Years End

Christmas is a week away. There has been essentially nothing done the entire month of December. It appears that I am going to have to take over the finish of the house. We do have power to the house now and the trench is closed and all back filling is done. The HVAC crew put in the heat pump so the system is about 99% complete. They need to get power to the units so we can at least run the wood furnace. I am going to aks the electrician to get that done this week as well as a temporary outlet box on the first floor. The second floor is rough wired so once the first floor is done, we will be ready for the light fixtures. I started putting on siding about two weeks ago. It is not that difficult but when it gets too cold, the siding becomes brittle and virtually impossible to cut. As long at the temperature is over about 25 degrees, it goes ok, below that - not so much. With the holidays next week I probably won't get too much done but I would like to get more siding done and maybe lay some chimney block next weekend.
I would like to have the wood furnace fully functional by the end of January.

November - week one

We have had some good progress in the last two weeks. Since the last post, the deck is finshed (except the railing) the remaining windows are in as are the doors. We also had the trench opend up to lay conduit for the electricity and the sewer pipe installed. The trench is closed and we are waiting to the inspector to come out and inspect the electic service. Once that is done Allegheny Power can pull the cable and connect us up. Hoping the shingles and siding are next.

October

A month has gone by since the last post and quite a lot has been completed. The exterior does not look that different with the exception of the deck. The set the posts last week and have the entire deck framed in now. They should lay the boards down tomorrow and may be able to finish the railing or at least start on it. Inside, the electrician put in temporary lighing in the basement and started pulling wire upstairs. The HVAC crew also has the system about 70% complete. We have a heat pump and a wood burning furnace as the primary source of heat. The 'finish' framing inside is also complete and our stairs are in.

Main focus next week will be to get shingles on the roof, the last few windows in and the siding on.

We also started backfilling yesterday and installed double french drains. Fill in the back is almost done and the sides are close. They should hopefully dig the trench for the electric service tomorrow.

More Progress

A couple of weeks have gone by and the roof decking is done and for the most part papered. Started on the windows yesterday and are almost all in - at least on the first floor. Apparently, the deck is going on next so they will be able to put in the second floor windows. The electrician was up today to install temporary lighting in the basement. I will be starting on the basement finish in the next few weeks. I will be calling the HVAC contractor soon so they can begin.

All framed in

Last Friday the heavy framing was complete. We can finally see the 'shape' of the house and get a sense of how it will look - a little bigger than what we thought!!

They should spend a few more days finishing up the interior framing and then move on to decking the roof. We should also get the steps buillt this week. After that comes shingles, windows and doors. The electrician was up on Saturday and started to mount the electrical boxes. It also won't be long before everything gets backfilled and leveled off and the trench dug for the electric line. Slowly starting to come together.

Movin' On Up...

Well the 2nd floor was completed last Friday (it was started about 2 weeks ago) and work just got underway today on the roof! Yippee!! We will take pics tomorrow of the roof framing.

With the blessing of mother nature, it won't rain till end of week and we can have a completed roof!! That would be the most awesome thing ever!


It has been amazing to watch the house change in proportion with every wall and floor put in place! There were days that I thought 'wow this doesn't look all that big,' and then there were others I'd look at John and say 'what did we do?' For some reason no mater how much you think you know spacially what it will look like, it always looks just fine on paper.
I'm still hoping to be in late fall. Thanksgiving would be great!

The windows, doors and siding will be next after the roof. Then the interior work begins.


This has been a learning process. If we were to do this again I know there are some things that we could/would do differently...maybe we'll turn that into a book. The experience thus far though has not been as bad a a lot of people made it out to be, but I won't discount their advice since we are still in process and anything , can happen.

ON AND ON

Well July has come and gone and the framing is still underway. Despite that they say the watertable is still 2" low, we had a lot of rain for July. John and I both said last year that this will be the wetest, ickiest year just because we're building. So far we haven't been proven wrong.

The first floor is now almost complete. The last of the floor joists were attached today, now starts the second floor subfloor. If Mother Nature will cooperate, it may get done in a couple weeks so that all is under roof.

We do have the window's, 21 in all and doors, 5 in all. With the size of the windows, we should be able to save on the electric bill for lack of use on lights! A fireman fully suited with oxygen tanks could get thru the things!

All in all it's coming along. I'm not a very patient person so this is a challenge for me not to be fussing! MUCH!!! If we could get a streak of weather that did not contain moisture, it would help greatly! Things can get built much easier when it's dry.

We changed the siding color again, but I think this time it will stay. Both of us like it and we were able to take a full piece so we could really take a look at it. The stuff is from a buyout so we're saving a little cash - Thanks to Cherie at Homewarehouse! It's sage but the color is more like a gray green so we think it will look very nice once it's all done with white trim.

Framing Update

It's now mid July and things are moving along pretty good. We just got back from vacation to see the progress. First floor is down and the walls for the first floor are almost done. They should start on the interior walls of the first floor by the end of the week. If the weather holds, we could have a roof on by the first of August.

Framing starts!

June is almost over and it has been a long month with little visible progress. When the lumber arrived four weeks ago, all that needed done to finsh the foundation was the cap blocks, due to rain, and waiting a couple days for the inspector, that took up a week. Then we had amost a full week of rain and then the builder went on a weeks vacation. Finally started framing last week. So far, the load bearing walls in the basement are up and the stairwell framed in. We added a small bathroom in the basement so that is framed as well. They started to lay the floor joists on Friday and should pick up where they left off tomorrow. Hope to have the first floor framed this week but the weather report is showing possible rain showers thru Thursday so we shall see.

Lumber arrives

We got lucky last week and had a couple of rain free days and were able to pour the center section. Now the floor is complete! They spent the last couple days applying mortar to the outside walls as a moisture barrier at the building inspectors request. All that is left now is to pour the reinforcement columns in the back wall and lay the cap blocks and the foundation will finally be done - hopefully by Saturday.

The first load of lumber was delivered a couple days ago so framing should start on Monday. Kathy ordered the doors and windows yesterday so they will be comining soon. It appears that all is slowly coming together.

May showers....

Starting to sound like a broken record but rain, rain and more rain has kept progress to a minimum. There has still been a good deal of work done, but most is unseen. The builder spent about three days setting all the drains and then they had to bring in more gravel. Because the floor is so big, they decided to pour it in three sections

The gravel was brought into the foundation and graded so that the floor is an even four inches. Once that is done, they lay black plastic down with wire mesh and rebar on top. Finally, the cement truck comes in and they pour a section. So far we have two sections done and the final one should be completed tomorrow. The last thing will be to pour cement in the block on the back wall every four feet with rebar per code as reinforcement, then the cap blocks go on. When that is done, hopefully by early next week, we can start on the framing.

And the Rain Continues...

Well it's been a few weeks since I've had time to blog about the house. It's rained a lot. But the guys were able to sneak in enough time between the drops to pour the footer and lay the block for the basement.

The footer took the guys all of 2 hours to get it poured and smoothed out. John's help was also enlisted to wheel over loads where the truck couldn't reach. There are 14 1/2 yards of cement that make up the footer. The front of the house is about 18" thick, while the sides are about 10"...I don't think she'll move.

So once that was poured, it then poured rain for about 4 days...then the heavens managed to dry up for a few days and the guys laid the block. There are 2100, 10" cinder blocks that make up the basement.

Minto, now thinks it's his. He's always going in and out of the basement door opening. He likes to yodel at John and I. Once it echo's he stops looks around and starts all over again.

The next step is to get the floor poured but it hasn't stopped raining long enough for that to happen. Hopefully in the next week or so, the heavens will once again dry up and allow us to proceed.

Rainy Days

Well it's been raining since Thursday so no digging has taken place. They should be out sometime this week to dig a a trench for the water line and phone/cable. We're going to run the electrical from the location it currently is. Our water pressure is mostly a trickle and the pipe the phone is buried in was crushed...How do I know - well we tried to get fiber earlier this year and they couldn't pull it thru the existing pipe.

The second week has come and gone and, as noted, it has rained quite a lot. We did have some progress however. The first 500 feet of water line and conduit for cable are buried, the site has been leveled and the footer dug. The footer trench will need cleaned out as all the rain caused some minor cave ins.

At our request, while they were digging, they took out another half dozen trees so we have been working on getting them cut up and stacked. Going slowly but getting there.Not sure what this week will bring as the weather is not looking good, at least the first couple of days. The builder was working on getting the block ordered, getting rebar and lining up the cement trucks - he is planning on pouring the footer this week if he can. The earth work guys are almost done with the initial work. They need to dig a trench from the corner of the house out over the hill side for drainage, finish the trench for water line and touch up the driveway. They are going to bring in some more gravel and once that is done, we will be ready for the first draw from the bank.

Hopefully the weather will cooperate this week...Will update again in a week or so.

Welcome - Initial post

Well it's taken us about 2 1/2 years to get to this stage but we finally broke ground on 03/24/2009 to build our new house. YIPPEE!!!

The clearing behind our current tiny house took about 2 years and then all the bank stuff took a bit longer than we expected! Like 6 months longer than we expected! So if anyone plans to build, start with all the bank stuff about 6 months before you really want to start building...

I got the idea to blog about the construction of the house from a co-worker. I had planned to scrapbook it, but knowing myself, that probably wouldn't have gotten done until a few years after the house was built. I figured the blog would allow me to do something real time and share with more friends and family across the country.

For this first post, I thought I'd share what the property looked like before tree cutting, up to the dozer pushing dirt yesterday and today. As there is progress, I'll try to keep up with posting.