September 8, 2009: Staining and driveway begin

We made it out to the house on Monday, though not much visibly had been done (Dan was busy prepping for the seeding guy, but that was mostly smoothing out the soil). On Tuesday, however, floor staining and the driveway installation began.

The stained great room floor and stairs. The stain color is English Chestnut. This (and all the floor stain pictures) were taken leaning into the front door as we can't walk on the floor for a while.

The dining room floor.

Looking across the great room.

The driveway was graded and crushed stone began to be put down (by the garage), but then a rather large rain storm came up. Not so conveniently while I was there making a small change on a corner of the driveway.

From Monday - the ridge was stained and the dormer was painted.

The outside units for the air conditioners were installed on Tuesday (no inside pics - mud + stained floors),

On Monday, I also noticed that electrical boxes were put in on the kitchen island.

On Monday, we also took some "family" shots on the front porch. From left to right: Fritz, Preethi, Silver.

And here's Fritz, me, and Silver.

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August 24, 2009: Forms and veneer

On Monday, we visited the house shortly after work. Concrete should be poured tomorrow and forms were in place.

Forms for the piers that will support the back door garage concrete pad.

Turns out that the ridge can't be stained (the downside to engineered wood). So now we're building a fake ridge over the real ridge but using wood pieces that can be stained.


My apologies for the misrotated image. But I've rotated it, saved it and reuploaded several times and either the file save is failing or blogger is doing something weird. Regardless, a little more prep work was done on the front stoop. I assume the plastic is there to help with the curing process.

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April 30, 2009: Roofing continues

While we came out on the 29th, I forgot the camera, but significant roofing and second floor work still went on on the 29th. By the 30th (when these pictures were taken, with some at lunch and some as the sun set so there's a huge variation in lighting) much more of the stick framed roof (mmmm attic space) was taking shape with the ridges and most of the rafters in place.

View of the house from near the road and slightly West of center. You can see the several of the roof sections here (types of roofs are nicely described here, but there's a brief ad first). Basically, the great room is side-gabled (on right), the roof above the dining room is front-gabled, the main area is side-gabled, the roof over the garage is a saltbox, and the roof over the great room is kinda shed / saltbox cross (with a hip roof to come over the bay window / bumpout).

Here, yo ucan see that most of the rafters are in (rising from the walls) and are being supported by the ridges at the center of each gable.

View of the house from the tree at the North East Corner. If you look closely, you can make out that some of the sheathing is up on the front gable.

View of the hosue from the West side, where you can clearly make out the rafters as well as some of the scaffolding needed to help put together the stick frame roof.

View from the SouthWest.

The plumbin rough-in also occured for the basement. You can see pipes running, eventually to flow out the hole cut underneath the foundation which we showed earlier.

Pipes for the rough-in for the basement bathroom. Also if you look closely, you'll see a pressure gauge which is used to check for the . The inspector happened to be there checking the gauge to make certain it held air pressure for long enough (basically as a means to test for leaks).

View of the house from the neighbor's yard (from the East). We're going to be letting them use the scrap wood to build a tree house and were giving them the heads up on where the scraps would be. On the way back, I realized I didn't have a pic from this direction.

From this, you can a) see Preethi, but b) also see the nice example of a saltbox roof (gabled with different slopes) that is over our garage.

Interior view of the Great room - there's a lot of vertical space. The gap shown in the rafters on the eft side is for a dormer that will be going in.

Detail of the ridge (the engineered piece of lumber which is a different color from the yellow pine) and some of the scaffolding. If you look closely, you can see the rope the workers used to help pick up the rafters to place them on the idge.

Looking up into the second level through the stairwell.

Preethi going up to the second level into the master bedroom. You may notice that the master bedroom appears to have no ceiling or rather that the ceiling is the roof. For the master bedroom and another bedroom where the roof was not that far above, we decided to not have the plain flat 8-ft ceilings (or tray or vault) and instead to go with the ceiling against the roofline.

That'll lead to a room that's sorta like a cross between a top-level room in a Cape Cod and a room with a vaulted ceiling as like a Cape Cod, the ceiling is the roof and slopes off in one direction, but like a vaulted, the ceiling is 9+ feet above your head everywhere. This should also allow us to put in a little plant shelf over the closets - an idea suggested by the framers.

Looking out the dormer of the other bedroom with the roof-ceiling. This room will seem more like a Cape Cod second-level room than the others, but you're certainly not going to bump your head in it.

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