House Update: Roofing is finished, dormers are on, plumbing started

The roof is now finished!  Before it was roofed, we had a major downpour every day.  Now that the house is in the dry, it probably won't rain for a month! :-)

There will be an arched window in that arched opening above the back porch....

..... and this is it!

Most of the house is now covered with house wrap.  It should be finished soon. 

As you can see, the 3 dormer windows are now up, too.

Here's a view of the front from the other side.

This is looking into the middle dormer from the inside.  It looks into the foyer.

Here's a closer view of the same thing.  The ceiling right above the window will be curved to match the arch.

This is the view from standing inside, looking out onto the back porch.  This is the same arched window from earlier, shown from the inside.  It looks into the living room.

The other major development is that the plumbing has been started.  This is part of the guest bathroom.

Here are the laundry room hookups.

More plumbing will be done later in the week.

That's it for now!  David has spent all day today setting some of the smaller windows.  Things are moving right along!  Thanks for visiting!

House update: Roofing has started, and stairs are in

The back of the house has now been shingled, and they are working their way around to the side.

Here's a closer view.  The color is called Williamsburg Gray.

The front of the roof has been covered with plywood, but they haven't started putting down the black tar paper yet.  The big open space down the middle is where one of the three dormers will go.  It will look into the foyer.

The other big accomplishment of the day is that the stairs are in.  They go up to the bonus room, which we are going to make into an office.

This is the view from the top of the stairs into the bonus room.  They got the floor down in it today, too.

Here's a close-up of the garage, with the bonus room window above.  Because of the way the house sits on the hill, it's a LONG way down from that window!  It's hard to tell from this picture, but when you are up there you are on eye level with the top part of the tree in the front yard.

Roofing should be completed this week!  Plumbing will also start tomorrow.  We lost a few days because of all the rain, but David is working hard to keep things moving along and stay on schedule.  We are still in the quickest stage of building.  Soon we will enter the stage where the more tedious work begins, like wiring, plumbing, floors, trim, etc.  That is when David is going to be REALLY busy, since he will be doing most of that work himself.  I'll keep updating when the big changes happen. 

Thanks for visiting!

House update: Framing continued- the roof is going up!

The house is starting to look at lot more like the actual house plan now!  It is starting to take shape rather than looking like just a bunch of boards and bricks.  For a refresher, this is what the house plan looks like.

This is what it looks like now:

Here's a close-up of the roof over the front of the house.

Here is the view of the front from the other side.

That's it for now!  The roof will be going on next.  We're getting there!  Thanks for stopping by.

House update: Framing

The house has come a long way since the last post!  The foundation was finished, and David put down plastic in the crawlspace for a moisture barrier and then had river sand brought it and dumped on top of it.  He spent a long day out in the hot sun raking the sand out to cover the plastic.  The sand will help keep the crawlspace dry, and also make it a little more pleasant when crawling under there because it keeps you out of the red mud!

Our framing crew started on Saturday.  We are using Rangel Framing, owned by Daniel Rangel from Greenville.  David is also out there every day he isn't working.  Here are a few pictures of the progress so far:

This is looking into the garage.  It opens on the side of the house.

This is the view from the back corner now.  Part of the cathedral ceiling in the living room is going up.

Here's another view from the back.  You can start to see where the back porch will be.

A closer view of the back of the house, from the other corner.

Inside the living room, with a lot of bracing still in place.

Looking into the kitchen area.

Looking up at the catheral ceiling.

But don't try to go out on the front porch.... that first step will get you!

Later on both porches will be poured, but for now it's just an empty shell.

The framing has come a long way!  They still have to frame the upstairs bonus room and the rest of the roof.  Next comes roofing and siding!  More updates will be coming as progress is made.  Thanks for visiting!

House update: We've got bricks!

Our house has now gone from a hole with some cement to..... a hole surrounded by concrete blocks and brick.

This will be the front porch.

Here's the view from the back right corner.

This is looking into the garage.

This is the view from the backyard.

The foundation is almost done, as of today.  They still have to build the front steps.  Framing is set to begin soon!  Then it will start to actually look like a house.

I'll update as soon as it looks different!

Our House Build Update: More digging, and pouring footings

We have made some progress on our house build.  First, David had to do some more digging.  The first dig was just to lay out where the house would sit.  The second dig was to actually dig into the hill a little bit so the house wouldn't sit so high off the ground.

There's David on the Bobcat, digging away and kicking up huge clouds of red dust.  It hadn't rained for a while, so the ground was very dry and hard.  You can see that now he's up on a ledge, above where he dug into the hill.

This is what it looks like from the other direction.  That corner that was left higher than the rest is where the back porch will sit on a slab.  That was the ledge David was on top of on the Bobcat in the above picture.

Now with that digging done, it was time for the foundation crew to come in and start working.   We used McGee Brothers.  They came out and checked it out, and we went to their Greer office and picked out brick the same day.  The next day they dug the footings.  They were inspected the following morning, and they immediately poured the footings. 

Now our big hole is full of a maze of concrete.

It looks like a muddy mess right now, but the next step is to start laying the block for the foundation, which will then be bricked.  If you squint really hard and use your imagination, you and ALMOST see this house sitting there, right?  :-)

Thanks for coming by!  More pictures will come with each step of the build. 

*Note:  While David is the contractor on our build, he will be subbing out some of the work and doing other parts himself.  I will continue to let you know which parts he does himself, and which parts are done by subcontractors.

Welcome to 2010, fireplace!

David recently did a  revamp on the mantel at my (Lauren's) parent's house.  The poor fireplace was stuck in 1990.  It had a plain stained-wood mantel at the top of the bricks, and a brass insert.  I was going to take pictures of that, but David had already taken them off and I was too slow.  So here it is with the brass insert pulled out, the old plain mantel gone, and some MDF he put up as a backer for all the decorative stuff he was about to add.  I know it's not really a "before" pic, but he didn't wait for me to take pictures. :-)

He built small built-in cabinets at the bottom to go on each side, and he built 8 foot bookcases to go above those.  He also created "columns" on each side of the opening out of fluted board and decorative moulding.

There's one shell of a bookcase, and part of one column.

Now he's got two book cases, and most of the two columns.

He built doors for the lower cabinets, added the shelves into the book cases, and started adding decorative moulding pieces.  He also framed up a box to go between the two book cases that will frame a large picture later.  That box was topped with crown moulding.

David put a new mantel on top of the fireplace, and created dentil moulding above the two white boxes of trim. 

This is what the doors that he built look like.  They have a recessed panel.

Then it all had to be primed.  Since the living room had all stained trim and the mantel was going to be white, the windows and door casings were painted white, too.

Here's a close-up of some of the decorative trim.

Here's another close-up of the crown moulding at the top, and the trim inside the box.  And if you didn't notice, the walls are no longer plain old cream.  They are now.... blonde.  (It was a BIG change for my mother!)  The darker shade really helps the white stand out.

And this is the finished product!  David included several outlets in and around the mantel to make it easier to plug in lamps.

There are outlets inside each lower cabinet, with a hole for the cord to go through so it's hidden.

There's also an outlet that lies flat on top of the mantel, but is not visible when you're looking straight at it.  It's for Christmas lights, other lamps, or whatever you can dream up to plug in there.

And that's it!  Now the fireplace has a lot more presence in the room, not to mention the extra lighting, outlets, and storage space that was added.  It's also a classic look, so it looks like something that would have always been there, not something that was added in later.  Eventually, they will probably add some sort of decorative fire screen in front.  You would never know this fireplace once had a brass insert from 1990 now!  Welcome to 2010, old fireplace!

Thanks for stopping by!!