We aren't talking chicken pox!

We have shingles!  We aren't talking the poison ivy I've had for the last two months mistaken for old people chicken pox either......although that might explain why I itch so much, but that update should be in a different blog.  Anyway, we are talking about good old american made, grade 'A' roofing shingles.  The roofers started shingling today and the roof is almost done.  We are pretty happy to see how fast they put the shingles up on the roof.  Things are starting to get dried in, a few more pieces of plywood, a few rows of shingles and us shutting the windows is all that is left to prevent the inside of the house getting wet when it rains.  We are really looking forward to the day things will stay dry on the inside.
A little less then a week ago the house looked like this:

This morning before lunch the house looked like this:

And tonight, this is how it looks, just a bit more shingling at the top and it will be done:

Quick progress

Things have definitely made a jump today.  When Shane our general contractor cracks the whip a lot gets done.  The walls, roof and windows are in.  They are finishing up a few things, but the framers should be done this week.  It is amazing how fast everything fell into place.  One day we didn't have a roof, the next we have a roof and windows.  Now it is really looking like a house.

Want to swim in the new pool?

Well, we don't miss the swimming pool as much anymore.  After the rain today there was a 2 inch deep wading pool through the house.  It will be nice once the house has shingles and windows so we don't get so much water in the bedrooms, but until then we will get to wade through the house.  There hasn't been this much water on a floor since that damn tornado hit in Nov.  If we still had the pool rafts, we could float around a little in the house.  I hope I don't get to say that for too much longer.  I'm not sure what the basement looks like, and with all the mud I am not really gonna find out until the ground dries a little.  Here are a few pictures of the house with all the water.

Put a lid on it

Things seem to be moving a little faster now.  They put the trusses on yesterday and half the roof is done, or if you want to look at the other side of the coin we could say half the roof is not done.  Not sure if you are a glass is half empty or half full sort of person.....Either way, one side of the house is starting to look like a house and the other half shows some promise.  The hole in the back is so they can pass wood to each other through the hole.
Here is the back of the house.

Here is the front.  Hopefully it will not be topless too much longer. This is one instance where being topless is not a good thing.  :)

We've been Framed!

We haven't posted for a little while, but that hasn't been because we aren't excited about the house.  Things are just at a crawl, or seem to be and so there really hasn't been much to post about.  The framing on the inside of the house is started.  Here are some pictures of the inside of the house.

Here is the dance floor that the damn tornado left us.

Now, we are dead even with where we started.  Notice how much cleaner this picture is than the picture above, but we are still at the exact same place.  We have finally broke even with tornado day, no longer in the hole on the rebuild.

Here is a picture of the first few walls that are being put up.  You can see the garage and one side of the house walls.

Here is the hole we are throwing all of our money into....just kidding, this is the basement  :).  No stairs are in yet, just a hole for now.

Here is a shot of the master bedroom.

Here is Bretts room.

Here is the front door and Bretts room.

Here is the corner of the kitchen.  You can see the pantry and mudroom.

We have a few walls started, hopefully later this week we will have a few trusses and the house will be enclosed.

The beams are started

Things having been moving very slowly.  The floor is in and the beams are started.  Hopefully the rain will hold off long enough to get the subfloor done.  Take a look now as it looks big, I think once the walls are in things will shrink a bit.

We hit the floor running at the end of the week

Well, it was a slow week.  The rain kept us from making much progress.  On Friday things picked up, and the concrete floor was poured for the basement and garage.  Think how much more would have been done if we didn't have rain for the first few days, I'll bet the whole house would have been almost completed  :).   We are extremely happy to see this progress this week considering the weather.

It is getting deep.

But I have faith in them smoothing things over.

A little bit more and all will be good.  Luckily the window was right there or they would have painted themselves into a corner.

Everything turned out great when all was done.

We have a garage door :)

The garage door is in!!!! It won't be long and we will have a finished garage.  We will put the door handle on in the next couple of days and we will have a place to keep some stuff.  Michelle picked out the fancy door with the fancy windows and hardware.  The garage turned out really nice, I wish the house was getting done as fast, but it wont be long and all of it will be finished.

The Egress window is installed

Our builders brought in a micro excavator to dig the egress window for the basement.  They didn't want to put any pressure on the new walls, and this excavator is just what the doctor ordered.  They tarred the basement walls and dug the hole for the egress window.

Once they attached the window to the wall, they tarred it really well so it wouldn't leak.

The basement walls are in

It has been a while since we posted, and there has been quite a bit happening.  Michelle has been busy finalizing the bathroom and kitchen, and Shane and Jesse from Legend Homes have been busy putting our house together.  The whole process around the basement walls is an amazing ordeal.  They bring in the cement trucks full.

 
The big pump truck pumps the cement out of the cement truck into the basement walls.

The guy tight ropes the wall and fills the form with the cement out of the pump truck.

Once everything is dry, the forms come off and our new basement is ready to go.

Things are forming up nicely

They had to dig a bit of dirt out after the rains, but the hole didn't collapse.  Shane from Legend Homes has his crew working hard to get things in place quickly.  Things are starting to form up nicely, now that they have the basement forms in place.  It wont be long and we will have walls, granted, they will be cement walls, but we will take what we can get.  You can see a glimpse of the shadow selfie in the middle of the concrete, notice how skinny I look.  I am so trendy  :).  At least, that is if a shadow selfie is a real thing.

Here is a better shot of the basement window.

Here is a shot of the garage.

Cross your fingers that Isaac Newton is wrong

Isaac Newton said "What goes up must come down".  Hopefully, when he said that he wasn't thinking of basement walls, but I can tell you that his quote keeps popping into my head when I look at the sides of the hole.  A couple of the walls are starting to cave in.  They put a brace up to hold the wall, let's hope they get the forms in before Def Leopard kicks it, and the walls come tumbling down.

 The chance of rain is 65% Sunday night, cross your fingers that the walls don't fall if the rain does.  On the bright side, I suppose we will see how well the gravity drain works, not exactly what we wanted, but we gotta try to stay positive.  We won't let that damn tornado beat us down, hopefully our new basement walls feel the same about the rain.  Pray that things hold up, at least until the walls are poured, then the walls can tumble down.   The dirt walls that is, not the concrete walls....hopefully.

The footings are poured and set

This was a good way to end the week.  The footings are poured and we are waiting on the forms to come in.  It wont be long and we will actually have walls, not real walls or anything, but basement walls will be better then what we have now.

They loaded the concrete into the excavator and carried it to the hole, this was so much faster then doing it by hand.

While droppng the concrete into the footing forms they would hang out of the cab to make sure there was enough concrete in the form..it looks good from here, but they know what they are doing compared to us.  :)

After they dropped the concrete in the hole, the "hole" crew spreads the concrete flat.  They got a lot of work done quickly today.  The digger crew worked their butts off to get all of the footings in place, the walls should start next week.

Take that you damn tornado, we are making some progress.

The Digging is done

The digging is done and we are pretty excited.  It won't be long and we will have some footings poured.  It will be really nice to see some actual concrete going into the hole, instead of them hauling it away.  We can hardly wait!  They have the drainage roughed in for the gravity drain, and it runs to the backyard.

They covered the black pipe in the picture above with the pea gravel below.  Tomorrow we will have concrete!

And the digging begins

Shane our builder(Legend Homes), and digger man as Michelle refers to him, started digging our basement today.  They found the water and sewer and marked the corners of our house.  They dug a little pile today and put it in front of the garage.

Here is the pile that they created today, finally some progress.  The mess that we cleaned up from the damn tornado is starting to come back after all that time we spent cleaning.  We are finally seeing some real progress.

Here is digger man and his sidekick hard at work.  Michelle really needs to get their names, but they are doing an excellent job.  She says they are really nice guys.  They also mentioned that we should put in gravity drainage with a sump pump to back it up.  This was a good idea and we are planning to do this.

Here is Michelle next to the excavator, she really wanted to drive it, but digger man was already gone.  She said she was going to ask to drive it tomorrow.  It isn't a Cat tractor, but I guess we will live with it as we want things to get done and so this might not be the best time to throw them off the property,  The damn tornado is making us make sacrifices all over the place.