A quiet day

There are two posts today - I just realized that yesterday's post didn't actually get published, so scroll down to read that one when you're through with this one.

The gang is all here. It's raining. Here's a view of the office corner taken from the slider. That's Josh on the right, Mike in the back (waving) and Jonathan in the yellow rain jacket. Now that I'm gainfully unemployed, I can do fun things for them, like establish "cookie-thirty" (that's what my beloved friend Michele calls rest breaks).


Did I mention it's raining? Here's the brook...in flood stage. Good thing we already got our Letter of Map Amendment from FEMA, heh heh heh.

On Monday, we're going to lay out the bathroom. That should be fun - the original, original idea was to have a shower, but we later realized we wanted a tub instead, which messes with the blueprints, so we have to settle on a revised design. Stay tuned, and stay dry...

Roof

We have a roof, ladies and gentlemen. We've had bits of this for a couple of days but it was raining and blah blah blah, excuses excuses, I didn't post. Deal with it.

And from the other side, yes, also, a roof over here.


Also featured in today's work: they're putting the inner walls in. (Double-wall construction.) So this is looking into the door off the office. The living room of the existing house will be to the left, where that ladder's leaning.

As you stand where that doorway will be and look to the northeast, this is what you'll see.


Standing in that same doorway, but just turning to the right a bit, this is the front corner. Sweet, no?


I'm thinking the cats will colonize this sunny corner right quick.

Rafters!

We had QUITE a thunder and lightning storm in the wee hours. I stumbled around, closing windows. The tarp's been a help, but last I checked the floor of the addition had some puddles. Sigh. But look-look-look at what the guys have done today! Waaghhhh!!! I'm so psyched!

A walk around, with Charlie.

Charlie and I took a walk around the house yesterday. Come join us: we'll be heading clockwise.

The not-very-interesting west-facing wall. This is the one with the staircase going up it.

The northwest corner. Charlie's in every picture, by the way, walking toward me. Hard to see in some of them.

The north-facing wall.

Ah, there's Charlie.


OK, he's off camera now, but I assure you, he's following me around.

Such a nice, clean work environment, notes Kevin.

Hi sweetie!

Second floor walls going up

The second floor is happening just like the first floor: the east-facing and west-facing walls are going up first. That's the east-facing wall, above. As with the downstairs, the windows will mostly be on the south and east sides.

Access is up a ladder, and onto the scaffolding...the floor is about chest-high for me once I'm on the scaffolding.

The east-facing wall, from the inside. The three windows over on the right are partially covered in plywood right now; they'll ultimately be taller, as the framing around them indicates.

Hey babe! Behind Kevin is all the slash from having trees taken down yesterday at Oh-Dark-Early.

Here's the west-facing wall. If we hadn't taken those trees down, branches would be smushed up against this wall. Those windows are in the stairwell. Stay tuned for exciting window developments once the master bath gets framed out.

Second floor decking went in today.

I was in town all day, and Kevin was 'working' from home. I say 'working' because apparently it's hard to concentrate with all the banging, dropping-of-heavy-objects, calling out of important measurements, circular saw whining, and general cackling and merriment that are the hallmarks of our builders. When I did get home, it was to find that Kevin had already been out with the camera. How tempting is this? Very.

This will be our view from bed.


Facing west - the wall with the stairs against it - these are the trees that are going to have to come down. (Sob.)

Did I mention it's time for a new roof? It's time for a new roof.

Here's the as-yet-unfilled bump out.

And, time to head back down and make dinner.

second floor framing begins

Yesterday, the guys started putting in the floor joists for the second floor. I'm learning all their nicknames for each other. Very cute.


The previous day, they'd tinkered with the first floor decking to prep where the trap door is going to be.

This is where the stairway goes up, so no joists here. There are four trees over here that need to come down - that may happen as early as Monday. Sadly, one of them is a yellow birch (my personal fave).



This corner might not be done yet - the stairwell is on this side, but I think this particular spot is where the (hooray!) walk-in closet is going to be. So it will need a floor, as your better sorts of closets do tend to have floors. In my experience, anyway.

The other two walls are going up now

So far, so good! Now remember, this is going to be TWO stories. Here we are, facing northwest.


The windows are generally on the southern and eastern sides. The picture above is taken from the north, facing south, which is why there are only those two windows. Also, me being my father's daughter and all, we have a ton of (sigh) framed prints, so we actually need wall space, here and there.


Here's that doorway on the east wall - they cut it out more today.



OK, this is the door frame of how this will connect to the existing house. Any day now they're going to want to actually connect the two houses and boy is that going to make a mess.



Here's the view to the south. Somehow I think I'm going to just have to buckle down and learn something about landscaping. And *gardening*.


Looking north.

There's that doorway again. Gosh, this is fun...

Holy smokes!

Things are moving fast! This was yesterday: they put decking on the joists. They covered up the trap door - they'll get back to that later. Notice that the existing house is thus far untouched.


Today they threw up walls on the east and west ends. (In the picture above, we're facing west, up the hillside.) Here's that same place, today. They've chopped out part of the existing house. Let's hope we don't get a windstorm or something! Oh, there aren't any windows because that will be the stairs, and we're having bookshelves put in all up the stairs. I think we will have a window up in the corner, though, at the top of the stairwell.


And here's the east side wall: the windows are concentrated on the south side (on the right). That will be a door in the center eventually.



Wow. They've hacked off part of the roof, too. Cool!

Floor joists

As you can see, floor joists are going in... this was a couple of days ago. It's all a blur to me now - I think I got in from work that day a little too tired and hungry to post that night, so this is a couple of days' worth of pictures.
They did the joists shown above in one day - I think Thursday - and then on Friday, Kevin and I were both home, which was handy, because they wanted to know where we wanted the trap door down to the crawl space.

They framed out the trap door yesterday.



Voila!


Here are the guys - Jonathan, Mike and Steve - that's Steve saying hello to Charlie.

Framing begins!

We've seen some rain, as evidenced by the standing water on the newly-poured slab, but that hasn't stopped the builders from bolting what looks like some pretty heavy duty plywood on top of the walls.


Looking down at how this is all held together... just some bolts. Who knew?


Out on the lawn, a pile of framing materials awaits under a tarp. I expect the next few days to be pretty intense!