Catching you up on House Progress

We've been working away on the house the last few weeks. Let me show you what we've been up to . . .

Here's the stairs in some better lighting. They have already been used a LOT . . . what did we ever do without them?

We also have our half-wall up on the top of the stairs. It’s finished now, but I don’t have a “finished” picture.

The wall on the other side of the stairwell is now finished. This defines the rest of the upstairs bonus areas. There will be a closet at the top of the stairs for our air handlers.

Adam added flanges to the tops of our dormer windows. This was a bit tricky because they are rounded. But, Adam came up with a good method and now we’re protected from the elements a bit more.

We also added more metal, bracing, and house wrap to certain areas. But, that’s not exciting enough to get pictures on this blog.

But, this ash tray? It IS exciting! After Clint and I picked up countless cigarette butts off the ground (we were wearing gloves and picked up a lot of other trash too), I decided to buy some buckets and sand to make ash trays for out porches. Hopefully they’ll be used and people will stop throwing their trash on the ground.

We also got a temporary front door. Here, Adam demonstrates how to avoid using the door.

We have a few shear walls on our house. These are walls with OSB over them, providing additional structural support. Here is the wall between the kitchen and great room.

And this is the wall around the breakfast nook. Can’t you just picture me eating breakfast here? Well, I can.

There’s more shear walls, but you don’t really need a picture of all of them.

Last week, Adam gave Clint a big treat. Clint has been asking for months to see the full dumpster taken away on a truck and a new one dropped off. We haven’t been able to take off work to get Clint out there to see the action . . . until Adam got away last week. Clint had a GREAT time watching the truck in action! The driver even let him use the lever to put the screen over the top to keep the trash in.

Here is Clint with our new empty dumpster, showing a pretty happy grin.

We also applied peel and stick flashing to the windows. This makes the window waterproof and goes down before the brick.

This is the first window we put peel and stick. Dining room window, if you’re curious.

Here is the back porch – these windows are ready for their exterior finish (which will be hardyboard siding).

Here’s our front door from the outside of the house. Don’t worry – it’s only temporary. We’ll get a big, pretty wood and glass door with sidelights and a transom put in as a final product.

This is what the house looks like now.

We finished the peel and stick on all the windows last week. Brick is starting MONDAY!! We passed our Dry-In inspection and we have a mason under contract and everything he needs to get going. So excited!! We have also been getting prices for cabinets and picking out a fireplace. We hope to pass another inspection soon, so we can do the roof insulation and get going on the inside of the house.

And just because, here are the pretty roses Adam got me for Valentine’s Day.