Framing progress

The first floor framing is complete, rooms and hallways and entry spaces are revealed, door and window frames in place and by the end of today work will begin on the second floor. It is startling in an unsettling way to walk through and experience the sizes of the rooms, the mudroom is larger than expected and the living-dining room smaller, although it is not a small room and the windows on three sides make for some lovely views. I love the twenty nine windows just on the first floor, beautiful pine, fir and birch trees in all directions and the cross ventilation makes me think of lines from a story my mother used to read to my sister and me when we were small about "old mother west wind and the merry little breezes" from Old Mother West Wind by Thornton Burgess, I will have to get a copy for our bookshelf.

Monday morning

Monday, July 21, 12:45 pm, the temperature is 61 and the carpenters are back!

Another week ends

Friday evening, the work site is cleaned up, quiet and waiting for Monday morning when the carpenters return. This week the excavators came back and backfilled around the basement walls so it is now possible to get up to the first floor without crawling up a ladder.









After the backfilling the basement walls look like this. This is the "rough draft" of leveling the dirt, they will be back later in the process to do a more finished job.




Craig also built stairs to the basement so the plumbers and carpenters don't have to navigate by ladder to do their work.

We had a very heavy rain last night so the basement got some water on the floor and some on the walls.







Tune in next week for the first floor!

Moving Dirt

It is the end of the work week. All four porches and the garage and Pete's workshop have their foundations in and today the excavators began the back filling process, finishing the garage and two porches and making a small dent in the sand dunes.

Craig has been working alone most of the week as our carpenters unexpectedly had to stay on another job longer than planned and will not return until later in July. He has marked placements for the doors and windows and put down blue chalk lines where rooms and hallways begin and end, a graphic floor plan. We were all disappointed about the carpenters delay but seeing the backfilling process begin and the landscape around the house return to normal is gratifying too.

The dance floor is in.

The first floor deck is complete so we can climb up on a ladder and walk around what will become the first floor of our new home. It is fun to step into the kitchen and walk over to the dining room and wonder if the guest room is the right size and delight at having a spacious mudroom to hold coats and hats and boots. It's really happening!