WHAT’S THE STATUS?

It’s raining again - unfortunately.  But besides that, on the second floor, the floor for both bedrooms and for the bathroom is done.  We got the walls up for Andrew’s room and this weekend, we’re going to attempt to get them up for Sarah.  So, that part of it is done and we’re working on framing the front of the house, because the roof trusses arrived - in the rain.  So, we have roof trusses at the moment, but we won’t be able to get them up until it stops raining enough to get the crane on the building site.

HOW FAR ALONG IS THE FRONT OF THE HOME?

We almost have the first level finished.  What we’ve done so far is the front of the house, to where we can stand on the floor.  We need to get scaffolding to go up any higher.  We’re supposed to be there all day tomorrow, but we’ve got a 30% chance of rain, so depending on whether or not we have enough dried out to put the scaffolding down, that will allow us to finish that section.  And if it’s dry enough for the scaffolding, it will probably be dry enough to get the roof trusses on.  We’re going to shoot for both of those things tomorrow.  Then we can slow down just a little bit, and we won’t be so rushed.

We did pick our roof shingles out and we’ll order them tomorrow.  We went with an architectural shingle that has a little bit of dark brown, light brown and a little black to it.  It has a bit of depth to it instead of being just flat.  I didn’t realize there were so many choices in roof shingles.  You can get metal ones, wood ones, 10-year, 15-year, 25-year warranties.  We went with a 25-year one.   That’s one place I don’t want to skimp on if I don’t have to.  It’s protecting the whole inside of my house.

Then we got a call that the windows are in and we have the two doors for the front and the side of the house.  The doors are identical.  Originally, I thought maybe I would pick out a great big, huge sidelight grand entrance for the front door.  But then with everything that happened with us having to turn the house, because of the driveway, we realized that the side entrance is really the one that most people are going to use.  It was one of the areas I could budget differently because I took away the sidelights.  I have so much glass at the front of the house as is, and I saved $600 by taking away the sidelights. 

SO, MOVING YOUR DRIVEWAY DETERMINED THE CHANGE FOR THE FRONT DOOR?

Yes.  The driveway changed so many different things.  It’s not a bad thing, really.  But it’s nice that we’re doing this ourselves, so we didn’t have to make changes and have more costs on our part.  My priority for the doors was that it would look like wood, be well insulated with a good R-value and have some type of glass opening.  I wasn’t dead-set on any particular style of door.

SO AT THIS POINT THE STAIRS HAVEN’T PUT IN?

Not yet, but John is first going to put the steps in from the first floor to the second floor.  We’ll continue to use the ladder from the basement to the first floor, until we get the home under roof, the windows put in, the basement floor poured and the garage doors installed.  After that, he’ll put the steps in from the basement to the first floor.  It’s a safety issue and he wants to keep the home not accessible when we’re not there.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Sadly, that’s pretty much it.  We’re just waiting for the rain to stop so we can move ahead.