Tuesday, December 20, 2011

All in a Day's Work

I love having Christmas Break where we can spend all day outside watching our house go up. :)
They have begun working on putting up the beam and rafters over the Great Room. 
That beam is huge so it takes a few guys to hold the beam in place while one guy nails it into place.
We are also getting our concrete patio poured today. :)


They staked out the form for the patio, then rolled out welded wire mesh for the concrete to attach to. Then the cement trucks came to pour the concrete and Matthew began the fun job of smoothing out the concrete.
The girls had fun collecting rocks. Nikki kept looking for pink rocks, but sadly, none were to be found.

The kids needed some exercise, so we walked to the top of the hill to see the progress from another view. 
It's so neat to see how our house is taking shape.
Here the builders are getting the Rafters built over the Great Room Windows. 

It was fun watching both the concrete go down and the roof go up. 



I was amazed at how many workers it required to build the roof, but we do have a tricky roof-line.
They used string between the beam and the rafters to figure out what angles to cut the next beams at. Just figuring the math for how to make the cuts took at least an hour, if not more.

It's going to be so neat to see once the rest of the rafters are up.

This is where they ran out of concrete, so we ended up having to get a second load to finish it up.
Tommy loved watching them smooth out the patio. He was amazed how the rocks bumpy texture was slowly smoothed away with the patience of moving the smoothers back and forth across the concrete until it was nice and smooth.
The roof over the dormers also got built today.


These dormers make me happy. :) I love how the peaked roof makes it look like the house is happy. It should be since we have awesome builders working on it. 
We took a look around once the builders left for the day, hoping that the concrete guys were gone too so we could put our hands in the cement. But they were still working away, since Buddy had apparently joined them once or twice to inspect their work (and leave his footprint which they had to repair). I also found out that the reason the concrete outside is cut is because the squarer the concrete is, the less likely it is to crack. Concrete is going to crack no matter what you do with it, but cutting it helps to encourage it to crack in appropriate places. The interior concrete isn't usually cut because flooring is usually placed on top, so it doesn't matter where the cracks happen. 

Anyway, we had fun looking around while it was still dusk.
I can stand right next to the short walls in the homeschool/play room without bumping my head, so they should be perfect for a magnetic chalkboard/whiteboard wall or something like that. 
It was amazing to look at the way they connected the beams for the main roof. 
So intricate and complicated. I'm glad I don't have to figure out how to make it work. I'm sure the house would fall down like a house of cards if I were required to do it. :)
Tommy and Nikki had fun cheesing for the camera. How lucky am I that I got them both to not only look at the camera, but also smile! :)
I even braved the ladder to take some pictures from the platform they built to put up the big roof.
Our Great Room looks so cool at night. 
When we finished looking around the house, we snuck out back to the concrete and tried to put our hands in the concrete. It was too hard to press our hands in, but we were still able to scratch them in. 
Of course, now that I'm posting this, I realize that it's really December 19, not December 18. Oh well. :)
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1 comment:

  1. What fun for your munchkins to watch their new home being built. Love seeing the pics.
    S.

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