Day 94, April 19

Welcome to our home!!  Bethany & Harold came for a visit mid-April to do the hard work of picking out fixtures, countertops, outlet locations, etc.  There are many decisions to be made, and even more choices to pick from that they were both tired (and in need of a martini) by 5pm each day.  

On the day of their arrival, the boys were pretty excited to give Grandma & Grandpa a tour of their own house!

Owen and Grandma checking out one of the offices:

Practicing serving drinks in the kitchen:

Checking out the view from one of the offices:

The living room, with fireplace (as seen over the kitchen island):

The back side of the house.  There will be a deck on the left side of the upper level.  The back yard will have a bit of a drop off, but just gradual enough to mow:

Day 85-87, April 9-11

Raise the roof!  The month of April was focused on putting the roof on the house.  As with everything else, it was pretty amazing to watch them put it all together.  The boys thought the roofing looked like a skeleton!  We had more great weather to do most of the work, with the exception of a couple days toward the end.  There is another house going up in our sub-division and those poor guys had to work on the roof during 40-50 mph gusts of wind.  Thankfully, our guys took that day off!

Day 80, April 4

You have a house!!!!  3 guys put up most of the walls and studs on a beautiful sunny day (quite the contrast to the dark and stormy skies the day before).

You have exterior walls,

solid stairs to the basement,

standing in main room, owen coming out of storage

the main room of basement is going to be nice!

studs for all rooms,

in the dining room

in bedroom looking at bathroom

kitchen/dining room

view off to side of house (ugly now, pretty later)

standing on ground outside basement slider door

spaces for big beautiful windows:

front door and offices

view from office to right of front door 

Day 66, March 21

The day these pictures were taken -last Wednesday- we had a high of 85 degrees!  (Only 5 days later, we have below-freezing temps at night and a mere 43 degrees for a daytime high.)  It was a wonderful day for the boys to spend outside watching all the work being done at your house.

Over the course of the day, dump trucks delivered a minimum of 60 loads of sand.  Both we and the excavators lost count of the number. For half of the day, there were 2 trucks working back to back; for the last 4 hours of the day, there were 4 trucks working at a time.  As one truck would dump it's load, another full truck would come up the street.  The sand was used to fill in the "trench" around the house and the garages & front porch.  The following day, they dug the hole for, and installed the septic tank.

(standing on your porch, looking at the front door)

Meanwhile, the bulldozer shifted all the dirt & sand already on the property to better grade the land on either side of the house (this is only temporary).  It was nonstop action -and of course, Owen begged to watch all day long.

Of course, we had to go check everything out up close after the workers left.  The light on the pictures is never that great because we can only go over there at night when the sun is setting....

(from the dining room)

(on the front porch, looking at our house on the right)

(looking out the dining room window.  the first floor is quite high!)

We've been so impressed with the excavators.  They're a local family and every man in the immediate and extended family works for the company.  Somehow everyone knows it's my mother's house they're building.  Multiple workmen have offered to take the boys for rides in the bulldozer or digger (both boys chickened out).  And, at the end of the day, the owner/excavator operator came over to give us a jug of maple syrup (that's a little side business they have!).  Vey lovely family, all hard workers.

The boys had to check out the bulldozer up close, of course.  It was Andy's birthday, so Frank and Jane were with us.

Day 56, March 11

The last week our weather has been just beautiful.  We've had a minimum of 50 degree days and this Wednesday it got close to 75.  All of the snow from the last blizzard melted quickly so we've spent a lot of time outdoors.  Last weekend we snuck into your house to get an up close look at your basement.

Vanna White

in the main room looking toward the bedroom

in the main room looking at the windows, slider door and bedroom window

Days 36 - 55, Feb 20 - Mar 10

I promise I haven't neglected this blog!  Unfortunately nothing much has happened in the last month.  At the end of February, the basement floor was poured providing the last bit of construction-related excitment  in our house.

In the last month, we've had a big snowstorm (about 2 feet):

...then spring sprung quickly thereafter (about 10 days after the blizzard):

...and the nice weather has brought us an abundance of sunsets: