The rains are coming!

As I write this, it is steadily pouring outside. While not expected to last more than a day, the rain is a reminder that fall is quickly approaching, and with it, many days of rain. Can we paint before winter? We'll know in about a month...

Anyway, for the fun stuff - new photos!

Mark and I jackhammered a 3,000 slab of concrete on Sunday. We both felt like we were vibrating the rest of the day!

back porch and bedroom balcony
One of our two front doors!
our wiring and plumbing are roughed in and ready for inspections

front porch really enhances the look of the front of the house

Windows and injuries

The good news or the bad?

Starting with the bad... I've now had my second of first-time injuries. First, it was two broken fingers from moving landscaping rocks back in May. The fingers are pretty well healed, though the middle finger still looks pretty funky.

The second injury was not as painful, but much more stupid. I went to the site in my work clothes (read: heels) and, violating common sense and previous experience, jumped down from the back of the house (where a deck will soon be), spraining my ankle.

I'm not completely laid up, but hobbling around and unable to run, jump (ha!) or do anything too physical. With the exception of dirt digging, which I managed just fine last night, to my dismay. What good is an injury if it doesn't get you out of all the really crap jobs?

Ok, that whining aside, we do have good news - the windows are going in!!! Siding, roofing, front and back porch, all a tedious if-then game, but will all be in progress in the next week. Pictures (as of today) below:

our future dining room windows
south side of house - and a bit of the front

Vacationland at the house

Mark and I are on 'recess' this week and next, which means that the Council members have two weeks off and we have almost nothing we have to do at work. So we're trading in office work clothes for construction work clothes pretty regularly these days.
The house is really coming together - the sheathing and 2nd floor framing will be complete today, which means that roofing and windows are tomorrow/Friday/early next week. The plumbers are at the house as well, working on the 1st and second floor bathrooms and the kitchen. The house is abuzz with activity! We had two inspections yesterday - side sewer and water line - and passed both, so we were finally able to have the excavator finish grading the front yard - and digging the new driveway.
A few pictures below for your viewing pleasure...

Taking a break to look at exterior paint colors. We settled on Benjamin Moore 2063:
click here for color







Roof trusses arrived last week via crane.








Roof trusses and sheathing.
Sheathing the roof.





Plumbers get busy in the first floor powder room.

Basement slab, walls and the incredible flying dogs

A lot has happened in a very short amount of time! We have a first floor with two walls, a basement, plumbing in the basement, and a lot more dirt around the basement walls (care of the Erika and Mark wheelbarrow team).

On Monday night, we took the dogs to the site and let them play on the platform. They loved tearing around and leaping over a partially constructed wall.


















The following photos are in chronological order working your way down.


Pre-slab plumbing and radiant in the basement



the framing crew - Jed, Dan and Tom



We've got a basement!


North wall





North and East walls - taken about 2 hours ago!

Walls!!!!

Well, we're going to have (basement) walls in about a day - just as soon as that concrete cures. Tomorrow the wall frames come down to reveal the concrete within, which is being poured today.

Our foundation guy Curt Wilson is awesome! His crew is fast and great, and he's talked Mark through every step of the way. Confidence is restored that we can be finished in 2010!!!


Showed up at 8:10am with a book, expecting to wait a while for the show to begin - this is what I saw instead. Holy cool!


















overhead view of concrete pour from our neighbor's second floor

Joe the concrete dude

Demo/Excavation photos

I've been negligent in getting photos on the blog. Although my parents saw the work site last week, our family in Iowa has been clamoring for photos and we have yet to deliver.

But first, an update on the status of the project. The house was demolished on May 19. It came down amazingly fast - when we showed up at 10am, we had a house and when we got home from work at 6om, we had a big pile of rubble. Seriously.

As you can see from the pictures above, Mark and I took a stab a the demo ourselves, which proved both slow and painful (I hit my ankle with the sledghammer when trying to swing it toward the wall!).




Back to May 19 - the remainder of the week included dozens of trips to and from the dump/recycling center to offload the housing materials and foundation. Despite a few setbacks - the big purple excavator, dubbed "Barney", went kaput on day 3 of the project - progress was made, albeit slower than expected.

By last week, excavation efforts were underway. Because the property's soil is primarily sand (we dug our fence's post holes with a shop vac, if that gives you an idea of how sandy it is!), it proved more difficult than expected. So... there is a theme here. Everything takes longer than expected!

Our concrete guy came yesterday and is, as I write, busily working to build the structure for the foundation. Sides poured next week, basement slab the following week, hopefully.

More soon!

Demo day is here at last!

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: Demo day is tomorrow, bright and early (as early as 7am). Prep work only today because the tractor wasn't fixed in time to start today.

UPDATE: Demo guy's tractor broke down and will hopefully be fixed by noon. Maybe demo today, maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow is demo day! We're thinking sometime between 9 and 11am tomorrow. Seattle friends and neighbors - come on out for the show! We'll post pictures galore once it's finished.