Oh What A Month!

The house building is still happening even though we haven't been blogging as often.  Many small, but necessary items are being installed.

The Front.

We have a temporary front door. Our actual door is a craftsman style door.

pipes and vents

Can lights in the great room.

The electrical work is coming along.  Outlets, wires, and switches abound!

The basement steps to the garage.

The view out of our garage.  

Driveway forms.

Garage insulation

The patio door

Can lights in the kitchen

Washer/Dryer hookups

The fireplace is in.

Steps to the basement.

Bath in place.

Master bathroom - oh how excited we are for this!

Windows and Shingles!

We drove home from St. Louis on Monday to see the shingles had been installed!  Also some windows are in as well as the home wrap (for the most part).

We STILL haven't ordered our front door, so the builder has to wait to frame the opening and get the wrap on.

We picked out our fireplace last week, the vent will go through the roof.

A Bit Here and There

As you can see, our home is coming right along. The exterior sheeting is up and there is tar paper covering the roof begging to be shingled.

From the inside of the garage, you can see there are some outlet boxes up and even some wires run.  You are looking at the back garage door and the auxiliary stairwell which goes from garage to basement.

We have a couple of steps to help us get from the garage into the mud room.  That is especially helpful when trying to get in the house and synchronously holding a 23lb wiggleworm.

The septic tank is in and nearly covered.  We also had our drain field dug, created, and covered.  Unfortunately our fire pit was half destroyed by a careless excavator in the process.

The process has been so paradoxical as the time has really flown but is going by oh so slowly!

What Does a Doggie Say?

ROOF!   Ours is on...for the most part.

Unfortunately, we've encountered an issue.  What worked on paper, isn't translating to wood and nails without a potential winter weather problem.  The ornamental gable we have over the front porch causes a run-off issue where it hits the roof on the garage.  An un-sloped pocket is created which could cause ice to gather and the roof structure to fail.  Yikes!   So, we had to make an exterior change call.   We loved the gable, but we aren't going to put aesthetics over stability.

The red circle is the problem area.  To fix, we'll bring the hipped roof down.  

The following pictures are a walk around the house.

The garage feels enormous!  Lots of room for lots of toys!

Side of the garage, garage back door, and window over kitchen sink.

Garage back and window in dining area. 

Our covered back porch.  Looking forward to many evenings out there!

Back from the back yard.  Our bedroom window.  

And back around again.  

Hopefully the weather is as beautiful next week as it was this weekend, and we'll have shingles by Friday!

Side note:  This week we also encountered an issue with siding.  Comments were made to our builder that "the Hendersons picked some very expensive siding".  Our builder let us know.  We had picked a color and a brand, but the type we showed the supplier was the most expensive.  We didn't realize this...we were just looking at color.    So, we had to go back in and 're-pick' our siding.   Happily, we were able to get the same color "Spruce" as we had originally planned.   So much of this is a 'learn as you go' type of thing and it can get frustrating that we don't know all the right questions to ask.  Good thing we like each other so much that even the more stressful decisions we have to make, we get to enjoy making together.

Update

It's been a week since the last post. I'm adding some current photos so you can see the progress along with a little info.

Roof trusses are up.  Showing the gable end above the double garage opening.

Looking at the front porch

Overhang for the rear covered deck.

A view from the right rear

View from the right side

some fill is still needed on this side of the garage along with the back side

looking up through the trusses to the roof sheeting

Looking through the future fireplace and the rear covered deck to the back yard.

It's an Inside Job!

Our house is a-MAZE-ing at the moment.  The interior framing is nearly complete and we were able to walk through the garage door into the mudroom, throw our imaginary keys on the soon-to-be kitchen counter, and imagine where we'll be kicking up our feet in our defined family room. We even took pleasure in sending the kids to their rooms...of course, it wasn't much fun for us when they can escape through the walls!  

Standing in the kitchen, looking toward the garage.

Standing in the kitchen, looking through to the family room.

Standing in front of the fireplace, looking toward the stairwell to the basement.

A view from outside of the boys' room.

From the front left.  Our trusses are waiting to become a roof.

The footings poured for our back covered deck.

We'd love to see the roof start going up by the end of the week.  Also, I hope you've noticed that our garage floor was poured, the garage exterior framing was completed, and our front porch was poured as well!

Color my World

For those of you interested, we wanted to post a picture of our planned exterior color scheme.   This was created using Certainteed's "Idea Planning" tool.   The colors may translate differently on different computer screens, but hopefully you'll get a general idea.

Charcoal roof, Spruce Siding, and White trim.