Framing Underway!

It's been over a month since I last updated this, skipping the whole month of July in the process. Why the lack of updates?

A. The great blogger strike of 2010 where bloggers across the globe rose up as one and said "we aren't sharing our useless information with people who don't care about it anymore!!!"

B. Al Gore shut down his internet to save energy.

C. For most of the month, there really wasn't much progress, and life was one big pile of chaos.

While "A" and "B" might be good ideas, the real reason is "C".

For most of the last month there really wasn't any progress on the house, as our builders put the finishing touches on the house preceding ours. Additionally, I was so busy with other stuff I just didn't get around to updating this.

Primarily, our family moved out of our rental into my brother-in-law's (Seth's) town home. Our lease was up and our choices were to sign through February, or risk going month-to-month. Since our house should be ready in December, signing through February didn't make a lot of sense. Month-to-month would have us living in a house that could be rented out to someone else at any time. Seth was gracious enough to let us squeeze into his town home with him for a few months. What a great (and brave) fellow!

So what ensued in July was frantic packing, moving, cleaning, filling a 15x20 storage unit to its max, helping Seth fix up his new house, and toss in a birthday party for Andy and his cousin Claire for good measure. Quite the undertaking. We did the move completely ourselves, with a HUGE help from Seth, brother-in-law Jeff, and Ma & Pa Harvey. I moved some stuff to my Mom's near Hibbing (snowblower, lawn mower, etc) and the tire blew out on the trailer I was leasing halfway there. Nothing like pulling into a gas station in the middle of nowhere with a packed 12' trailer riding on the rim with no spare. Had to drive to nearest town and rent another trailer, unload, and reload all the stuff. Overall, I'm not really sure how we pulled off the move. I swear we are hiring movers in December, but Seth says he will talk me into doing it ourselves again.

Here's a couple shots of our packed-to-the-hilt 15'x20' storage unit. I think we have too much crap. Notice the expertly-crafted 2x4 shelving running down either side:

Front left and right:

rear view:

Part of the month was starting to work on picking things out like fixtures, tubs, showers, flooring, doors, and so on. Going to kitchen and bath showrooms is amazingly frustrating, as most of them won't tell you the contractor pricing. So you are trying to pick things out without a price tag, then wait to hear what the real price is.

Lumber Liquidators had 18 month financing this past weekend so we jumped on that (flooring was one of the things we had allocated to pay for out of pocket). We landed on Handscraped Tobacco Road. This will be in the Great Room/Dining/Kitchen and adjoining hallways and pantry.

http://www.lumberliquidators.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=3877"

We picked out a front door. Went solid Douglass Fir because fiberglass is just dang expensive. And our builder said wood would work great for our north-facing covered entryway:

http://www.simpsondoor.com/door-products/search/detail/Default.aspx?BaseSpecificationID=464&print=true

Within the next week we'll be working on finalizing shower surrounds and fixtures, appliances, interior doors, and wood stains.

But the big news is that framing started this past week! We were out to the site several times this week, and these pictures are from Tuesday and Friday.

***** TUESDAY *****

View from SW corner (lower level corner is Christina's office, upper level corner is Andy's bedroom):

View from backyard:

View of SE corner (TV room lower corner, Master bedroom upper corner):

NE corner view.  Trusses in picture cover the area of the master bedroom, closet, and bathroom:

Tommy and Andy play frisbee with a piece of leftover insulation.  Tommy is standing in what will be the guest bedroom, Andy is standing in Christina's office.  I'm taking the picture from the location of my office ("boys town").  Behind Tommy is the location of the double doors leading to the backyard:

Another shot of them playing, with Tommy in full follow-through.  The interior doors to the left lead to the downstairs bathroom, and the spare room we will use for exercise equipment.  In the background is the TV/rec room area:

Christina beaming by her sunny office window:

Looking down from the porch area to the basement level:

Andy standing on front porch:

***** FRIDAY *****

SW corner of house.  Two windows on west wall are Christina's office (corner) and Boys Town.  Right above them will be Andy's bedroom (on the SW corner) and Tommy's room (center) and laundry room (NW corner):

Rear (south wall) of house.  Downstairs windows, left to right, are Christina's office, guest bedroom, windows and french doors of rec area, and finally TV room.  Upstairs is Andy's room, door to screen porch, dining room, open unframed space are location of windows and french doors in great room, and finally master bedroom.  The large area with no window to the right of Andy's bedroom is where the screen porch will be:

Closer look at the master bedroom bump out, with a door leading to the deck (we copy all of Ma and Pa Harvey's good ideas):

View from  SE corner:

I'm taking this shot from the utility area diagonally across the lower level.  Christina is standing in what will be the TV/rec room area:

View of NE corner.  Master bathroom is in the corner.  In the background, next to the 6' ladder, is the window looking out of the mud room:

Upper level.  I'm standing in what will be the laundry room, looking diagonally across:

Looking southward from the great room through where the windows and french doors will be leading to the deck:

Master bedroom:

View from master bedroom window:

The boys looking for rocks to add to their collection (Andy) or throw around (Tommy) by the big tree where the driveway turns into the land.  I'm taking the picture from the master bathroom.

Garage floor covered with materials.  Andy is standing in the entrance from the garage to the mud room:

View from the driveway:

And the most important feature of living in the country?  Being able to dump your scrap wood and cardboard into the burn pile as part of moving out of your rental house!.  Everyone's invited to the bonfire when we fire this thing up next year: