mas grande -- con autoport

With all the sunny weather, we find ourselves -- (wait for it) 2 weeks ahead of schedule.

That's how impatient I am -- we're 2 weeks ahead and I still feel like it's not going quickly enough.

But these past two weeks have seen major changes to the structure.

Upcoming events:

1.  Frame up 2nd floor
2.  Put up walls
3.  Roof!

view from the back of the house.  

View from the front -- carport not yet poured or framed.  

Carport was poured on Friday, framed up on Tues and Wed.  There will be a window in the center of the large wall.

We wanted to make sure this carport would hold our two cars plus the vespa.  

Benjamin is loving the open-wall plan.   He is not for sheet-rock.  

The carport does provide some nice relief from the western sun.

Framing has begun

We are now entering the fun stages of the project, I think.

Finally, we see some of the shape of the house.  With only the foundation, it was not easy to see (for me) how this was going to come out.  After today, I have a much better sense.

Lumber has arrived

At long last, the framing has begun.  We are now clearly in the house-building phase of the project.

For some reason, we also have nearly all of our trees planted.  

3 Ginkos in the front (we had to get smaller trees to ensure that we have male-only ginko trees!)

A potpourri of trees in the back including:  an apple tree, a persimmon tree, and other assorted trees (maple, birch, red leaf).

The trees were originally planted pretty close to the house.  After all of our efforts to create space for a backyard this fall (and negotiations with the arborists) we almost completely re-forested the back.
After a meeting with the landscape crew, we moved most of the trees further back, to create a nice backdrop for our yard.

Retaining wall needed to attain our grade in the front.
Anybody know a good graffiti artist?

Trees after being moved further back (note pale circle in front right, where maple had been 24hrs earlier).

Speaking of landscaping: we are also planning for blueberry bushes in the back, along the property border with our neighbor.  So maybe in a few years we are kicking back eating home-grown fruits.  Or maybe just feeding the local deer population.

May is for moving...along. As in: we are making progress!

The weather is cooperating with us a bit, and we are now in a real rhythm, I feel.

While I was away mid-week at a conference, work steadily progressed.  Our builder was nice enough to send me images of work as it was occurring (that made staying awake during some of the dry presentations a little easier!)

All 6 geothermal wells have been dug, and I believe that the grout was poured into the PVC pipes this week.

Anyway, foundation is all good now (we had to modify that this week).

The retaining wall has been framed up.

This wall was required to manage the 3-7 foot change in elevation between our yard and our neighbor.
There's an interesting, annoying story about this that is best told off-line.

Steel beams are going up as well.  Steel is required in the back because the back of the house is essentially glass, and that won't support the weight of the 2nd story.  So steel beams were called for, apparently.

This week should end with the retaining wall concrete pouring, and completion of the steel beam installation.  Next Tuesday the framing package arrives, and I would guess that shortly thereafter the constant din of hammers will be heard for about 4-5 weeks!

What in the world...

Anyone (besides Shelly) recall the World magazine?

How about the back cover feature called "What in the World?"?

Well, guess what this is:

Anyone guess mineral-rich subterranean water?  

Yep, that's a product of the geo-thermal drilling.  

On Friday, two of the 6 geothermal wells were drilled.  Each is 6" in diameter (or thereabouts) and dives 200 feet below the surface. During drilling, water and rock were encountered.  At first, I assumed that the grey sludge around the tube was concrete poured around it.  That's the fine residue from drilling through the rock, however.

Once all 6 are drilling and in place, some sort of geothermal grout will be poured into the PVC tubing to fill the space around the conduit/piping that's inside the pvc. Then the PVC will be yanked out, and the geothermal well will be in place.  In theory, someone will haul off the sludge at some point too.

Two steps forward, one step back

Rocks encountered during excavation of the crawl space.
We are going to use them when we get to the landscaping portion of the project!

One of the rocks is big enough for 3 people.

It's been a slow month.

For the record, we've had the following slow-downs:

1.  Rain.
2.  More dirt on the site than anticipated (the surveyor didn't calculate the volume of dirt we'd be excavating for the crawl space, b/c by report he thought we were building atop a slap, not a crawl space....guess he didn't get a look at the plans that were drawn since November) so we had to find a "home" for 14 truckloads of dirt.  That took -- weeks.  It ended up in Woodstock of all places.  Let us know how it looks, Shelly!
3.  One concrete subcontractor had to be replaced after he indicated he wouldn't be available for at least two weeks (we'd lost our window with him due to the dirt delay above).
4.  General slowness, slight inattentiveness.

This week, after watching Mon/Tues/Wed pass by (sunny, warm days, mind you) with nary a truck or worker on the site, I had to call Cara, our architect, as well as the Cablik folks to find out what was going on.  As Cara described it, we had a "come to Jesus" meeting with all parties involved where we worked out how to move the project along despite issues 1-4 above.

The very next day, it was a virtual Turkish Bazaar of activity on the site.  Bobcats were moving earth around, concrete guys were preparing the retaining wall (more on that later: it'll require its very own blog entry on "working with/around your neighbors"), and geo-thermal drilling was beginning!  See below:

Finally, Benjamin would be perfectly satisfied if what we have now is the finished product.  He loves the dirt, the dirt clods, the dirt piles, the mud on his shoes/pants/socks.

This boy loves to toss dirt clods into the foundation space.