May 9: Windows all in

On Saturday, we made it out a bit earlier and serendipitously met up with Wilbert at the lot (he was out for a ride and happened to be there). All of the windows were in.

View of the house from the road.

Outside of the garage. That's a window to the bathroom and to one of the bedrooms. You can also see some of the flashing (tape, really) around the windows. Helps cut down on water infiltration.

Door and window in the garage.

Preethi next to her favorite dining room windows.

Preethi and Wilbert in the Great room viewed from the kitchen. You can see where the 3rd window (center) is in. Lots of light.

View of the great room from the foyer. The french doors will eventually open out onto a wrap around deck, but not in the immediate future.

Detail of the ridge line and the rafters in the great room.

Looking into the master bedroom and the bump out.

One of the dormer windows in a bedroom.

View of the house from the west. You can see windows in the Great Room above and a basement window below.

Plumbing rough-ins in the basement. More importantly, the trench has been filled.

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April 24, 2009: Onwards and Upwards

We visited the site twice on the 24th. Once around lunchtime with Wilber and once in the evening with James and Kate and Joe and Jen. Again, the midday pictures came out a lot better than the pictures taken at sunset. A lot of the structural framing was completed on the main level and the floor started to go down on the second level.

View of the house from the tree on the north east corner of the lot around lunch time.

Looking into the garage in the evening. You can see both the support for the span over the entrance and the I-beam steel support closer to the centerof the garage. It's not a huge garage, but it's not small either so a little extra support goes a long ways.

Looking at the main-floor bedroom around lunch time. The joists for the second level are going in.

Looking from the great room back into the "dining" room (it'll probably never be a formal dining room and will instead be more of a flowing extension of the great room). You can also see distinctly see the engineered wood used to span and support the largish spaces on the main level.

Preethi in the foyer by the entrance where some of the top level support work has started.

Wilbert in the great room.

Looking at the entry-way at night.

Here you can see where some of the flooring for the second level is beginning with the bump-out for the master bedroom.

A view of the garage from the south side. If you look closely, you can see the I-beam that is helping to support the garage expanse and also see that the garage is a taller-than normal room. This was mostly the result of the need to drop the garage a foot and a half or so to match the roll-off of the lot and the need to have a common level for the second floor. This in turn means means that we're going to have a slightly taller than normal garage door (8' as opposed to 7').

A closer view of the steel beam support in the garage at night (hence the blur).

Joe, standing in the great room looking out the south side. There's actually pictures of everyone who came that night, but only's Joe's photo turned out okay-looking.

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March 12 - Footers Poured

The forms are all complete, the driveway is done, and the concrete for the footers have been poured. The foundation walls (and all the exterior walls for that matter) will end up sitting on the footers and the concrete slab will be poured up to them. There's actually a bit more involved in a footer than this indicates (i.e., beyond the concrete and wood, there's a vapor barrier, mesh, gravel, and rebar for reinforcement).

Low level view of footers. On the main level, looking from back to front on the left side, bedroom4, dining room foyer, great room.

Low level view of the footers at the front of the house. Eventually, the main entrance will be about 2.5 feet off the ground.

Detail of the garage footer.

Stones for the temporary driveway is now spread out (making it functional) with excess concrete on the stones.

Front left of footers (bedroom 4 on main + garage).

Footers at the entrance looking back to the garage.

Wilbert (who Preethi used to report to), the dogs, and Preethi (somewhat hidden by Wilbert) look at the footers. We bring people out to the lot... a lot. In fact, we like showing the lot so much, we made a blog!

At the garage looking down the slope at the back of the house. We're walking down to the stream to show Wilbert the rest of the lot.

Dirt pile looking down the farm road. You can kinda see the acre or so clearing through the trees in the top left of the photo.

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