Third Grade!

Feels sorta weird to photograph her in front of a new tree ... Thought about running over to the new house to take the pics on the porch, but we ran out of time.

Building Barry: Day 120

Shingles were done on Saturday, garage door and electrical rough-in started Tuesday, and today the rough plumbing was done and the furnace was in. Progress!

Of course, not everything is smooth sailing. We should not, for example, be able to sail in our basement, no matter how much rain we've gotten.

But that was all pumped out by dinner time today, and hopefully the combination of soon-to-be-installed gutters and a plugged in sump pump will prevent this from EVER happening again.

Building Barry: Day 114

There's a roof!

(Well, plywood that's going to be a roof once the tar paper and shingles get installed. Until then, it's a bit leaky.)

Building Barry: Day 111

Still no roof, but at least the replacement trusses have arrived.

We're supposed to have our walk-through with the electrician next Tuesday, so I hope we have an enclosed house by then. Except for the front door, of course, which the designer screwed up again by having us choose a replacement door (when our original choice was discontinued) from the wrong catalog (which is for a company they no longer use). So my house, which should have a door by now, is doorless until she can scan the catalog and get it to us, we can choose a style, she can find out how much it costs, we can sign off on the change, she can order it, and they can get it delivered and installed. Not real happy about this, to be honest. There had better be some pretty spectacular choices in the new book, or else we're going standard and I'll get something I like from Lowe's after we move in.

Building Barry: Day 107

This is my house:

Notice how there's no roof on most of it? That's because all of the trusses over the main part of the house were manufactured wrong, and they look like this:

Gonna be stuck for a few days while they make and deliver new ones for us.  Here's hoping they're speedy and accurate!

Building Barry: Day 106

Not as many big changes today:

But not everything shows up at first glance, like the finished basement:

Or the roof on the morning room:

Little details like the breakfast bar (and two sets of stairs) showed up, as did a few other things:

The framer I talked to today said we should have a roof tomorrow if everything goes well. Keep your fingers crossed for that!

Building Barry: Day 105

They got a lot done today before I was able to drop by:

And by the time I came back after work ...

Why yes, that is all the walls and floors done upstairs. Jason and Liza made sure of that!

Building Barry: Day 104

We've got a first floor!

With a morning room!

And a closet!

Very excited to see this project finally making great strides. Keep your fingers crossed that the rain in the forecast goes around us, at least on the days when the Beard Brigade is supposed to be running around building our second floor.

Building Barry: Day 102

Look what we have! 

A garage! And a basement!

Yay for progress (after more than a week of nothing nothing nothing)!

Building Barry: Day 96

Well, actually it's looked like this for most of the week, but you get the idea. Basement floor and garage floor are in, they've back filled in around the foundation, and we should start framing this week. More exciting photos to post in the near future (I hope!).

Building Barry: Day 75?

Building Barry, Day 72: Walls, wonderful walls!

Spent all morning packing up the house, and by the time I got out to the building site, it was already three o'clock.  The guys had been busy in my absence (probably worked faster without me sitting there watching them from a lawn chair).  All the forms were in place for the foundation walls, and the cement pumper truck was just maneuvering into position when we arrived.  Score!

Liza and I hung around in the hot sun - SUN!  Hallelujah! - so we could watch them start to pour the walls.  It was every bit as exciting as it sounds:

And just like that, we have a basement.  By the time Jason got to the site around 5:30, the tops of the walls were already hard enough that he couldn't even scratch his initials into one of them.  Disappointment abounded.

I'll be out of town this weekend and won't be able to post pictures, but I'm hoping that by the time I return on Sunday they've removed the forms, finished the drainage around the foundation, and backfilled in the trenches around the outsides of the walls.  Keep your fingers crossed that the weather holds for us so we can get caught up with the framing and such.  And think good packing-and-moving thoughts for us for next week!

Building Barry, Day 71: The muddening

So, we got a little rain after the hole was dug.  And by "a little," I actually mean "seriously, we need an ark over here."  But that didn't stop our intrepid work crew from getting the footer forms ready to go:

By the end of the day, they had the footers in for the walls and support columns, and the crane had delivered the forms for the walls:

In other news, we walked around the extremely muddy neighborhood until our shoes got too heavy to drag out of the mud:

Also: our neighborhood used to be a wheat field.  Parts of it still are:

We also met our soon-to-be-down-the-street neighbors, whose names were (I think) Larry and Linda.  They've got a son that's a year younger than Liza, and a daughter that's three.  They're in addition to our other neighbors Jerry and Lona, and Brad and Britney, and Sheila and whatever her husband's name is that neither of us can remember and her son Austin.  Looks like this time we might actually know the names of more than two neighbors on our street!  Huzzah!

Building Barry, Day 70: Groundbreaking!

Jason and I are now the proud owners of a Big Damn Hole:

Now, as long as it doesn't rain so much that the whole thing caves in on itself overnight, they should be ready to put forms in and start pouring concrete later this week.

The house next door to us is virtually the same floorplan as ours (different front elevation, and they chose not to add on some of the options we picked), and they broke ground a couple of weeks ago.  It's been fun watching their Big Damn Hole turn into Sort Of A House, especially as the Beard Brigade has been framing it during the past week.

When the workmen leave for the day, I have been known to go wander around their house, trying to picture where our furniture will fit in the various rooms that are the same as ours.  And I marvel at the puddles you get on your floors when the storms hit before the roof goes up ...

More thoughts on the process

I thought it would be fun to show you some of the stuff I found while going through the paperwork to get ready to sell the house.  For example, here are the photos I took when we were looking at buying our current house:

http://mind-flush.blogspot.com/2007/04/house-pictures.html

And here's what it was like right before we moved last time, in case you're looking for a laugh:

http://mind-flush.blogspot.com/2007/04/coming-into-home-stretch.html

And this is what happens when you trap me in a hotel room for two months with two cats and a not-quite-two-year-old Hellion: 

http://mind-flush.blogspot.com/2007/04/and-she-hasnt-even-started-her-lessons.html

This is the first house sale we've done where I have to wrangle the kid, and the fact that school ends in four days absolutely terrifies me. The benefit of the two weeks of intensive work I put into getting the house ready is that now I just have to keep it up, which shouldn't take a ridiculous amount of attention each day. Hopefully I can be "present" for Liza, which should minimize the amount of damage she can do to my perfect house before I notice it and beat her for it.

ETA: House went on the market Friday, and we had an offer on Tuesday, which we countered and they accepted on Wednesday morning.  Four days on the market - not bad, if I do say so myself!

Building Barry, day 22

Here is the final round of photos of the house, which went on the market Friday. Wish us luck!