Trusses Delivered

The trusses were delivered today. They have a pretty neat process to get them off the truck - they slide them off and usually they land fine on the ground. I'm sure they didn't want us to see it, but the trusses slid off the truck and did not land neatly, they cascaded down onto the ground. Luckily none of them were broken.

Framing Update

They're now getting to the kitchen and mud room...

Vertical - first days

They've started going vertical.

Here is the view from our bedroom window...

This is our bedroom:

View of the house from the front deck.

We have a slight problem, though. They framed the master bathroom and we made a few changes because the shower was too small. Now the bathroom itself is too small. It feels quite strange. We're going to have to have them change it because it won't work the way it is.

City Utilities

The city trenched the electric, cable and phone across the front of the property today. Not sure how far they got down the east side.

A Lot Happens in a Week

Lots of activity out at the farm the last few weeks.

All the steel has been put in place.

All the floor joists for the main floor are in place.



All the flooring has been installed.



And we have a basement!


Yesterday and today they are chalking up the lines for the 2x6 and 2x4 walls on the main floor. We had to make some changes in the kitchen because it looks like the space for the refrigerator isn't deep enough. We could go with the wider/shallow refrigerator, but it is $4k more, so we decided to move the walls instead.

We are also talking about moving some walls in the master bath. Seems like our shower isn't quite big enough for two people, which we intended it to be. The framers are really good at seeing things and making adjustments as needed.

The utilities are also coming along. They have completed the gas line to the house. This week, the city electric utilities are working on boring the electric from the new church facility on the corner down to our property. They will trench across the driveway to the house in front tomorrow and will be coming down the east edge of the property tomorrow. Cable and phone are also being inserted into this trench so we'll have all the utilities ready except water. It is a different utility that brings us water, so not sure when that will happen, but looks like all of the utilities are coming as expected.

We drove around looking at stone samples and are getting our stucco samples today. We are narrowing down the color and will need to schedule another meeting with our decorating consultant in the next few weeks to finalize exterior colors.

We ordered windows yesterday and finalized those. Most of them will be casement and we have limited choices on the color. We chose the almond color rather than white or gray. They don't warranty the darker colors, I guess because they haven't figured out how to keep them from absorbing too much heat and causing problems.

We should start seeing walls go up this afternoon or tomorrow.

The Steel is Here

They got the big steel beams that support the house today, but I guess they had a small problem. Uh oh. They are going back to engineering to see what they need to do. I didn't get the full story, but will go out today to take pictures and take a look.

Progress

I'll go out to the house quickly before I go get the kids, but what I know so far is that they are finishing the gas line and starting to frame the basement.

Yesterday they accidentally cut the power lines to the barn from the main house. Oops, I guess they are going to fix it today. Wayne mentioned that it was probably cheaper to find them the way they did than to do a utility locate.

We had a meeting with our designer yesterday and she walked through stone, stucco, roof, window and exterior paint and stain decisions. We narrowed the roof down to two selections, stone down to three, stucco down to five and windows down to one (that one was easy with only 3 choices). We are working on getting samples of all of the options so that we can see them together. We'll meet with her again once we get all those collected.

We also had her look at the 2 stain options for the kitchen and we went with the second option so I had to put a change order in already to the kitchen designer. Not a big deal, but I'm glad we came to that decision.

House on the Market Today

Today our Bluestem house went on the market.

No updates for the new house today. The framers will start framing tomorrow and the utilities will start boring the gas line. Not sure when the electric, water, cable, phone, etc. are going to trench - they need to all go in the same trench, so hopefully they'll get that coordinated. I have a lot of faith in Wayne.