Day 53 - REAL progress

I (Catherine) saw Don, our architect, on Saturday and he asked me when the framing would start. He had been to the lot on Thursday afternoon and saw the framing materials, but nothing was up. On Sunday, day 53, Micah and I headed over to the lot and were pleasantly surprised to see that the framing had started on Friday.

view from the garage entrance

 

This is REAL progress. You can actually see the studio 1 a.k.a. Micah's music room/Tailenders' practice space coming together. They had started with floor 2 with includes the the garage and studio 2 a.k.a. the moneymaker.

 

the music room/Tailenders' practice space

 

Actually seeing progress has made the two of us really excited. It's one thing to make plans on paper and shop for windows (which were not cheap), but it's another to actually see rooms form. I think we're going to be visiting the site everyday this week. Everyone says that once the framing goes up, the whole project takes off like wildfire.

 

Top : View from the north side of the house. Bottom : Beam which will help hold up the garage and the rest of the house.

Day 20 and Day 42 -- we have a room!

So this is the project before the wedding on Day 20

And this is the project after the honeymoon on Day 42

They finished the cementing of the first level which is just a room. The room will probably be a mother-in-law apartment one day -- a.k.a. a way to pay the morgage. The framing was suppose to be done by the time we got back on August 18, but it turns out a few more soft spots in the soil were found and they needed to replace the soft dirt with hard dirt and gravel.

It looks like the framing will be done in about a week and a half, but we willl see. The trusses for the roof have been ordered and they should be ready by Tuesday, so at the very least, we'll have a roof but it may not be on the house quite yet.

WWJHD?

What Would James Hardie Do?

Over the past couple of months, I've been completely obsessed with Fiber Cement Siding. Apparently it's pretty standard on any new house built in a modern style and being relatively maintenance free and fire-retardant, it was the logical choice for us.

After numerous hours spent on the web, and a few trips to our local big box stores where we actually got to see the product in person, we decided on some of the Hardie Board Products. The problem after that was deciding among the mind-boggling number of varieties that this stuff comes in.

We knew we wanted to mix textures and colors on the house and since it is roughly a rectangle we hoped to make it a little more interesting with some variety in the siding. Right now our plan is to put roughly 3/8 of the house in red HardiePlank Lap Siding (smooth finish) and the other 5/8 in grey HardiePanel Vertical Siding (smooth finish). We can order it pre-painted but think we'll opt for the cheaper unpainted version and just do it ourselves.

The idea with this design is that instead of varying the siding in a vertical manner, we'll just vary it in a horizontal style.