Structure has begun

When we got back from vacation on Monday 2/12, we were eager to see what kind of progress was made the week before. Our builder had us front some money before we left to pay some of the labor costs toward framing, so we expected to see this started. Sure enough, the structure has begun and it's starting to look like a house! They even had both the front and back porches and garage floor completed. I'd say that's pretty good progress for only 1 week.

The problem is that we are running into the rainy season in this area. We apparently don't get snow, but just get rain. And boy has it. I see nothing but rain over the next 15 days. When it rains, people don't want to work. I don't blame them, but on the other hand, don't they want to get paid? The materials are okay in the rain, and the majority of the day it is only a couple sprinkles so I hope it is the cooler weather/rain combo than just the 2 rain sprinkles that disincentivizes the work. I digress... They've made a good amount of progress.

Still a lot of materials on standby ready to go up!

Liz standing ever-so-comfortably dressed on the back deck. It's about 10'x22' - a good size and half of it is covered!

We ran into a little bit of an issue when we started measuring things out. The master bedroom felt huge. So we grabbed a tape and measured it to be about 2 feet longer than expected which meant the walk-in closet had shrunk by this 2 feet. I'm not sure how this happens. They are working the same plans as we are - Because well...we designed and provided them. We also found the two windows on the south wall of the bedroom were spaced too close - only about 4 feet apart, which isn't great spacing if you want to place your bed between them. Our builder said there really isn't a problem moving these features around and sure enough - they were corrected within a couple days.

Difficult to see from the photo but this is the master closet. The access door is no longer centered to the room, but that's okay. The door will be a pocket door so we don't loose any wall space within the closet.

Windows corrected with extra spacing for up to a king size bed to fit between without covering the windows.

We also found the half bath to be quite a bit smaller than expected which is going to require some creativity in sizing the vanity and placing the toilet in a way so the layout feels proper. There was nothing we could do to correct the size of the half bath. It is now just long and skinny rather than square-shaped.

One thing i'm really starting to appreciate now that windows are going in is just how there really isn't a bad view. Every direction you look through a window is beautiful; maybe not so much this time of year, but we're very happy with the location we picked and how the house was oriented.

View out the north window (front of the house) and a covered front porch.

Same window - all windows on the first floor are 6' high. This one in particular will be two double hung 3' x 6' windows called "double three-oh/six-oh".

View out the west side of the home. It may not look so pretty just yet, but you have to picture a beautiful fireplace centered between these windows, a large houseplant/tree off to the right side of the right window and 17' high ceilings in this room and three fixed pane windows above the windows seen here. We'll catch the evening sun through these windows.

I enjoy taking panoramic shots even if the camera sweep angle is only 90 degrees. You get such a better perspective. Anyway, here is the east side of the house. The small window seen here is a single 20/30 double hung centered over where the master toilet will go. I didn't realize having a nice view while peeing is an important feature, but it will be nice to have some natural sunlight (and natural fresh air) in the master bathroom.

A little difficult to see in the photo, but we caught the tail end of the framing crew's workday. 5 cars; maybe about 7 or 8 crew working that day. 

By the way, someone needs to have a consultation with the crew's diet. Let's count the food products I've found in the home: Pringles, Mellow Yellow, Mountain Dew, Powerade, Coffee, Orange peels (ooo something healthy!), cigarette butts all over. LOL - Oh well, If they can work off that high-sugar fuel, that's fine so long as the job gets done well!

Okay - Here's my favorite part - They have already built the curved staircase to the second floor. One of the workers told me there was only one guy in Dayton willing to do the job, and it looks great. Feels solid too!

Each stair tread is 42" wide which is a good size. Treads are to code, so rise and run feel natural - No weird short steps. He did a great job and it is going to look beautiful when finished.

It appears the staircase runs very close to the front door of the house and the truth is... it does, but I think it will be okay. There is enough room for the door to swing and miss the first stair and feels inviting when you first step into the great room. There will be a small coat closet tucked in the corner between the stairs and front door.

Here is the top of the stairs. Creative... Not sure how this is all going to come together but I'm sure it will.



You can also see here that the left side has been framed in and feels a bit less scary at the top.

Just kind of a random photo of the crawlspace. I took this photo because I wanted to see if the dirt was filled in around the inner supports. My boss said when his house was built they never filled in the dirt and water constantly collects and pools up here, which can cause issues with unwanted settling of the supports and dips in the floor joists as well as a moist crawlspace prone to mold/mildew problems. I think this is only a real concern if you have an unvented crawlspace (ours is vented) and poor water control around the foundation.  But, either way, best to have that filled in I think.

Here's Liz on the curved staircase which helps with perspective. You can also see the walls of the garage are up at this point.

Almost looks like the concrete is frosted. It was a little cold this day, but this is just dust on the concrete's protective tarp.

Garage walls up

Garage wall on east side of home - Man door here for ... human access (for lack of a better term)?

They chose to run 2x6's on the west wall of the garage only. Not sure why exactly but i'm not complaining.

Very tall walls in the garage which will be nice for our home gym and extra storage. A little over 13' tall.

  

Now we've got the front of the garage wall in showcasing what the two garage doors will look like. Each opening is about 7' tall, 10' wide.

Entrance to master bedroom. One thing not previously mentioned is if you walk to the far wall in the master bedroom and turn right there will be a pair of french doors leading to the covered portion of the back deck. This will be beautiful! Might turn out to be sliding doors instead if french doors are too expensive, plus, you can't put screen doors (that i know of) on french doors so they would have to remain shut.

  

East wall of master bedroom

 Hoping the second floor will be nearly complete within the next week or two.

This is so awesome. If you look out the front of our home you will see a pond. We own about 12 square feet of the pond. LOL. But what's awesome is that just two monogamous ducks have recently moved in - A male and a female. It's Mike and Liz in duck form! Of course, Mike is prettier.

-Toodles!
Mike and Liz