PROGRESS!!!

Ok, finally after several days of straight rain we have a finished garage slab and three framed walls on the house! Below is the garage footing and stem wall before the pour and above is after the concrete pour and sealer

And now FINALLY some actual walls! Above is a view from the great room back to the kitchen. Below is a view from the corner of the great room back toward the dining room.

In the pic above, the south wall goes up. Below . . . You remember when I mentioned the pool, right? (We'll be pumping that out as soon as we get dried in).
We're supposed to have all of the first floor framed (except for the two-story great room) tomorrow. The open-web floor trusses arrive for installation tomorrow - weather permitting. Then, they'll be able to move on up to the second floor, the geat room, and finally the roof. We'll keep you posted. Thanks for reading!

The Shed . . .

Well, we finally got tired of waiting around for progress on the house (we've had about a week and a half of straight rain). So we decided to just suck it up and get wet. If we weren't going to have any progress on the house, we might as well work on getting the shed done. Most of the framing was done in dry weather, but sheeting and roofing went on between downpours. Below you can see Kaden helping - he's tightening some anchor bolts. You can see the shed during framing - it's kind of a prelude to the house. The shed style echoes the house style. The photos below also show the shed with sheeting on, and also a close-up of the metal roofing. The last picture shows the rafters and the purlins before the sheeting was finished and metal roofing was installed. I'll post more pics when we get the siding on.





Next week the excavator is supposed to fill to prepare for the garage slab pour. Once it's poured and set up, the crew can begin framing the house and garage. If we continue to have wet weather, we're going to try to get the crew to start framing before the garage slab gets poured. We just can't afford to loose any more time! I'll be sure to post more upates as the job progresses, but with this crazy midwestern weather this summer, it's a slow go . . .

Garage foundation formed

Today we went to the site to work a little more on the shed and see what the crew finished with yesterday. Here you can see that the garage footings have been poured and the forms for the foundation walls have been laid out. Today Kenny framed 3 of the shed walls and started the fourth. With the garage laid out, you can really start to see how the spaces will work together now.


Kenny spent the day yesterday helping the crew form up for the garage foundation walls since they were a guy short - he's pretty proud of his work. We hope the weather cooperates and allows us to pour the concrete for the garage foundation walls on Monday so that we can begin preparing for pouring the garage slab. After that we'll begin the framing on both the house and the garage. Thanks for reading!

Working on the shed

Here is Kaila and Kaden checking out the new basement now that all of the dirt is backfilled. The interior shot is from the basement egress window on the west end.

Here are Mommy and Daddy helping Kaila and Kaden build the shed. Mommy is helping Kaden hammer in some anchor bolts into the concrete while Daddy shows Kaila how to measure for the bottom plate.

Backfilling and garage footing layout

In these pics you can see the excavator backfilling and rough grading while the contractor's crew lays out the garage footing forms. Here are the forms in place at the end of the day yesterday.


Here you can see the guys laying out the garage footings with their laser. The orange lines on the ground mark the location of the exterior of the garage walls.

Kenny even got to help with the backfilling by spreading gravel over the footings (see picture above) before the backfill AND driving the bobcat. (He was so excited!)