pics from Andy's cell phone.

Some of these date back to November 2007. Yikes!

preparing for foul weather

This is the house yesterday evening... They finished covering the roof with plywood and cut the window and skylight holes out.

All these pictures of the front of the house and none of the back. Well, the rear is neglected no more. There are two beautiful apple trees inside the fence, lots of big trees and a year-round creek beyond the fence.

Andy climbed up the wall studs to get into the attic and get a feel for how big our storage/hobby space is going to be up there. As you can see, Andy's nearly 6' tall and having no problem standing up straight. (I'm so excited to have a crafting attic! Though it won't look anything like Martha Stewart's...)

Ann watched Ava while I took some photos. Ava didn't like the cold concrete floor too much, but we told her it would be warm once we move in and she found a piece of wood to put in her mouth, so she decided it would do for now.

Here's the house as of this evening. We're expecting close to a week of rain, so the guys got this roof liner stuff. Hopefully the roof won't be soggy when the roofers come out to put on the shingles and metal roofing.

This is how the house looked this morning.

It was cold out there!

The grass seed that I spread has begun to sprout. (It took longer than I thought, but it's all good.)

Hopefully, this is the last time we have standing water in our living room. I just couldn't pass up taking a picture of the reflection. It was such a nice, bright morning.

Here's the house as they wrapped up work on it today. The windows in the dormers are covered over with plywood at the moment, but they'll get cut out soon.

Ava and friends.

Ava amazes us everyday. When she is in a good mood, which is often, she's just a perfect little angel and we can't smile and laugh with her enough. Here are some of the most recent happenings.

She pulled herself up to standing in her pack 'n' play on Feb. 11. This photo was literally the first time she did it, and she's just standing there, holding on with one hand like she's always been able to stand.

Andy's former contact at Chicago Public Radio, now current co-worker at StreamGuys, came out to visit. We had Shiow over for dinner and she and Ava got on famously.

Andy thinks Ava is the "Jimi Hendrix of the kiddie keyboard." She's playing it with her mouth.

On the morning of Valentine's Day, we went to the Humboldt Poultry Fanciers' Winter Show. She seemed to appreciate all the birds (except the crazy loud geese) as long as she didn't have to touch them, as seen here.

In the evening on Valentine's Day, we attended the first birthday party of Ava's buddy, Susannah. She's just about to dig into the cute frog cupcake that her mom, Kathryn, made.

Our friends April and Larry came to visit last weekend, too. This is Ava and April at Susannah's party. It was great to see them, even if it was a short visit--this was the first time they met Ava and Susannah!

After Susannah's party, we relocated to Kristen & Shawn's for Zeke's surprise birthday party, complete with poetry slam. There's video of one of the performances, but we'll let Zeke post that.

I don't know what we have planned for this weekend, but it had better include several naps for all 3 of us. Seriously.

The rain is back.

It feels like not a whole lot has happened with the house since my last post, but I know that's not the case. Stuff has been done in between rainstorms, hurt backs and crew members being out of town, so progress has been a little slower for the last two weeks. That's okay though, the guys really kicked ass while the weather was good. So here are some not-totally-recent photos... I'll try to take some more when I'm out there tomorrow morning.

That's Dustin under the hat, cutting rafters for Adam and Aaron who are putting them up over the garage.

This is the house as it looked on Feb. 4, 2009.

Adam suggested a notched detail for the rafter tails and the headers over the dormers. He's chiseling out the extra wood in one of the headers here.

This is the house with all of the raftertails sistered on. Originally, we had planned to have the rafters create the eaves, but they ended up being too short. So, Adam contacted the various authorities to see what our options were, and of course, each agency had a different story. Luckily, it came down to the fire marshal, and he gave us the answer we wanted: a 4"x6" sistered on to every other rafter and fire-rated plywood over the overhangs. That's instead of sistering on 2"x12" rafters on every rafter and enclosing it all with Hardisoffit, which would have been more expensive, laborious and ugly.

Here's a closer pic of the notched rafter tails and headers.

Super.

We were hoping for a different outcome, but oh well. The Cardinals were doing fine while Ava was wearing her dress with cardinals on it, but it impeded her crawling so it had to go.




Who needs football? We have the entertainment taken care of.

moving right along.

I'm going to try to keep all of these captions short and let the photos speak for themselves. (Not that the photos are all that spectacular, I'm just incredibly tired.) Things are "zooming right along," as my dad used to say. It's amazing to watch the frame of the house go up so quickly after waiting so long to get to this point. Here's what's happened since the last post:

Looking at the front door from the driveway.

Looking from the great room toward the hallway leading to bedrooms and bathrooms.

From the living room through the kitchen wall to the back yard.

From the kitchen through the living room to the front yard.

Adam and Dustin putting up joists. They are working so hard out there—taking full advantage of the non-rainy weather.

Andy and Ava standing in the hole where the big sliding door will go.

Andy and Ava standing in the kitchen area.

A ridge beam with rafters attached. Andy asked if we really have to put a roof on... or if we could have a convertible roof for days like today. (It was really nice out there today, especially considering it is Feb. 1.)

This is looking toward the hallway from the great room again. The great room ceilings will be vaulted to match the rafters seen in the photo, as will the bedrooms. The only flat-ceiling rooms will be closets, bathrooms and the hallway. This leaves a nice big attic space for storage and crafting. :)

Faithful BLB readers may notice I've been taking photos from this angle every so often. I wanted to have one set reference point so I could really track the process of construction. I wish I had taken the photos at regular time intervals as well, oops.

Ava approves.