Roof close to finished

The 18"+ of snow we had last weekend slowed things down, but it is finally melted and some progress has been made the last couple of days.

A roof!

We finally got a roof today! The enormous crane that was brought in got stuck, but the job was done. We're bringing in roofers early next week.

Ready for the roof

After two weeks of crappy weather that slowed the framing down to a crawl, it looks like we're ready to put the roof on. The crane will be coming this afternoon or first thing Tuesday morning.

Gray Helps Build the House

Gray has asked us constantly if he can "go help build the house". Today he got a chance to help - I took him out with his plastic tool set and he helped the framers for a while. I didn't put up the pictures of him with the nail gun - I figured Grandma wouldn't like those. :)

Framing updates - 1st floor almost done

The framers are moving right along. Here are pictures showing the first floor nearly finished framing. They're setting steel for the 2nd floor on Monday and hope to have the 2nd floor done in about a week.

Framing update

Looks like the framers are making good progress. They've spent about 1.5 days on the project so far and already have the first floor joists down and have started on the garage.

Updated schedule

We're only a month in and already these schedule postings are funny. I look back to estimated schedules only three weeks old and they're nowhere close. Supposedly it gets warmer later in the year, so we'll see if that lets things move along faster.

The tentative schedule is:

Jan 28: Strip forms and waterproof
Jan 31: Backfill
Early Feb: Begin framing / deck
Mid Feb: pour foundation floor

Walls Poured

Today the second phase of the walls was poured. The pictures below show the walls after they pulled the forms on the first phase of the pour (the basement portion). The 2nd phase - the first floor walls in the bball court - are formed and ready for the pour.

Urgency

As you can see from the picture below, we have to finish the house soon because we have so many children that they have to sleep on steps.

More Delays

Here's a handy tip - try not to schedule your foundation work in the crappiest time of the year for weather. We've lost most of another week due to rain and now it's starting to freeze again. Looks like we'll try to pour walls on Monday.

Footers poured

Late this evening we finally had the footers poured. Here are some pics of the site as the concrete pump truck is working. The pump truck was an unexpected expense that we had to use because the ground was so soft. The regular concrete truck would have sunk into the mud. J&L thinks they'll be able to get the walls poured by the end of the week.

Schedule changes

The snow from the last two days has delayed things. We're hoping the foundation sub can get started on forming tomorrow when it starts to warm up.

In the meantime, we're getting revised bids on the framing and the plumbing. The changes to the upstairs mean we'll need to get revised bids for most the subs.

The tentative schedule is:

Jan 7-11: Pour footers and walls
Jan 14-18: Finish pour walls and waterproof
Jan 21-25: Rough plumbing and remove forms, backfill
Jan 28-31: Slab work and begin framing / deck

Revised upstairs design

We've modified the upstairs plans more than any of other part of the house. Danielle believes we've finally got a design everyone can live with. We've decided to finish the portion above the garage. This new are will be bedrooms for two of the kids. In the new design we'll have space for a small library / study area and a spare bedroom for guests.

Foundation options

We got the steel quote back for the reinforcing portions of the bball court wall. The steel alone was going to be $8,000-$11,000. As a result, we've decided to go with the poured wall option. J&L will be handling pouring the 20' tall wall on the eastern edge of the house.

The engineer had given us three options for how to handle that wall. The diagrams are listed below:

Excavation Day 2

Major progress made on the excavation today. The hole is the correct depth across one entire side. The boys pulled a lot of material out and things are proceeding well. The stone turned out to be a non issue - once they got it broken up, the excavator could pull it right out.

We're stopping work for the Christmas holidays and will be back at it on the 26th.

Excavation Day 1

The equipment was delivered and the boys (Kenley, Kody, Kory and Darren) started work. The stone wasn't the problem we thought it was going to be - the hammer broke it into pieces quickly and the excavator took it from there. We'll be working more on it tomorrow - probably can't finish on Saturday, so we'll pick things back up next week.

Temporary Drive Installed

J&L Poured Walls installed the temporary drive today. It looks pretty good. We'll have to put in some additional rock as what's in place gets driven into the ground. They had to work around a cable utility box out near the entrance, but I don't mind the curved look at the edge - we might just leave it that way.

Hopefully we can start excavating by the 20th.

Permits (Finally!)

Well, it only took about 4.5 months, but we finally have permits for zoning and construction. We're hoping to get started in the next couple days by installing the temporary drive.

Latest plans

We're still working to get things fixed up to meet New Albany's latest requirements, but here are the latest plans and site plan.

2nd Floor

First Floor

Basement

Exterior

Site Plan

Tree clearing

Next step is to get rid of some pine trees at the back of the lot that we decided not to keep.



Kory will be cutting these up and chipping what he can into mulch over the next 2-3 days.

House Demolished

Kenley came into town and finished demolishing /clearing the house. He brought up a Bobcat configured as a skid-loader and one of his dump trucks. We rented an excavator from a local company. Some of the debris was hauled away, some was buried on site.


Here is the picture of the house when the FD finished.



Here is the picture taken Saturday, with the house demolished. This is from the road.


This is from the back of the lot. (The standing water is where we've relocated some trees temporarily)