It's finally, FINALLY starting to look like a house...

And folks, it is. It surely, surely is. So far, it's been (counting from today, September 16th) only 6 weeks since groundbreaking. We have done the foundation, the floor trusses, the flooring, the walls (exterior and interior), the roof trusses, the deck, the bay window, the roof (excluding shingles), the stairs, the upstairs flooring and part framing and the chimney!!! If I could, I'd put about a thousand exclamation points behind that sentence! I'm just so excited!

This past week has been extremely busy: we have done the roof trusses, the decking, facia, deck railing, inside stairs, chimney. All that jazz. Bro. Mike stayed until yesterday and Tim is still here working on the days Paul is at his job. He is such a blessing!!

Before the roof trusses came we decided do go ahead and do the deck. We hadn't really planned on what we wanted, just what we didn't want. We didn't want it to span the length of the house, though I would've LOVED to have it come all the way to Elliot's back window, in case he fell, you know. But that wasn't to be the case. Paul thought it would be too likely for Elliot to try to climb out when he becomes a teenager. lol. I thought that was hilarious reasoning! :) But I have a good man to think of that! So Tuesday and Wednesday the deck was built. About nine feet off the ground and 12 feet deep by 16 feet wide. Great size! Can't wait to do some barbequeing!

Starting with the roof trusses. I just have to say something! I'm sooo glad that we have this opportunity with Elliot. He has been LOVING our home being built! We go out there every day and he sees all the progress and the machines and he just has the time of his life:) Praise the Lord! I hope he always remembers this! So, we order the trusses last Monday and they arrive on Wednesday. During that time, Bro. Mike was finishing up the interior walls. Thursday, the crane came and in about three hours they had the trusses put up and nailed in place. Bro. Mike was so awesome just climbing and not even wobbling so high up! I tried walking across a two by four laying on the ground and fell off like three times! So I would die walking up there!!! My heart about dies inside me thinking about it. *deep breath* lol Dad was there helping, guiding with a rope to where the trusses needed to be set. Bro. Mike, Tim and Paul were up nailing them into place and bracing them with 2x4s. Elliot and I stayed for most and then left. The rest of the day they spent putting the decking on the roof. That was only sheets of plywood laid across. They got half done along with the facia, which is 2x4s that cap the bottom end of the trusses.


Friday the rain came! And the inside of our home got all wet! But that's why we used Advantech so we wouldn't have to worry about warping. But they were still able to work and they got the rest of the decking and felting down. (The felt is roofing paper that acts as a water barrier).

The rest of the weekend and this week was spent on "piddly" things as I mentioned in an earlier paragraph. It was really busy, but now that that's all done we are going to start s l o w i n g d o w n.........


I did mention something on Facebook about going to the salvage yard with hubby. I can't stand when I have high hopes! Mine got sorely dashed last Wednesday. I had heard so many good things about a certain salvage yard. We went and got disappointed. Now, mind you, their selection was pretty amazing! They had great rugs and sinks and flooring and even exterior doors. But we went to look for windows and fireplaces and other such stuff. I felt like such a loser asking the lady, "well, do you have windows?" "well, do you have fireplaces?" "well, do you have tubs?" AHHHHH!! They didn't have what we were looking for at that particular time, but we will be going there later for some other stuff. I had promised Paul that I knew what I was doing so that I could get him to go with me. It about killed him to not work on the house on his day off. So I was pretty upset when all three of our stores were a bust! Only after six hours of getting lost and frustrated with our finds did we stop to realize that we were spending time together! Something we hadn't hardly done since we had started our house! When we both thought about this we started having a great time just enjoying each other's company. We may not have found what we wanted, but we had a good time looking:)

So, this week we are supposed to get our windows and doors. We have to go pick out our tubs and showers. We have to prepare everything for the subs to start their work in the next week. That is going to be interesting. The subs. Their work is sooo important! I hope they go fast and efficiently! :) And then we begin work on the vinyl siding and shingling. We are seriously considering hiring out our shingling work, but I would love to save money here, so prayerfully we will do the right thing. We are getting ready to get our bill for all our lumber. I'm praying it's less than $10,000! We can only pray, right??:) We shall see!

Well, folks, go check out my link for all the pictures. I've got to take some more of the deck and stairs but it already looks soooo different! Hope you enjoy. Thanks for stopping by!

http://s793.photobucket.com/albums/yy214/edeshappyfam/It%20is%20starting%20to%20look%20like%20one/?albumview=slideshow





On to build,

Rachael