Fun With Cranes!

It's a VERY exiting day out here! A crane just showed up to lift the roof trusses into place! You can see it below:

Credit for this photo go to my brother and sister who couldn't help themselves.

Ok, there's the real deal beginning to hoist trusses into the air. Pretty big crane, and if you look closely...

You can see the entire front half of the truck is lifted into the air to level it.  I'll let the rest of the photos speak for themselves.

And the final result, after just one morning of work with a crane...

It's starting to look like a house!

Taking Shape!

I took some quick photos as the guys were working today. I'm not really comfortable wandering around inside while they're working, so they're mostly exterior shots. Since they're working from sunup to sundown every day to try to catch up, it'll probably be like this until the weekend when I can walk around inside the building in the daylight hours.

This is the current view from the back of the house. The big block on the left is the third garage. The wall with the two vertical windows cut out is the kitchen. You can see the second floor taking shape now and the beginning of the covering for the back porch.

The front shot! They've enclosed both garages now so you can see where the doors will go. The initial frame for the covering of the front porch is in place and they've framed where the front door will actually be. We're pretty sure the guts of the house have been framed at this point, now they just have to frame out the roof. You can see the beginning of the gables over the garage side, but they'll be bringing in a crane on Friday or next week to put the majority of the roof trusses up.

Framing Part Three

More framing photos!

This is the front of the house. If you look closely you can see the future owner standing there for reference.

The garages, now with some walls and a bit of the second floor. That will be one of the upstairs bedrooms up there.

Not only is this calculation correct (notwithstanding the use of parens which any accountant is probably having a fit over) but it's actually legible!

View from the back side of the house. The room closest to us there is the 'morning room', but they've avoided framing in the closest wall so they can get in and out of the house. If you look closely, you can see the ramp they're using for that. They can't use the normal entrances since the porches are still big gaping holes waiting for cement.

This is going to be the dining room.

I'm standing in the great room here and looking in towards the kitchen. Since there's no stairs to get to the upper floor yet, that ladder is what they're using.

The front door is on the left here and straight ahead is where the gym will be.

That will eventually be where the stairs end up on the second floor. I think they're using some sort of extra strong LVL up there.

This is our master bedroom! What a mess. You can see the three large windows on the back side though.

Hard to see but that up there is the beginning of the loft.

WTF! They punched a hole in our wall to get their nail gun hoses in! I was really curious about this until I went inside and saw that hole's where a window will eventually be.

Framing Part 2

They already have some kind of house wrap on this side of the building. You can clearly see the height of the first floor is 9 feet here since the 8 foot plywood sheets don't reach low enough.

They are pre-fabricating the overhang for the front of the house I guess?

This is the side of the garage. They're were starting to hang the exterior boards and were almost done with the garage by the time we left.

This is the view from the backside of the house. You can see the sub floor for the first floor is complete from this view.

The front side, featuring the three car garage and the front steps.

Frame Job

Framing has begun! So exciting!

Oh look, the trusses have been moved to the work site and laid out better so they won't warp.

The joists for the first floor have been completed at this point.

They laid out boards so they could walk around. Made it easier for me to get photos too. I'm standing where the kitchen eventually will be, looking towards the great room.

That's the back porch. No framing since it'll be a cement pad on top of an elevated 'tray'. It's going to be a huge porch, roughly 25 feet long and 11 feet deep. Covered, too.

That's it for now. Hopefully this next week they'll start erecting walls.

Foundation complete

The foundation is complete! As you'll see below we went out there today to walk the new foundation and take some photos. It's all very exciting, but we had to whip out a measuring tape. When just looking at a foundation it all looks so SMALL, but it's deceptive and after measuring and comparing with the plans, looks like everything's about the right size. Weird!

Here's our front steps. They sprayed the bottom and some of the brick around the base, presumably to indicate where the dirt has to be backfilled to.

Some kind of drainage solution from the foundation. I assume these will be buried in the end.

A view of all the supports in the center of the house.

They're placed gravel into where the garage will be.

This is our well pump house, tipped over so they can replace the pump with a new one. There was nothing wrong with the old one, but we wanted to make sure it could support a house of this size. And it was old. And we like having running water and stuff.

Better view of the entire foundation. This is the 'high side' of the house.

Whoa. They dropped off the trusses up at the front of the property and it looks like one whole pile slipped off the rest. Bad delivery guy!

We're going to send photos of this to the builder, who I assume hasn't seen what they did yet. Some of this lumber looks like it's being bent pretty good, I'm not sure if it'll be usable or if they'll have to get some new trusses out there to replace them.

Hello, foundation!

The masons are hard at work this week, laying brick and block onto the concrete poured footings. You can see the start of the shape of the building. The bricks, which appeared to be more of a red color than we thought, are apparently only red on the sides that are not visible to the outside. So the outside wall appears to be the more 'sandy' color that we like.

One of the corners is where the master bedroom will be and we were a little shocked by how small that space seems to be within the foundation. It always amazes me how deceptive that can be, how an area laid out on the ground seems tiny, but when you erect walls around it, it seems spacious.

Anyway, this will be the last update for over a week since we're heading to Orlando for a much needed vacation next week. By the time we come back we expect they will be done with the foundation and moving onto framing. Exciting!

Footers poured!

Looks like concrete footers have been poured. You can see them in the photos above, inset into the dirt channels that they dug. I'm sure the layout of all this makes sense to someone.

You can also see the bricks and blocks that have been delivered and unceremoniously dumped all over the freakin place. The cement blocks will form the actual support for the house while the bricks form a nice 'curtain' wall around the exterior of the foundation so you won't see the blocks.

My assumption is that they're waiting for the cement to cure at this point before proceeding. Next photos will likely be next week at some point before we take off for Disney!

Broken Ground

Yes, they've broken ground on the new house. What you can see here is the bobcat they've been using to dig into the ground where the concrete footers will be. The little piles of dirt are around the holes they've already dug and this was about halfway through.

The big giant mound of dirt to the right of the photo is the results of the 'scraping' they did to even out the land. Not sure where they're going to put all that dirt when they're done. I have suggestions for them if they need ideas. :)

Today the county is expected to show up to approve the holes for the footings. Next week our builder (Brian) expects to be pouring the cement and starting on the brick curtain (the brick walls that form the outside of the foundation).

Closing time!

Yes, after much going back and forth and frustration and some cussing, we're going to close this Tuesday. Hopefully everything goes well and then they can start building!

Hopefully I'll have more than just text to put on this blog before too long.