Windows and Doors, oh my!

No time has been wasted after the framing was substantially complete - the windows and doors are nearly done (even with our "hmm, those windows seem too low; and let's move these windows around").

The front view

Right side view (my office and the stairs)

Rear view
Porch on the right, dining nook directly in front of you, master bedroom above,
Heather's office and the guest bedroom in the loft

Back right
mudroom exterior door on the far left, kitchen front and center, dining nook between kitchen and porch
you can also see the steps (with lots of lighting) down to the basement from what will hopefully be the back patio

Shingles, exterior trim and siding come next, I believe, but I think we're moving back into a phase where there will not be a lot of visible progress, at least from the exterior.  It is my understanding that wiring, plumbing, insulation, etc. will be up next.  Fun stuff.

By the way, any input regarding whole-house generators hooked up to the natural gas line would be welcome - good/bad experiences, brands, maintenance, etc.

Framing (the sprint begins)

Up until the last couple of weeks, the progress on the new house seemed to be nonexistent much of the time, and when there was visible progress it seemed to occur in very brief spurts.  There was obviously progress with a ludicrous amount of research and decisions being made in the background (I had no idea that there were so many different lights, faucets, granites, etc.), but not of it was visible on the forlorn field that used to be my home.

The times, they are a changin'!

As a reminder, on April 5, our new home looked like this:

Since then, we have seen major transformations every day as the house has been framed.


This process resulted in:

Visualizing

As many of you know, Heather likes visual examples over simply visualizing or describing things.  This is a great help in her career as a teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), as examples often help overcome language acquisition challenges.

This can be challenging, however, when discussing room sizes and layouts, since we don't necessarily always have good examples available to us.  It also means that we have a LARGE duffel-type bag we bring with us to EVERY granite/tile/plumbing/lighting/etc. visit.  This duffel contains doors, chips, mini granite slabs, and even a drawer in our colors and finishes.  Although awkward and heavy, this duffel has allowed Heather to become more comfortable that our choices work, because she can see all of them together, rather than one at a time.

When it comes to room layouts and sizes, however, this gets challenging, since we don't have rooms or spaces that are necessarily dimensioned the same as the alternatives under discussion.  Fortunately, Heather is not just a total hottie - she's also pragmatic.  When she got stuck trying to visualize the mirror and cabinet alternatives in the master bathroom, for example, she used sidewalk chalk to sketch out the various alternatives in our driveway so we could stand "in" the space and see how it would feel with both of use using our sinks at the same time.

 Although I was initially skeptical of the usefulness of the sketches, they did help us to immediately decide what we wanted to do.  Of course, as you'll see in the next post, the framing is now done, so we can do our "visulizing" in the actual space.  Woooo!

The slab and basement steps

After the French drains were installed, the under-slab plumbing was laid and the slabs were poured.

Although it looked even more like a swimming pool, particularly when it rained, we could also see the beginnings of our new home starting to take shape.

A tradition was born

As many of you know, I've enjoyed the odd game of poker over the years.   We've played in dorm rooms, hotel rooms, at many of our bachelor parties, at a few of the weddings, on porches, in basements, and even in the car on road trips.  With a nice screened in porch at version 1.0 of the 907, I ended up hosting my share of games over the years, although sometimes when the weather failed to cooperate, we would move in to the kitchen or basement.

Accordingly, after Team Norton had moved down the street into the rental, and after the utilities had been disconnected, but before the deconstruction process began, it seemed only fitting to have one final lantern-lit bundled-up poker game in the basement, with a fire in our newly reopened fireplace. 

So one freezing evening in late December a bunch of the neighborhood poker players and spectators gathered for one final game in the old 907.

We had so much fun, the plan is that for subsequent Shady homes going through "iteration," we have a final poker game after utilities but before demo/decon. 

Good times.

The basement walls and French drains

After the Olympic-sized hole was dug, the footers were poured, then the walls, the plumbing was laid, the French drains were laid, and finally the slab was poured (next post).

Woohoo.  I have a garage. And yes, I know these are out of order, but I'm just trying to keep up.

Digging

So after the deconstruction a/k/a "razing my home,"  we had The Field.  The next step to the creation of our new home was digging the hole in which to put the new home.  Although intellectually we knew that the hole had to be bigger than our basement, to allow construction, waterproofing, and the French drains, it still looks crazy big.

Well - I guess I've always wanted an Olympic-sized swimming pool.