Trusses and Sheeting

It doesn't look like much got done in the past couple of days...mostly because the framers didn't work yesterday. I'm thinking I wouldn't mind having those hours. Work 2 days and have a 5 day weekend. They are working there way around the house and putting in a few more trusses and sheeting as they go. It's looking great and we absolutely love the house, but I wish the whole process would go faster. They said they were going to be done by the end of September, but I just don't think that is going to happen. We are also having troubles with buying our shingles. Lowe's doesn't seem to want our business, so we are going to take it elsewhere. It's a long story, but extremely frustrating.

Anticipation?

Well Megs is out of town again, so I have to keep those dedicated to looking at our progress updated. Since Megs was out on business it was Mocha's (our dog) responsibility to accompany me to the lot. I couldn't tell who was more excited myself waiting in anticipation, or Mocha waiting to run around. When we pulled up to the house I was amazed, I looked at Mocha and asked her what do you see. She replied, WOOF! Enough Said enjoy the pics!!!!

TRUSSES!!!

A lot of things have been going on the past couple of days. The most obvious being that the trusses have arrived and the framers have started putting them up. I didn't figure that they would start putting the trusses up until next week, so you can just imagine how excited I was when we drove up to the house. The garage walls were also put up. They installed two of the windows in the garage at the wrong height, so they are going to have to change those, but everything else looks good. Northwestern Energy was out at the house too. They got the gas and electric all installed. We couldn't believe how many different sizes and shapes of trusses were laying around. They were everywhere you looked. It has to be so complicated, so today we were definitely thankful that we hired someone else to install them. Who knows if the framers will work tomorrow, but I sure hope they do!

Miscellaneous Work

The framers were back on the job today. At first it didn't look like they did very much, but after walking around the house, we could tell that they did a lot of little things. They have most of the walls framed for the garage and they just need to be put upright. The big picture window was framed in, so now we could get more of a feel of the height of the ceiling in our living room. They also wrapped a lot more of the house in Tyvek. A dump truck was also brought in, so they cleaned up a lot of the trash and scraps of wood lying everywhere. We are still very happy with how the house is looking and we are in awe of how much progress has happened. It's hard to believe just two short months ago, that we had just an empty lot!

More Framing

The framers got a little bit more work done before they were pulled to work on their Parade home. The office and master bedroom, bathrooms, and closets got framed. They also sheeted a little more of the outside and cut out a few more window openings. The office feels so tall with the walls being 11' high. It'll still get taller by another foot because there will be tray ceilings in there. We are still very happy with how the house is progressing and that the house looks as good in person as we think it did on paper.

We have also made some big purchases lately. We got all the windows and exterior doors ordered. Those should arrive at the end of September. We also bought a projector for the theater room. One of the local stores redid their theater room, and we bought the floor model projector at a great price. We couldn't pass it up, and the picture is great. Now we really can't wait to have a Super Bowl party!

The Answer

Okay, I know the suspense was killing you. Does it help to have the before and after picture posted? If you look at the section of three windows on the right hand side of the picture, you will notice the windows on the top floor do not line up with the basement floor. They were off by almost a foot! In the far left of the picture, you will also see that those windows were changed too. There was one other section that you can't see in the picture, and it dealt with the window by the bar downstairs and the wall oven upstairs (you might remember this from an earlier post). Well they did the downstairs with the windows how it was originally drawn up and the upstairs windows after the change. So, in order to be consistent, we had them change it to match the upstairs. This then negates the whole problem we had in the previous posts with moving things so we could still have the wall oven.

Pure Happiness

The three problems with the windows were all fixed today and a lot more work got done. Travis and I were really satisfied with the way the windows look now and the contractors were very apologetic. I think the owner really lit a fire under his workers because they did a ton of stuff today. The interior framing picture is of 2 bedrooms with a jack and jill bathroom, the laundry room, and a powder room. The windows in the front of the house look huge too. We left the house today and could not have been happier.

We have heard conflicting stories as to whether they will be working on our house or not for the rest of the week. We really hope they work on the house at least tomorrow because we love to see all the progress.

The Walls are Upright

Who knew that contractor's got Labor Day as a paid holiday? As you can tell by the lack of posts last weekend, the framers didn't do any work on Friday. Northwestern Energy was out there marking where they were putting the gas line, so I guess some work got done.

Today, all the walls that were laying on the ground last week, were put upright. The stairs were also put in, so Mocha got her workout chasing us up and down the stairs. We were looking back at old pictures of the house today, and it is hard to believe that we are already framing. Even though I do complain, the framing process is still going really quick.

We found some more errors that the framers made today, and if you look at the last picture you will probably see what it is. Travis is meeting with them tomorrow morning to get them to fix the problems. Can you see what went wrong??? I'll give you a hint...it has to do with the windows. The sheeting around most of the windows downstairs hasn't been cut out yet, so the number of windows isn't the problem...Just for some added suspense, I'm not going to give you the answer until tomorrow:)

The Helena Parade of Homes is this weekend and our framers have a house in it. They will be pulling their crew off of our house the end of this week to do some finishing touches on their parade home. After tomorrow, there might not be much progress this week. The roof trusses are scheduled to be delivered on the 19th and the framers are hoping to be done by the end of September. I'm hoping winter holds off at least until we get the roof on, so everyone cross your fingers.

Upstairs Walls

First off, I have to brag about our recent tile purchase. Somebody returned some special order 16x16 tiles, and Lowe's just reduced the price on them. The tiles are really nice and a good color too. We got over 300 square feet for something crazy like $0.52 a square foot. What a screaming deal! We are not sure where we will put them yet, but at that price, we couldn't resist.

It's such an emotional rollercoaster every time we drive out to the house, or at least it is for me. We leave, and I'm so excited to see what happened, then we get a couple of miles away and Travis' eagle eyes can spot what happened. Usually the words out of his mouth are "they didn't do anything". Well that fires me up, and I start thinking about all the bad things that I could say to the contractor, but if I actually came face to face with him, I wouldn't be tough at all. Then, we actually get out there, and see all the progress, and I get all excited again.

Today they put together quite a few of the upstairs walls. Tomorrow should be real interesting to see because I'm thinking that most of the upstairs walls will be standing and that will make it feel like work is really progressing. Travis is going out to the house bright and early tomorrow to meet with another HVAC company. He gave us a rough quote earlier, and I am hoping that it comes in around that number. If that's the case we will save around $4000 on the HVAC, and I don't mind going under budget at all. This guy does good work too because he's worked on a lot of the custom homes here in Helena. Don't forget to check back tomorrow to see all the progression. The contractor better be working, since they didn't work on Monday...

Sheeting Away

The contractors sheeted all the floor joists that they installed yesterday and started doing the walls. We were excited to walk on the main floor because we've been talking about how big we thought it was going to feel. Well today, we walked on it, and it really didn't feel big at all. We are thinking that once the upstairs walls get put up that it will feel big like the basement. We also had a small crisis today, but don't worry, we overcame it and we think the solution will look better than what we originally planned. When we were meeting with the guy who drew our plans, we moved a window closer together so that we could fit a wall oven in the kitchen upstairs. We moved the window downstairs by the bar to match. Well the person who drew the plans didn't change the windows in the side view of the house, which is what the contractor is using to frame the house. We were thinking that we were going to have to get rid of our wall oven because of this. We came up with a solution that would allow us to keep the wall oven and not have to change the windows. Hopefully tomorrow the contractor's will start framing upstairs!

Floor Joists

We drove out to the house today and we were very excited to find how much work got done. Look at all those floor joists!

The opening in this picture is where the stairs will go. The staircase is curved, so it was cool to see how they framed it out. It made it much easier to picture too. Below is a picture of the staircase from downstairs.

Walls, walls, and more walls! If you look close, in the far end of the picture, you can see Travis. When we were standing on the far sides of the house, it really made the house feel big. Not too big, though...just big. We were really excited to see the progress today and can't wait to see what happens tomorrow!