One of the things that we love about this lot is that there are SO many trees. If it were up to us we would be completely out of sight from any road in the middle of a woods but buying land like that around here is either entirely more than we want to pay or entirely too far out in the country. This is a good compromise. :) There were a few trees that had to come down of course to build the house but we wanted to preserve as many as possible. Our builder put us in touch with an arborist who came out and helped us figure out which trees would have to go due to the stress of the equipment, the house, etc. It was interesting to learn about how far roots go out, etc. We ended up having to cut down a few more than we would have liked but better to do that now than have them die in a couple of years and fall on our new house!
Tommy is used to having ample space to do his woodworking. As I have mentioned, our current living quarters are....well...not exactly setup for a wood shop. But don't worry! We make due with what we have available to us! Most of the time our living room turns into a work shop of some sort. Tommy is building the trusses to go on the front of the house and he has built them in the living room of our apartment. It has been...interesting. But doable!
Here he is with the final result of truss 1 of 2. This one had to be finished quickly because it will go up when the house is framed. This one will go over the front entrance to the house. He timber framed this and it is held together with wooden pegs. It is AWESOME! And HUGE! This picture was taken before it was stained.
You can see the detail of the wood pegs in this picture. It's very cool!
Today was a HUGE day. Today the framing began. I have heard many people say how incredible it is to see Niehaus Brothers' crew frame a house and they were right! SO much progress was made today. I couldn't take my eyes off of everything going on. There were a ton of guys there and they never stopped! We've been waiting on this part for awhile and I'm so happy that it's happening! Keep in mind, all of the pictures below were taken in one day - all of this work was done in about 8 hours.
This was the beginning of the day This is the lower/basement level. You can see the "man door" and a small garage door. We will park a side by side in here eventually and this basement will be Tommy's wood shop and my paint shop.
This was taken early in the morning once the walls started going up. This is the first wall on the main floor - the back wall of the garage.
This is looking into the basement - I love seeing things like stairs going in!!! The little things make it seem like a real house. :)
This was taken after lunch - this is the garage. We will actually be parking our cars in the garage which will be all new for us since the garage has in the past been used for Tommy's workshop. Very excited about this! :)
This is the truss that Tommy made - it's hanging out waiting to be hoisted up to the roof! You can see in this picture how it looks now that it's stained.
Every girl needs a hot pink hard hat for construction days! :)
Later in the afternoon the interior walls started going in and you could start to tell that it is a two story house.
This is the back of the house - this will be a big screened in porch looking out into the back woods. :)
You can really tell by this picture how much was done today. You can see that this is the basement wall that I posted up above and now it has much more done! Now there is the main floor on top and the upstairs being constructed. The two doors you see up high will be for the kids bedrooms. They will have a small balcony that they can share for reading (Sheridan!) or playing iPad (Will!) - ha!
This is the last picture that I took today. This is looking straight on to the front of the house. The far window on the right will be our bedroom. The middle is the entry way and then a living room window on the left. The second story was really taking shape at this point but I couldn't get close enough safely to take many pictures. Hopefully tomorrow I can!
A lot of progress has been made and we are really looking forward to the next stages of this process. Hopefully in a few short months we will be able to call this our home!
