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. 

Floor trusses!

Finally it was time to set the floor trusses that hold up the first floor. These were assembled by the good folks at NOW Structures in Nevada, Missouri, and traveled by truck to our site. July 22

Next the sheeting went on the trusses so we were finally able to walk on the first floor. July 26

Steel Beams hold up the house

Because our house will have extra-heavy floors, we need to support them with steel beams. Sam had Kyle, our architect friend, ensure that we had sufficient support, and the result is 2 long beams from front to back, with steel columns supporting them in the middles, and the ends rest in "beam pockets" on the concrete walls. These were set on July 2, 2011.

The steel was assembled in the barnyard behind our house, and then set into place with a large "lift". The shorter beam went in first.

 

 The longer beam had to go in in two pieces.

 

Jim helped us in many ways with the steel, as he has had a lot of experience in this area.

 

All done!