Starting to Look Like a House

The past few weeks in the Queen City have been RAINY. This isn't atypical around here this time around here. The humidity level is almost unbearable and it's been hot and relatively strong thunderstorms in the evenings. The weather patterns aren't good for the anxiety as it continues to rain in the house. We really have made some pretty decent progress in the past few weeks. We've had our fair share of hurdles too...

1. Lumber doubled in price after the earth quake in Haiti. We priced the job before Haiti. We had our second and final large lumber delivery.

2. Weather, as mentioned above.

3. In the initial plan we hoped to keep the existing hardwood floors. After demo and rain we realized this wouldn't be the best plan, so we've started shopping for floors.

4. One day last week, one guy almost had a heat stroke and another shot a nail through his hand. Glad to say that they're doing fine.

Framing is starting to wrap up. In my very unprofessional opinion, we should be "dried-in" by the end of the week. This is very exciting. Dried-in means that there is sheathing and tar paper on the roof (ready for shingles), house is wrapped in tyvek (covers the sheathing to keep water away) and windows and installed. This will be a much welcome milestone! Framing is where the largest chunk of the money is spent, so as it wraps up pressure will be relieved for us and for the crew! Once the house gets to that point, the HVAC guy, electrician and plumber will start doing their rough-ins and the carpenters will continues studding up interior walls, shingle the roof and apply the siding... Big changes coming, but for now this is where we are...

Beginnings of a second floor. Exterior walls are all up. We can see the dormer on the left sticking up a little bit...

Sheathing applied to most of second story and windows are getting cut out. Also, the beginnings of a ROOF!!! YAY!

Back of house. Can see a little work on the roof here. The part that sticks out in the back is where the stairs are

Looks like a roof to me!!

Hopefully next post will show dramatic improvement. Fingers are crossed for dry days!