June 10, 2009: Bricks and Drywall (and a lot more)

On Wednesday, the bricks progressed until it started raining, the basement step rough-in was completed, the front entry slab was poured, the whole house fan was installed, more dirt was delivered, and... whew. That's a lot!

View of the house from the northeast corner of the lot. Bricks have gone up on the garage side and a bit on the front.

View of the bricks on the garage side.

Close up of the soldier course and iron angle above the garage. Pretty, but weaker structurally than the staggered pattern.

We had some insulation added around the master bed room to cut down on sound wafting up from the great room.

The master bed room all insulated in.

More drywall in the great room with the dormer filled in.When you hang drywall from the top down (as you're supposed to) and you have a 24 foot ceiling, it takes a little bit to work your way down.

The kitchen drywall was mostly completed (except for the mudding).

Looking out from the kitchen towards the great room.

Looking from the kitchen towards the dining room.

The pantry.

The dining room.

The main level (guest) bedroom.

The main level bath.

Some more dirt was delivered for finishing the filling around the house after the brick work is done.

Our whole house fan. The concept is to expel all of the air in the house out through the roof and replace it with air from outside in about 3 minutes.

View of the basement stairs from the main level.

View of the steps from the basement.

The front slab was poured, but is covered to protect it from the elements.

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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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