Archive for 2006
They laid the beams for the second floor today. No steps up to the floor yet.
Looking from the kitchen to the family room
You can see the fireplace behind Anne. If I remember right, we only got a fake-gas log fireplace – not a woodburning one.
Caroline stands in the driveway
The master bedroom is partially suspended over the garage. Thus, there is a huge steel beam in the garage which you can barely make out in this photo.
It’s amazing to see how fast the walls go up in just a matter of days. Today they completed the exterior walls on the first floor and started on the interior walls. Still no steps down into the basement yet.
Looking from the kitchen towards the garage entrance
Anne and Caroline in the front yard
When Nancy went by the house today they had finally started framing. It’s amazing how fast they can put the walls up once they get going.
From the back yard – looking at the family room
From the driveway – looking at the garage
The front entrance
The black hole to the basement
They weren’t any stairs down into the basement yet – just a black hole where the stair well would be.
We haven’t been out to the new house for a while because not much has been happening. When we went out today, all the concrete flatwork in the basement and garage had been done.
The cold storage room – this will be underneath the front porch
Anne and Caroline in the garage
Nancy was worried about a crack in the basement floor. I’m not too concerned about it.
What I think is the phone line (black cable) has been run up to the demarcation point. I’m pretty sure the metal pipe will house the electric line
I’ve been in Irvine, CA on a business trip all week and the weather has been bad all week so Nancy didn’t go out and take pictures until today. The foundation has been completely backfilled and all the rough plumbing is in place.
Looking at the garage. The gravel area is where the driveway will be
Note the roughed in plumbing – I think they are the drain stacks for the upstairs kids bathroom and kitchen as well as the basement bathroom
They’re in the process of putting in the window wells and backfilling up against the foundation.
Looking north at the south side of the house. The orange “D” shows where the demarcation point will be.
Looking at the back of the house towards the street. The “S” and the arrow shows where the sewer line will be and you can see the trench has been dug for the sewer
The concrete room (directly underneath the bucket of the backhoe in this picture) is a cold storage room or “fruit room”
Looking at the back of the garage. The notch will be a doorway from the garage to the back yard
Today forms were off (note the crane for lifting forms) and the foundation had been coated with that black tar-like stuff that I assume is supposed to help prevent water seepage.
Facing the front of the house. That funky notch is where the front steps/porch will go
Looking south at the north side of the house. The garage is in the foreground
Facing west, looking at the garage. You can see the lot number (321) painted on the foundation
We didn’t go visit the house on the weekend but when we showed up on Monday afternoon the foundation was all poured!
Looking north
This following picture shows the notches in the foundation for the garage doors.
Looking southwest
One thing that irritates me about construction is how dirty the workers are. They leave empty containers and drink cups and other trash all over the place. Even the concrete people dump extra concrete all over the lot as opposed to going to the designated clean out station for concrete trucks which is just a street over:
I suppose it would be too much to hope for that they would actually break up this leftover concrete and haul it away. More likely they will just grade over it when they do the final grade…
Today they poured the footings:
Facing south
Facing north
Turns out it only took two days for some action on the new house. Today they put in the forms for the footings.
Looking southwest from about where our driveway will be
Looking north
We’re getting excited now that they’re actually doing some work!