A Roof in the Works

My parents were in for the weekend. Usually they crash with us, but due to limited space, and J being on call, they stayed at the EconoLodge. (Better digs, they say, than our lovely, local Holiday Hotel.) They were anxious to get up to the property (have I mentioned before that they will be building here too...a hexagonal log cabin?) to have a look-see at all the new stuff. Dad wants to get started clearing their space out of the scrub. Mom can retire in November, so they may move as early as December, rather than wait until the following Spring.

Mom thought that perhaps this was the reason for the LULL in activity up there for a while.

The girls thought it was a great place to play (definitely less muddy)!

These are the interior, main floor walls. This view shows (from left to right) kitchen with pantry behind it, master bath and closet, master bedroom.

On the other side of the house is (from left to right) study and mud room/laundry room/ T's workspace. There will also be a small washroom with shower in here, but that is not framed in yet. The central space will be kitchen, dining room and great room...all open, and the great room will have something like 17 foot ceilings.

Today the men were crawling all over the roof. They had already put up the trusses for the hip roof in the back of the house. This will create 8 foot ceilings over the framed out rooms on the sides of the house.

They used the LULL to move these trusses for the high ceilings over the great room. That's our builder in the black hat...a really nice guy! Unfortunately, it got stuck about 20 yards from the house.

Wet Concrete

We are afforded a great deal of privacy with our long driveway up the hill. The building site is not visible from the road (and we like it that way!). We get hints about what is going on at the top by whether the cable is up or down across the drive, and, since there has been snow, the number and variety of tire tracks.

J got off work early yesterday, and the weather had blossomed from .1* on Thursday AM to about 47* Friday afternoon. We took this as a sign to head up the hill for a look around. The cable was up across the drive, but there were tire tracks heading up (or down) from a BIG truck...a good sign! Apparently those tracks were either from the concrete truck, or the truck that delivered the roof trusses.

The concrete for the 2nd floor walls was obviously poured today, as bits were still slowly oozing out from under the framing around windows, and there was a fresh pool of extra cement in the driveway in front of the garage. We were a bit disappointed that we missed observing the pouring of both floors. I was also at a loss to figure out how to photo document it until I noticed a ladder still set up against the scaffolding in the future Master Bathroom! I went up first to snap a few shots, and then little J was quite eager to join me up there.



She was tentative at first, but then enjoyed it so much that she made 2 full circuits of the house on the scaffolding before climbing down!



Who can resist the opportunity to write their names in wet cement? We put ours in the study wall for posterity!


A friend of ours, who always seems to be "in the know" told us that all construction in the area has basically ceased this winter, weather related issues, he says. It only makes me feel slightly better that we aren't the only ones twiddling our thumbs impatiently!

The Second Story

Lo and behold, as we approached the top of the hill this morning, two stories of house rose up above the frozen mud!

The temperatures actually snuck above the freezing mark for two days this week (in fact, they snuck up into the 40's). We enjoyed seeing some blue sky and sunshine, and taking great gulps of fresh, winter air for those couple of days. But I am so grateful to the men who were out working on those not so balmy and lovely days!

This is a shot of the house from the driveway. The doorway will be the main entrance to the house, bringing you in next to the dining room.

This shot gives you an idea of what the view from our Great Room will be like.

Eventually there will be a breezeway between the garage and the house...into the laundry room.

Here is the inside of the main floor. It is so exciting to see new things the past few visits!