August 31--2nd floor emerges!

The second floor has started to emerge! 

These are the posts on the west side of the house, where some porches will be. 

More steel

We will have 3 different porch areas, and the roof trusses will be supported by laminated beams and steel posts. Jim ordered the steel, drilled the holes, and then did all the welding to assemble the parts. Deb gave them a couple of coats of primer to keep them from rusting. Then the guys took turns helping Sam put them into place. Sam rented a hammer drill and they went to town! The entire process took a couple of weeks but it will be worth the effort. 

To set the three largest posts, Jim drove the lift to set them into place. I was very impressed with his ability to operate it with no previous practice! Jim got more of the mechanical genes than the other brothers, although they are both pretty good too!

Brick Delivery

The bricks have arrived in town, and even though we don't need them yet, we have room to store them, so once the ground dried up from the various rains we've had, we took the opportunity to have the bricks delivered. We have bricks for the entire exterior as well as split pavers for a large portion of the interior. We plan to put carpet in the bedrooms, but most of the living area will have brick floors. We enjoyed laying brick for patios and sidewalks at our home in Albuquerque, and we liked various neighbor's houses that had brick floors.

Unloading the truck

Stacking them so we can move them with the tractor later

Sam and David inspect the bricks

Great Room Beam

On the south side of the house, we'll have 5 clerestory windows, which will let in a lot of light, and hopefully give us some passive solar heat in the winter. This wall will contain a large beam, 48 feet long. Justin and his crew used the SkyTrak to hoist this beam up over the walls and into place.

Getting ready to go

Getting closer!

Up and over!

Into the yoke... Will it fit?

Sitting pretty

2nd floor trusses are installed!

More rain

We had a lot of rain on August 10, and so the house was really holding water. Took a few days to dry out!

And now the garage is taking shape, and some of the sheeting is up on the walls. More trusses are already here, trying to stay dry under the plastic. This was taken on August 22.

Walls!

It was very exciting to start seeing the walls begin to emerge! The first wall went up on August 4. 

Ricky says "Here is the front door. Come on in!"

Ricky is somewhat concerned as he can't find his doggie door yet. Sam told him he'd have to wait a while for that. We plan to put it to the right of the back door which you see in the center of the next photo.

And now the first floor is starting to take shape!

HOT

It's been very hot here. On August 2 it was 109 degrees here! At least the humidity was low: 19%

 

Our framing crew would start work at 6:00 am, and have to stop by 1pm or so, as it was just too hot to work out in the hot sun. We were thankful that they could make progress, even if it was slower than we'd like.