Roof Trusses!

As expected our roof trusses arrived today, so the house is literally shaping up!

The first truss in the lounge is lined up against the wall so they can cut the block exactly to fit.

Another view from the stairs.

Jeff stands in the doorway to Sarah and Jonathan's room.

Sarah's side.

Jonathan's side (ignore the bracing).

The bathroom, I know it is almost impossible to tell what is actually a wall and what is a shadow. The little room in the back is the toilet, and the shower room is to the right of the picture.

The master bedroom.

Jeff's office, with a huge window that opens to the lounge.

The lounge as seen from the master bedroom doorway. The stairwell will be surrounded by bookshelves to the height of the rail and then the right side will have couches and be a reading area.

Jeff stands in the doorway of his new bedroom.

A bird's eye view of the house from the corner of the lounge.

A really big bug I found on top of the wall while I had the camera.

Time Travel

I'm going back in time about two weeks to maintain the start to finish feel of the blog. So here are pictures of putting in the upstairs windows August 12th.

The other Jeff with the windows in the lounge.

The carpender building the front wall of the dormer which is not made of ICF.

From the back of the upstairs, looking toward the street. This is what the site looked like everyday.

Hard at work framing Jonathan and Sarah's bedroom.

Al checks Jeff's office window, it is 7 feet long!

Jeff and Sandy's bedroom windows. The heights are different because of the roof. It makes sense when you can see the other windows and the roof.

We're back in school...

So the blog is a little behind. Here are some catch up photos from Friday when they poured the foundations of our porches. Sometime there will be pictures of the upstairs since the walls are in place, the roof trusses arrive tomorrow!

Measuring out the places for the holes.

The digger at work.

The holes for the front porch.

The hole from above.

Our house as it currently looks. The roof trusses come tomorrow and should be up soon.

Concrete filling in the foundation holes.

Writing on the floor

 Jeff, the new expert on concrete, smoothes out the new part of the garage floor.

Jonathan puts his handprint in the concrete!

The final product.

Stairs to the second floor and walls

The house is starting to feel real!

The stairs to the second floor are just about done! They are partially open on the front side and there is a great landing/stage under the ladder.

Another view of the landing.

The wall between the kitchen and study went up today too!

First floor walls poured!

Tuesday was a big day here. After staying up til midnight and waking up before five, we got everything ready to pour the first floor walls at 8am.

The two Jeffs work on the porch ledger board.

That's right, construction HERE.

The set up for Tuesday involved concrete trucks and a big pumper truck that had a HUGE reach.

Moving steel for inside the walls.

Checking progress from the inside.

Concrete filling up under the windows.

Filling the walls.

More filling the walls.

Another view of the massive truck.

Rain, Rain Go away, we want visitors to stay

Today is blog catch up day, it has been a very busy week!

A large group of out of town visitors stop by to look at the house after a 50th wedding anniversary party for our relatives down in Tolono (Happy Anniversary!)

Rain dripping off the edge of our house, it poured on Monday afternoon for quite a while.

Jeff, looking very wet after putting things away in the rain.

Work on the house continued despite buckets and puddles. Jonathan and Sarah removed over 6 buckets of water by pushing it into a dust pan and dumping it out, and they didn't make a dent.

25 crazy years!

Happy 25th Anniversary!

Jeff's sign!

The new stairs to the basement.