Current photos

Starting the first floor ...

Sorry there aren’t any pics yet – I thought I burned them to a cd last night so I could upload them at work, but when I got to work this morning there weren’t any pictures on the cd.

Today is Day 2 of full-time framing on the house. I’m hoping that by the time I get there we will have the four walls of the bottom storey up. Last night we managed to stand the front wall and frame the back wall. When I was there at lunch today they had the frame for one of the side walls done, so I assume they finished the second one this afternoon. Now comes the slow (but very important) job of anchoring the walls to the concrete floor. Peter rented a concrete drill this afternoon, so that’s probably what we’ll be working on all night.

These days are just flying by with no time for anything else! We got home around 9:30 last night and by the time I had organized the pictures from the last week it was 11 and way too late to be up. We got up this morning at 5:30 to do some car shuffling before work.

Nan & Gramps came up today to bring food and a picnic table. Gramps’ trailor also came in very handy because we had to pick up a few more pieces of wood to finish the bottom floor today. Gramps also worked on checking for leaks in the connectors of the heat pipe – very helpful as we wanted to be sure we weren’t losing pressure from leaks in the foundation :)

It was really neat last night to see the wall go up – I could see where the kitchen, entry, and living room will be. The only surprise was the height of two of the windows in the living room. They’re a bit higher than I expected, but I figure that will make it easy to put furniture (maybe the piano?) against that wall. The downstairs is so open that wall space is precious! Anyway, it was really neat to see everything start to come together. I imagine it will be even more so tonight.

Thanks again to all the people who are helping out – we really appreciate it!

Finally some pics!

Before the news - there are a few new pictures on the site - I think the only new ones so far are in the 04-24-2005 folder, but now that I know how to get them down to size I'll add some more tonight. Stay tuned ... **ETA - this is no longer relevant. See the Flickr site for house photos.

On to the news ...

We have a foundation :) The concrete was all poured on Friday, and except for one long crack in the middle (eeks! Oh well, everyone told us to expect it, but it’s still very distressing) it looks really good. There wasn’t much to do over the weekend, as God did the work for us by sending rain to keep the concrete wet. The slower it dries, the stronger the concrete.

Today is the first full-time day of framing, so I’m anxious to see how it’s going. The day apparently got off to a rough start, with Kent’s bringing an old version of the lumber order, so that slowed things down a bit as they had to wait to get the correct stuff. Peter said at lunch time that they wouldn’t have all the walls for the first floor up today, but I’m inferring from that that at least there should be something standing, which is very exciting!

Things are moving very quickly now, so it’s even more important to keep up with this journal. I really don’t want to look back and be unable to remember the process, and the daily ups and downs that went along with it.

Last night Peter and I were up until after midnight working on diagrams of the walls of the first floor. Hopefully they have come in handy today; allowing the carpenters (Peter, his Dad, and my Dad) to just measure and cut instead of figuring out all the measurements at the site. Peter said he’s going to tell me they were useful whether they were or not since we stayed up so late working on them! We were up at 5:30 to get Peter to the lot and me to work on time. I think we’ll all crash tonight!

Pouring today!

Well, in about an hour the concrete should start to be poured for our slab. Needless to say, we're very excited. Tom, Dad, and Peter worked all day yesterday laying the in-floor heating pipes - it looks really good. Now if we can just manage to avoid puncturing one when we put up the walls!

I have all kinds of new pictures. I'm hoping to get them posted over the weekend.

Concrete ... coming soon!

So, lots of news on the home front this week. We (finally) got our financing straightened out early this week, which was definitely an answer to prayer. Maybe God is trying to teach us patience through this whole endeavour?

Tom helped us build the forms last week, and last Saturday Dad, Jeremy, Peter, and I braced the forms and tried to get enough sand in the middle (underneath the middle of the slab). With all the wet weather lately, it was a chore to keep the sand dry enough to be useful, but we were finally finished with it a few nights ago.

Tuesday night we compacted the sand and laid down the insulating foam which will (hopefully) keep our heating bills lower in the winter.

Yesterday Tom and Debbie came up and tied the rebar (a really tough job – lots of bending and sore hands) together to form the mesh around the footing. Today Peter, Tom, and Dad are laying the in-floor heat pipe and tomorrow we pour. Yippee! Seems like a long time to get here, but it will be worth it when we walk on our warm floor next winter.

Monday is the day we start framing officially, so if you can keep us and everyone else who is up in your prayers that would be great. We really don’t want any injuries during this process, and it would be nice to stay somewhat on schedule. If all goes well, in a little over 2 weeks we should have a roof on and windows and doors installed J We should also be ready to receive our first draw of money, which will enable us to pay off all the debt we’re incurring. Overall, it should be a very full next few weeks.

I’ll try to keep updated as much as possible.