Adventures in Home Building

We were greeted by this fine site after work yesterday!

Not much daylight left in th evenings . . . . The windows should all be in by the end of this week. This is exciting because some of the ro...

During the plan stage, you mark up your drawings with every location you think you might want an outlet or switch on an outside wall. When t...

The shingles have started and the HVAC and Plumbing rough are mostly done. I am not totally satisfied with the mechanicals and am going to t...

Not a lot of major stuff lately, but things are moving ahead. The HVAC rough-in started today, and we finished the stairs from the first to ...

Not much to say about this one. It was a long day, but I'm not complaining since we had a crane. The rafter tails are not long enough so...

This little hummingbird built a nest not 6' off the ground and 20' from the house. The wife was the first to spot it. We think she...

This just about does it for the interior walls. The wife and I finshed the interior walls by building the walls for the office, powder room,...

I know that we have some family and friends checking out this blog, but I am curious who else is out there. I put a sitemeter counter up an...

These pics show the clerestory windows from the inside. (Those openings are actually for 2 windows each). The three on the right are high ...

They put down (up?) the second floor deck on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, they stood up all of the second floor walls. The headers fo...

A friend from work came over Satuday. He helped me with the two main load bearing walls. It took him, my wife, and I to raise the big one. T...

(Wow!) Now we can really get an idea of how the great-room is going to look. The tall windowless wall on the right in the interior shot wil...

The picture from the previous post showed a completed floor deck on 8/2, here is what was done by 2pm that same day. The panels ARE structur...

I wanted to throw this quick one in here to show that the floor deck was done. The picture you see here was taken from a vantage point that ...

They started by installing the SIP rim on 3 sides. It straddles a 2x4 that is glued and nailed to the sill plate. Nails are then driven thro...

These are the two main load carrying beams in the basement. The lumber yard sent the wrong length steel columns so the beams are on temp s...

We should wrapup bacfilling/rough grading today. It has taken a bit longer than expected for a couple of reasons. Primarily, there has been ...

How much (many?) concrete block can a husband and wife lay in 2 days? This much. . . not bad for a couple of DIY'ers. We were hoping for...

Sorry - this post is a couple of days late. The forms actually came off on Monday. The only forms that were pulled on Saturday were the ones...