House Update - May 30th - Then There Was A Garage!

As you can tell by looking at the pictures below, the frame of the garage is now in place. The schedule for next week is for the rafters for the garage to be placed on Monday, and the rafters for the house to be placed on Wednesday. This is of course rain and wind pending, as that can change the schedule drastically. Hopefully at the end of next week we will have a picture that will show the outside of the house for what it will look like in the end. It is exciting to see the house coming along more and more each day.

North side of house & garage

South side of house & garage

Busy Busy Busy / House Update - May 28th

Well there has been plenty going on for us over the past couple of days. On Sunday we went to Milnor to attend Darci's (cousin of Jim) graduation party in Milnor and visit with Jim's parents. On Monday, along with Jenny's Dad, we backfilled the house. Last night, we broke out our tar skills again and put tar on the garage area. Tonight, we were able to go to Hannah's (our niece) 5th birthday party. On our way over there we swung by the house and got some updated pictures to share with everyone. You can see in the pictures that they have the main walls of our second floor in place so that they can place rafters starting next week if the weather and wind are kind enough to let them do this. The plan for the rest of this week if the weather is nice enough is to build the walls of the garage and the stairway from the basement to the second floor. Hopefully, if all happens to go well, in a couple weeks the outside of the house will look like the finished product, and we can begin the work on the interior. Stay tuned for more!

House Update - May 22nd

Well we have to hand it to our building crew. Not only have they done a huge amount of work in only 6 working days, but they have worked so fast that they have made the lumber yard run out of material and earned themselves a 5 day weekend. The good part is though, the house won't be sitting still during these days. Today the in floor heating tubing in the basement was to be installed, and the concrete basement floor is set to be poured over it tomorrow. We hope that then on Monday we can backfill around the house and prep the garage area. The plan for next week by the builders is to finish off the second floor, the staircase, and the garage. The rafters are set to be delivered and placed on June 2nd, along with the roof being shingled the rest of the week following that. The windows are also set to be delivered/installed on June 5th so things are coming along nicely. We also gave our custom cabinet maker the go ahead to begin his part of the project today so we are getting further and further along each day. We have included some pictures here to show the builders progress thus far. We are showing the house from each direction starting with the west side, then the south side, east side, and finally the north side. Hope you enjoy!!

House Update - May 17th

Today we put on the old clothes, and along with Jenny's dad we placed tar all over the treated plywood that was put in place on the basement walls. Let just say that by the time we were done it would seem that one of the buckets of tar was dumped on us. It was quite the experience for both of us, but we didn't mind doing it especially since we know it only saves us money in the long run! :-) Enjoy a few pictures of todays work. In the pictures you can also see that the garage foundation has been put in place, and that the floor joists between the basement and first floor are now set. Here's hoping that mother nature can keep the rain away this coming week so we can get more work done on the house!

Just starting the job on the south side of the house.

North side of the basement full of tar.

South side of the basement full of tar.

Basement Walls! - House Update May 14th

As you can tell from the above pictures we officially have our basement walls in place on the house. The building crew along with Jenny's dad were able to cut all the boards needed and put them in place today. It is extremely fun to be able to walk in there now and get a feel for the size and dimensions for everything that we had picked out. The plan for tomorrow is to put the supporting wall for the garage and the floor trusses in place between the basement and the first floor. We plan to hopefully be able to tar and waterproof wrap the walls this weekend...nothing like some good sweat equity!! The first picture shown is looking in one of the basement bedrooms (NE corner of the house). The second picture is looking to the east as in all the previous pictures in older posts. Stay tuned for more pictures later this week!

House Update - May 11th / Camping

On Thursday afternoon our footings were poured for our house. On Friday the forms were removed and you can now really see the basic layout of the house. The goal for this coming week is to get the basement walls created and placed. If things go really well we might be able to see the floor trusses placed on top of the walls, but we will just hope for walls. The picture above is standing at the garage and looking to the east with the master bedroom in the top left corner again.

This weekend we were lucky enough to get away and do some more camping with Jenny's parents. We went to Mantrap Lake Campground and enjoyed the weekend there, except for the snowfall on Saturday night (thankfully it didn't stick around). On Saturday we also went to Itasca park and went to the Mississippi headwaters as the picture shows. We tried our luck at fishing on Saturday and Sunday a little bit and all we had to show as a small Walleye and small Sunfish that Jim caught and gave back to the lake. That is all that is new with us!

House Update - May 7th

Well today there was some more activity on the house. The concrete guys along with Jenny's dad put down the forms to lay the footings for the house. From looking at the forms you can get a general layout of the house. The very bottom of the picture is where the garage is, and the top left of the picture is the master bedroom kickout. They expect to resume work tomorrow morning and put down the rebar and pour the concerete into the forms. The walls of the basement should begin construction next week, and the in floor heating and basement floor should be in place shortly after that. Not sure what we will get for an update here in the next couple of days as we plan to go on a camping trip for the fishing opener this weekend in Minnesota!!! Stay tuned......

Black Hills / House Update

We'll I finally got the chance to put an update on here from our trip to the Black Hills. We had excellent weather the whole time we were there as it was around 70 and clear skies always. We were able to go to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Custer State Park, Wyoming, Deadwood, Spearfish, Needles Highway, Wall Drug, and Badlands National Park just to name a few. I have included a couple pictures to show the good time.

On the house front...the land was excavated on Friday afternoon so things can officially start to happen now. We hope to get the footings, plumbing, basement floor heat, and basement floor done in the next 10-14 days. Be sure to check often over the next 3-4 months as things will move fast I presume. Enjoy the picture of the excavation courtesy of Dave.