Day 10/11/12, January 25-27

It's been a slow week here in Lake Wobegon Traverse City... The week started with some strange weather -so much freezing rain and ice on the road that school was closed on Monday. But by 9am it was sunny and clear, and by noon it was 45 degrees.  The workmen took a couple days off at the beginning of the week & a half day on Wednesday.  By Thursday the guys were in full gear again and made a lot of progress.

Wednesday, they brought another flatbed in with cement half-walls.  Originally, we thought they were for the back side of the house, but instead they built up the space under the garage.  We're speculating on what they'll do with that space, as it must have to be reinforced somehow to carry the weight of 3 cars (right?!).

That afternoon they destroyed the dirt platform for the crane and brought in a truckload of wood.

Thursday they started the fun work.  It was very cold...the 4 workmen had at least 5 layers of clothing and still looked cold.  The work was a little slow for a while since they had to do a lot of measuring, conferring, cutting, etc.  But by this afternoon they were moving and there are now studs and weight bearing beams up for the basement!

Side note #1:  the cloudy skies are what is typical in Michigan winters.  Most days are overcast and cloudy, even if it's "warm" out.

Side note #2:  my picture taking dilemma is that to get good pictures, I have to be pretty close to the house.  Can't do that while the workers are there; by the time they leave, it's getting dark.  So. We'll have to wait until this weekend to get closer.

Day 6, January 22

Justin and I trekked over to see what they'd done on Friday.  It's a beautiful day but COLD!  We lasted long enough to walk around the basement and then hustled home for hot cocoa.

garage area

base level of where the front door will be

From the back side of the lower level.

looking into the basement 

don't know what they're for, but there are two very large holes behind the house

Day 5, January 20

Finally, we had clear sunny weather to get back to work.  One of the workers told us that they started work later than usual that day because the snow slowed the prep down a couple days ago.  It was very exciting all day long.

the outlines of the "foundation"

finishing the prep work

Then they brought the crane in.  What's amazing is that we hardly hear these vehicles at all, even across the street.

The day began with 2 large flatbeds with the pre-poured walls lining up at the bottom of the hill.  Then, the snowplow came to clear and sand our street -FOUR times!  We've never had such beautiful streets as we have today. Since the flatbeds are so heavy, they had to make sure the roads were clear and dry.

The trucks rolled up...

And they started to unload...

They got all but 3 panels put in place on Friday.  It was so fast and easy to assemble.  Owen was really excited by it all -he kept racing into whatever room I was in to pull me to his window and watch.  The foreman talked to us a while too.  He said that when Gary told him years ago that this was how they would build houses, he thought the guy was nuts! Now he's sold on the process and loves building this way.

Day 4, January 19

We've had pretty bad weather this week -winds up to 30 mph, very low visibility, terribly slushy roads.  The work crews had to take a couple days off.  These pics don't do it justice, but this is what it looked like from our living room:

our deck

Our sandbox is in the white space to the right...can't tell we even have one.

Tried to get some pics of the big wind gusts, but couldn't get a good one.

Day 2, January 17

We had about 6 inches this morning, along with freezing rain.  This hill gets VERY windy, so all of that combined for a short day for the workmen.  They began work about 8:30am and shut down about noon.

Before they quit, there were 2 large dump trucks waiting to be filled with dirt.  We got to see them loading one with the digger.

The trucks are the only way I got the boys out of the house this morning.  When I tried to get Owen in the car, he cried for 10 minutes because I tore him away from his "DUMP!"

Day 1, January 16

Reportedly, the digging was supposed to start in 2 days.  I had planned to take some before pictures, but before we knew it, there was a backhoe clearing the land.  It only took about 1.5 hours to clear the land (mostly just scraggly bushes and trees -a couple Autumn Olives and an old apple tree) and the bulldozer arrived to start moving things around.

Andy thinks they're digging the septic tank today.  I think they're digging the foundation.

Looking up at our house from Briar Ridge Dr.:

And a pretty cool video!!