The Best Part!

disclaimer: long post:)

First of all, about the pictures. I have created a link so you can see ALL of them instead of 5 at a time...here it is: http://s793.photobucket.com/albums/yy214/edeshappyfam/The%20Best%20Part/

God is so good! I have to start this way, because, well, He is! There have been many ways this past week that He has helped us. I don't have the room to explain them all, but I will intersperse a few things in this post. As my title says, this part of home building is one of my favorite parts! I know the inside stuff, like the painting and flooring will be pretty neat, but the best part to me is seeing our house come together. My husband's and my dream becoming reality...what was on paper is now in wood. In real life size, not miniature. Tangible not imagined. I LOVE this part! I love, love, love it! :)

As you know, we left off with the trusses. Paul was able to do that with just the church men's help. But the closer we got to the framing the more we began to contemplate having somebody come in to help. We discussed having a local, but Paul was quite adament about having his old boss, Bro. Mike Mueller, come in for the framing section. Now that we are almost done with the framing I can see how wise of a choice this was. Sure, we wanted to save money, but we also had a time constraint and with us being able to save money in other areas we were able to have Bro. Mike come up. Bro. Mike is a fast worker, very efficient and Paul knows his style of framing so he could help after work, whereas he would have to learn the ins and outs of other framers if we had them instead. And Bro. Mike gave us the best price around:) Thank you, Lord!


Bro. Mike (who is Bro. Rob Mueller's brother) came in Monday, August 30th. Paul and him went out to the land and surveyed the job site and ran a couple errands.We went over our plans multiple, multiple times and made a few minor changes. He had great ideas and comments, so I was eager to listen and learn! For example, do you know that you can change layouts even in the framing portion of building? I did not know this. When I heard this I was like, I am NOT going to be that mean person to do that to my framer, but alas, I did not keep that promise! At least I didn't have him tear down a whole wall or something:) lol! So, Monday was errand day; Tuesday was finish up the Advantech and chalk the lines for the walls day. That was fun because I could finally tell exactly how big each room would be. It was still a little hard to imagine because it wasn't in 3D form yet, but it helped a great deal! We decided to make the hallway 6 inches smaller so that the boy's rooms would be bigger; we made a soft angle into one of their doorways instead of straight corners. I'm glad someone came up with that idea of chalking floors:) Vewy, vewy smawt!!


Man, there is soooo much I'm not telling you for lack of room. So many things that I have learned in this process! Oh well, be content!! :)


So, all this time, nobody was there to really help Mike. Joel helped on Tuesday with the laying of the Advantech (which was a HUGE blessing), but Wednesday when the lumber came Bro. Mike was the only one at the job site. It about killed my husband to not be there. It didn't really matter though because Bro. Mike was able to get the whole back walls built and put up with the windows and doors formed and everything (just not the headers put in, which is the top of the windows and doors).


Thursday, several men were able to come and help put up the rest of the exterior walls and a few interior walls. (Thank you, men, though you probably won't read this lol) Friday and Saturday, Paul was off work and helped put up the rest of the interior walls. Now, there was a slight problem Friday. That day was a church field trip that I went on and would not be at the job site for most of the day. Before this I had been at least twice or three times a day. I didn't want something happening that I didn't know about. Nothing happened on those days, but on the day I was gone, they ran into a problem. Where I had the stairs was not going to work...at. all. Coming up the stairs our heads would be sticking into the rafter part of the trusses. I didn't even think about that! Man! So, my husband made an executive decision in my absence to move the stairs from the front part of the house to the middle part of the house in front of our bedroom. It's hard to explain exactly where. It made our bedroom two feet shorter, though it was able to make it two feet wider. So, I guess there were no problems there:) haha. But it still got my heart racing when I heard my hubby's voice, "Honey, we have a problem"! But the Lord worked it out.

Well, today is Tuesday, September 7th. As of today, all the exterior and interior walls are put up. The house wrap is on(to shield the wood from bad weather). The deck posts are put in and we are now waiting on the trusses. Tomorrow they will finish the 12 x 24 foot deck in the back. It's about ten feet off the ground! What a view:) Thursday they will put the roof trusses on and during the weekend they will do the stairs, plywood and felt the roof, put in windows and doors and we will officially be "dried in". Safe from the elements!! Yippee!!!!!


On to build,


Rachael