding color is called “Oxford Blue”, although it looks gray in this light. The black sheet to the right of the siding is some roofing shingles nailed there so we can see what they will look like against the siding.

It was a big day today. The roof went up today. The rafters were cut yesterday and were delivered this morning to the roof platform with a crane.

One by one the guys lifted them up to the ridge pole and nailed them in place.

The rafters are nailed to the ridge pole at the top and the joists at the bottom.

Do that about a hundred times….

…and you are done. Below is a photo of the rafters in place.

After the rafters were in place, they put the plywood sheathing on.

There you go! The roof is on.

Now it really looks like a house!

And it was all done before the stormy skies arrived.

The attic floor went in today. They put some scaffolding on the side of the house to stand on while they put the joists up.

The joists for the attic floor are the widest pieces of lumber in the whole house.

The reason for that is that there must be enough space between the upstairs ceiling and the attic floor to get insulation with a rating of R-38 in there. Here is a view from the second floor looking up.

Lots of space for insulation.

They also built the gable ends after the floor was in.

The gable ends already have the plywood sheathing, the Tyvek® and the Azek® trim on them so after being put in place all they need is the windows and siding.

Tomorrow the rafters go up.

BTW, in case you are curious, here is what the house is supposed to look like once it has been finished.

The second floor walls went up today. They used the same technique as they did for the first floor walls, build ’em flat on the floor and then lift them into place.

Sometimes they had to, um, stretch a bit to nail them together.

The stairs from the first floor to the second floor went in today as well.

I heard that there was some discussion about how the stairs should be built and there were a couple of false starts….  and some additional expense was incurred to argue them into position…. so they decided to charge a toll for use of the stairs to offset the additional cost.

Hmmmm. At least they provided for a fast lane.

It is starting to look more like a house now.

Next up is the attic floor and stairs. Then the roof gets framed.