Up on the roof

Thank you so much to my brother Colby and his wife Krista for letting us borrow their old digital camera. You're life savers! Now you can see that they have finished putting our roof on and the boys put most of the tar paper on yesterday.

Now you can see how the house comes out the back. Garrett loves to go outside in the addition any chance he gets. Here's the view from the family room looking at the bedroom, hallway, and behind.

And the view at the back wall of the family room where our TV will eventually go.

And here's a better look at our covered patio. How nice it will be to be able to go outside and relax in the shade or read a book.

Curtis and his brother Nic putting tar paper on the roof.

Curtis in his hard hat. Now he looks like a real construction worker, hehe.

My brother Stillman and Curtis continuing to put tar paper on the roof.

Rain, rain go away!

(Okay, this is the 4th time trying to get this posted. Our computer shuts itself off when the framers are working here.)

Well, the framers didn't get too far yesterday because of the thunderstorm and down pour of rain we had in the late morning. We even had some fun with water leaking into the house over the sliding door but Curtis was able to fix it. But the forecast says no rain today so they should finish up either today or while we're at the cabin. We are leaving sometime today and plan to be back on Sunday. So, since Curtis had some time on his hands yesterday (because he was suppposed to be helping the framers) he decided to go ahead and move the kid's window to the new wall.

The trusses that they did get done yesterday.

Stripping down the window.

Curtis cutting the wall where the window will be moved to.

Holy moly we have two holes in the bedroom!

Curtis and his helper, Andrew, who is our nephew, looking out the freshly cut hole for our window.

From here to....

there!

Curtis trying to piece back the hole where the window was taken out. We weren't able to cover up everything so will have to wait till we sheet rock everything else.

Walls

Well, thank you to Tamara for taking these pictures for me while I was gone to girl's camp. I'll have to post pics from girl's camp as soon as I develop the film and scan them. Anyway, when I left, there were just floors and now there are walls. As you can see they delivered the trusses but the framers were too busy on another job to come finish yet plus a few of the trusses were the wrong size, so the lumber place will have to fix that and bring out the right ones. So they are planning on doing to trusses tomorrow and Curtis will be here to help the framers lift them up so they don't have to charge us for using a crane.

There are the trusses.

View from family room looking at bedroom and hallway.

Family room windows

There's the little bathroom and the extended dining room.

A new sliding door will go in that hole and the trusses will cover the patio.

We have floors...and a broken camera

Well, the framers did start today and I was able to take a few photos of the progress before Nikki ended up breaking the camera. It was up on the bar counter and she kept climbing up there and playing with the flashlights and other stuff that was up there and I kept telling her not to. The next thing I know, I can't get the camera lens to retract. It doesn't come out straight anymore, it kind of goes at an angle and so now it's stuck and I can't take any more pictures. I was able to look at the pictures I already took and save them to my computer but for some reason the blogger is having issues too and I wasn't able to load them. So, we do have floors now and they started one wall. If anyone would like to come take pictures for me while I'm gone, that would be awesome!

On top of that our computer has been acting up and now I'm afraid of it crashing like mom and dad's did and losing all of our pictures. So I gave Curtis an assignment while I'm gone to girl's camp to save all our pictures to discs. Yep, that's right. I'm off to girl's camp bright and early in the morning and won't be back until Friday afternoon. It will be nice to get away from all these problems and just enjoy myself with the girls. See ya all later!

Patios and my little helper

I don't have very many pictures to show today. The concrete guys came early this morning and did the patios. I didn't make it out until this afternoon after they were finished to take pictures. Now that they are finished, there's nothing for the framers to wait for so they will hopefully start framing on Monday, maybe Tuesday.

Here's the main patio, the bigger one.
And here's the smaller patio by the dining room

Garrett loves to help mommy so I had to take a picture when he was helping me vacuum today. He also loves to help me with unloading and loading the dishwasher as well as the washer and dryer. I figure I might as well take advantage of it now while he actually WANTS to help even though it's hard for me to be patient while he tries. I'm usually in a hurry and just want to get it done but sometimes you have to slow down and enjoy the moments such as these.

Dirt and prep

Now that the foundation is finished, the diggers came back and back filled the dirt around the outside and prepped the areas for the patios.

Tractor putting dirt back.
He's hammering down the dirt to prep for the patio. That machine is really heavy. He had to haul it back there using the tractor. And so much for keeping this side of the yard untouched.

Curtis and his brother Nic are getting some prep work done for the framers to start next Tues. That's the day I leave for girl's camp. So I'll miss seeing the walls and floors go in. Guess I can't see everything I wanted.

This is the far corner of the back yard. Notice how much of our lawn has been trampled over. Pretty much all of it.

Garrett and Taelyn (Nic & Celeste's daughter) were pressing their faces up against the window, watching and wanting to come outside.

More cutting

Here's what our house looks like now at the end of the day. Roof cut off, some more siding taken off the side of the house, and the dirt is filled in. Unfortunately they are going to have to rip our sliding door out to do the framing so that means we're going to need to pull out our box fan and brave the heat. We were hoping to avoid that step until closer to finished but oh well. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Yay for concrete!

The next step was completed yesterday. The concrete guys came early in the morning and put up the boards for the footings. Then we had to wait until 3 pm for the inspector to green tag it. Not too long after that, the concrete trucks showed up and poured the concrete. Garrett was napping through the whole pouring part but Nikki and I went outside and enjoyed watching. Even some of our neighbors came out and watched. It was pretty exciting!

Garrett loves following Daddy around so of course he wanted to go outside with Curtis when they were putting up the boards. It may look like he's crying but he's actually smiling.

Nailing up the boards.

Curtis saved $100 to cut an access hole out himself. He just borrowed the tool from the concrete guys. Looks pretty sexy to me!

After cutting lines he had to pound it out with a sludge hammer.

Curtis is cleaning out his hole and the boards are all ready to be inspected and for concrete to be poured.

Look what was parked in front of our house when they poured the concrete. Took up the whole culdesac.

They used a crane to go over the house and then the concrete came out this tube that he's holding.

It only took about a half an hour from when the trucks got here to when they finished cleaning up and left. That was fast!

4th of July!

They're back....and finished!

So the diggers came back this morning at 10 a.m. like we hoped. Actually, the foundation guys came before them thinking it was ready but of course it wasn't. So they just kind of hung out awhile until the diggers showed up and then they left. It's already 3:15 and I haven't seen them come back yet so I don't know if they'll come back today or tomorrow. The diggers finished around noon. Here are some more pics!

Garrett is poking his head out the sliding doors to watch. Notice the nice shiner he has on his left cheek? Not exactly sure how he got that, just know he was playing in Tam & Chris's backyard yesterday with the other kids and somehow got hurt.

The diggers brought their dog today so I took the kids outside and they played with it (not sure if boy or girl). I think the dog enjoyed them.

All cleaned up and ready for foundation!

And so it begins

Well, the diggers kind of surprised me this morning when they just showed up and started to work. I wasn't expecting them yet because we were waiting on the city to come mark the water lines for irrigation. But the irrigation is right by the fence and so is the neighbors behind us so he figured it wasn't a problem. So they start digging and continued for a few hours. They decided that it was too muddy so they couldn't finish today. They want to wait a few days for the dirt to dry up. So they probably won't be back until Monday with the holiday weekend. Well, now you can see we have a big hole in our back yard and the front doesn't look very pretty either. Oh well, what can you do?

Started by getting rid of the patio.
Had to break it up into smaller pieces.

Picking up the pieces.

The kids loved watching!

There's our not so beatiful front yard. I didn't realize the tracks were going to be so deep but maybe that's because it wasn't dry.

And there's what we have now. A nice big hole, but they aren't finished yet. Oh my gosh! I can't believe this is actually happening. I am so excited! As if you couldn't tell.