Framing continues

The weather has been great--thankfully--so the framing is going smoothly. The builder is trying to get the house "under roof" before it gets too cold and snowfall becomes an issue. Below are a few pictures showing recent progress (as of 10/27) on framing. 

 Facing the Front Door

South End of the "Great Room" from Outside

Looking to the South End of the Great Room from the Inside

We were a bit dismayed to learn that the framing crew is working our house on Monday to Wednesday and another house on Thursday and Friday. It seems like both houses end up being framed later than simply finishing one and then moving to the next. Oh well, such is the reality of the construction business when the demand for construction services is high.

Some exterior walls are framed

We've had almost two full weeks of framing and the house is taking shape. The pictures tell the story.

View from street

Future dining room and kitchen areas

Back yard

Future covered patio

The windows are larger than we imagined from the plans. The walls are tall (10' to 14') and the windows didn't look that big as drawn on the plans. But, now that some of the window openings are roughed in, we are getting a better sense of their actual size.

Framing will stop next week while we wait for roof trusses to be delivered. I'll add another post when the roof is mostly framed.

Framing has begun!

It has been over one month since my last blog post. During the month a lot has happened, but there was not much to look at. The major activities of the last month were laying the drain piping around the exterior of the house, waterproofing the foundation, installing precautionary radon mitigation piping on the inside of the foundation, installing the plumbing piping in the basement floor, pouring the basement floor, and backfilling the foundation.

With all of the above accomplished, the framing began this week. As you can see from the pictures below, the house is beginning to take shape.

From the garage looking into the house

Various framing materials

The sewer line being dug in (I have a new appreciation for the excavation sub)

The view from a future guest room window (look closely for elk in the background). The large pile of dirt is temporary...the view of Bergen Peak in the background is not!

A view of the primary steel beam from the front corner of the basement. 

The framers tell us they will first build the exterior shell of the house and then turn to the interior framing. Thus, the exterior of the home should take shape fairly quickly. I'll post more pictures as the framing continues.

Pouring foundation walls

The foundation walls were poured this week, so the house is beginning to take shape. I had never appreciated how much work it is to prepare the walls for pouring. The walls themselves are large (likely 12' in some sections) and are heavily reinforced with re-bar. Thus, it took a crew a couple of weeks to build the walls and place the re-bar. Once everything was in place, the actual pouring of the walls took about 4 hours. Below are some photos and videos of the process and finished product.

Below is an overview picture of the foundation walls with a pump truck in action. The forms themselves are heavy metal.

Here is an inside picture of one of the walls with re-bar in full display. As you can imagine, placing the re-bar is a time-consuming task.

Below is a link to a video of the walls being poured.

Notice how tall the finished walls are in the basement. This picture is looking towards the unfinished basement storage room.

Finally, here is a video of the finished product.

The next steps are putting in the foundation drainage pipes, waterproofing the walls, and getting water and sewer feeds into the house.

Pouring footings

There was a lot of excitement yesterday on the house project. The cement trucks arrived to pour the footings for the foundation. The attached video provides a good overview of the process.

And here are some pictures of the work and the end result.

Next step is to pour the walls. The amount of cement involved is impressive. We're gaining a better appreciation of what it means to build a house.

Lastly, our neighbors reported that a bear was running around our hole in the ground a couple of days ago. Word is getting out that this is an interesting place. A more likely explanation--the workers left some food lying around and the bear was glad to finish it off.

Excavation and rock hammering

As I write this post, the excavation is completed and the foundation work is scheduled to begin next week. The hole seems huge. As we look at the hole, we have to keep in mind that it is deeper and wider than the final house footprint (space is needed for foundation work and the footers go below the level of the floor). And the house footprint itself is large because of the ranch design.

While digging we hit rock. Yuk. Not totally unexpected, but it will add to the expense of the excavation. Below is a video of "rock hammering," which is used to shatter the rock. Fortunately, the rock was weak enough shatter, otherwise we would have needed to blast.

Below are a couple of shots with of the nearly final excavation.

If you see where I am standing in the top photo, just below me will be the walk-out part of the basement. This still needs to be dug out and there is lots of "final" grading to do once the foundation is set.

Today, we broke ground!

On a warm and sunny July 6th, we finally broke ground! Below are a photo and video to prove it. Tonight, we are opening a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

Click image below to start the video.