Pony 'Wall' Express

We have the pony walls up on the second floor. For those of you who don't know what a pony wall is - I wouldn't, had we not been building them - they are the four foot walls that the roof trusses will rest on to shape our second floor. We have about 1,500 square feet of bonus space upstairs, that will be built out at a later date. For now, it's going to be unfinished. This space will have a 8' ceiling at the center and slope down at a 45-degree angle to 4' walls. This picture shows the second floor plan:

There will be bonus space on either side of the stair well, with attic space on the far right.

So, now that you know what we're trying to build, here's some pictures to show you what the progress looks like.

The house is getting height!

The gaps in the pony walls are where the dormers are coming through. See picture of house sketch on right side of blog to see what the dormers look like.

The back of the house. The trusses are scattered, close to where they will be placed.

Here's the pony walls from the second floor.

More pony walls. The bracing coming off the walls at angles is only temporary.

Check out our roof trusses.

The roof trusses were delivered Thursday morning. We will be getting a lift or crane on Monday to set the larger trusses in place. The smaller trusses will be set by hand. I can't wait to see everything together, it's just like a giant Lincoln Log house. I am in the process of selecting the brick now, so many choices. But, this really is exciting!

Making Progress

I don't have any pictures this time . . . but, I wanted to fill you in on the progress we've been making. This past weekend, we used a laser level to determine the site elevation at different points. We will use this to decide how much dirt we need to order, to get the foundation to the right height and the yard graded.

Adam also set the truss designer, structural engineer, and geotechnical engineer (soil testing) loose to start their work. We should have their designs/tests soon and will then submit for permit with the county. This will probably still be another couple weeks.

Yesterday, Adam, Austin (Adam's assistant at work), and I started on the batter boards. I'll try and get a picture of that up soon. They are basically wooden boards that go outside the corners of the house. We will then tie stringline at the correct positions that will correspond to the outside perimeter of the house. We put up about 75% of the boards, but have not run the string yet.

That's about everything. Adam will be at a men's retreat with church this weekend, so I don't know how much work will get done in the upcoming days. As always, I'll try to keep this site up to date and will try and get a picture up soon of our latest feat.

Floor Plans

This is the home we are going to build. It should look just like this, except the garage will be front facing on the left side of the house.


This is the first floor plan. It has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. I'm in love with the layout - we found and ordered the plans on www.architecturaldesigns.com.


This is the second floor. We're going to leave the upstairs as storage for now. In the future, we'll build it out to be an extra bedroom, gameroom, whatever. We know it's huge. But, I figured we're going to save money building it ourselves, so we should make it bigger, right? Well, it'll be great once it's done. Hopefully we can afford to live in it.