Blocking the Shot

The sun came out, and then the rains came down...but our framers have been busy regardless of the weather. The basement is 'under roof' and we have a skeleton of a first floor. All the openings for windows and doors seem to be properly placed! Conor confirms what we've been told by those who've traveled this road ahead of us -- the house looks small when it is just framed. Small and cozy is OK with us - small and cramped is what we're hoping to avoid. Here's a few pix of the progress as of Sunday night.

Taken from the back corner this is how it looked with the first floor laid. This is where the steps leading to the patio from the kitchen will be.


Here's the front of the house. The flat headers flank the front door and will house two picture windows each. On the left is the library and on the right is the family room. It's hard to tell from this vantage point but the ceilings on this floor will be 9' (in the basement too!). The large pile of sand is a little perplexing. Apparently we needed a little more fill dirt, but it's unclear where all the dirt that was IN the hole disappeared to!

This picture is looking through the fireplace wall on the south side of the house. It's a direct vent unit so no chimney. We went back and forth about wood-burning or gas and finally decided that 1) the winter's are long and 2) we're pretty lazy ... so we went with the gas. Since the woodpile would be buried under snow for much of the winter it just seemed like too much work. There will be built-ins on either side of the fireplace and windows above.

The part that juts out on the north side is the dining room windows (3 that run floor to ceiling). To the left of the dining room is the laundry room and below is the rec room in the basement. The black tubes have something to do with water/sewer.

Tomorrow we are meeting with Dave (our builder) and Andy at Big C lumber to order windows (Andersen), doors and knobs, trim and the roof (black). Five decisions down and only 327, 548 to go! (OK, that may be a slight exaggeration!)