The end of the lumber (outside anyway)

The porch and balcony are framed and sheathed. Shingles will go on soon and the decking to the balcony, then the railing. The posts for the porch roof have to be put in too, so I guess we aren't done with the lumber after all, but for now we are. I have got to get the siding on and the soffits closed in, but it's tough to do with the sun setting about an hour and half after I get out of work. That means it's going to be weekends and days off from work. But you can see the porch and balcony, plus a detail of the porch rafters to show off what Linnea has built.

Last warm, sunny day for a while

It was over 70 degrees (that's 22 or 23 for everyone still in England) here today and sunny. What a great day to have off for a holiday. We built the master bedroom deck and did some work on the porch roof. Looks like rain tomorrow, so if it's too wet to work outside we will run plumbing. Here are two pictures to let you see the porch from the garage site and from the porch itself. If you look hard you will see the detailing that Linnea put on the rafter tails. Every contractor that has seen that has approved. We feel like the porch is our signature and graduation project for the house, since we hired a crew to frame the house. Lately, Linnea and I have been finally breaking the silence over our Christmas target move-in date. It's only something like 45 days until then and we have so much to do that it's not in our power to make it happen. Of course, that's the ideal situation for God to make a miracle work out. That's not saying that we deserve a direct intervention in the physics of creation just to make it to our Bethel Hem (that's an inside joke, as we live in Bethel township and Joseph and Mary were headed to...well, you know how it went). If we are living in a barn for Christmas, that's okay with me.

More pictures...and the missing scaffolding

I noticed that the scaffolding isn't in that picture as mentioned--so here it is. There's also a bonus of the porch before the roof was framed and sheathed. I don't have any pictures of that yet--maybe tomorrow? The maniac on the top of the scaffolding is Bob the builder--my good friend and the go to guy if you want to borrow something. I was at his house this summer and it was like being at the tool rental place. No less than three people came by to borrow a tool.

Late, but as promised pictures

Here are a few recent pictures from last week's work. The towers of scaffolding are what we used to set the shingles on the steepest part of the house. Bob Peters and his crew, masons by day and roofers on the weekend, helped us by busting their butts for three straight days to get it done. It's been a HUGE blessing with the intermittant Autumn rain to not worry about it. Chris, their experienced roofer, came back on Tuesday to finish it up. We have the porch roof on 3/4s of the way and need to install the rafters for the south face of the porch roof. We are going to put in the master bedroom balcony ledgers first, then put up the rafters and roof it. The second picture is the sliding door with transom for the living room. It opens onto air right now, but there is a deck coming there too. You can also see the windows on the left that are in the other half of the living room.