There has been a lot of activity but it seems like very little progress lately. I've been busy the last couple of weeks doing the DWV plumbing. Its been really tricky to plumb because there is 3 bathrooms and a laundry room all stacked on top of each other and it seems like there is no common walls to each floor. So its a matter of trying to find the easiest way to route the pipe without framing in a bunch of plumbing chases. I've done a pretty good job of it but it has taken much longer that I wanted it too. The other side of the house will be much simpler because all I have over there is one upstairs bathroom and the kitchen. After that is done I can then start the supply piping.

Two Fridays ago the roofing was delivered. Unfortunately it then sat on top of the roof for a week and a half. The unfortunate part is that the weather was great during this time and would have been perfect for getting the roofing down. The owner of the roofing company finally got out last Friday and started laying shingles down himself with one person helping him. On Saturday he came back and worked by himself for 5 or 6 hours. Of course, it started to rain again on Saturday. He said he would be back on Monday but the snow put a hold on that! Hopefully he'll be back soon.

I was surprised one day last week to walk out and see windows in my garage. I can't wait to get started on that. I also ordered my sliding glass doors, all 7 grand worth, ouch. Luckily I had more that enough budgeted but it still hurts. At least I could put it on my credit card and get miles!! I tried to convince them to give me a discount as they are coming from Milgard which is less that 5 miles from the house but no deal. The should be delivering on Friday. It will be great to all the glass in so I can get some heat in the place.

In this last picture you can see I've hung plastic over the windows. When it rains the water blow right inside and gets the floor all wet. It worked great until last night when the wind really picked up. I walked out this morning to find half of it on the ground, crap! I'm going home at lunch to put it back up. You can also see the left upper roof with its shingle on.

I'm done being framed

So the framers finally finished! It was a little bit of an adventure with the great room windows. If you remeber from the last post they didn't frame the upper trapazoid windows in. So after thinking about it, I decided that they really needed to be there and told the contractor that. He in turn told his crew to lower the uppper set of windows and cut in the traps. Unfortunatly this is exactly what they did. The result, I ended up with a verticle column made up of 3 2x6's with two 2x6 blocks on top of it, with a 6x6 post on top of that, all strapped together. To say it looked like hell is an understatement. Some of you may have also realize that 3 2x6 put together only makes 4.5"(for those of you that don't deal with this kind of thing, a 2x6 is actually 1.5" x 5.5"). When you put a 6x6 on top of that you end up with a missing board. So to compensate they added a 2x6 making one of the trap windows narrower that the others. Yes, confusing I know.

The next day the contractor showed up again and I pointed out this. He responded with a yea, it does look like crap, the guys did exactly what he said not what he wanted. So the next day they came back out (I think it may have been a different crew) and spent 2 days fixing it. They also finished bolting all the brackets into place. On Monday the 7th the inspector came out. As it turns out they do not require a roof nailing inspection on residential projects. He did do the shear wall inspection though. I passed that, needing only to have the decks lag bolted into the ledger boards and one strap installed that was missed. He signed me off so now I can install windows and side the house.

My roofing guy came out on Tuesday and layed down a layer of roofing felt. He is suppose to be back in the next day or two to get the shingles layed down. It is nice to walk around inside without getting rained on. Now I just have to get a cap on the chimney so it doesn't rain through there.

I also got all the widows ordered minus the sliding doors. My door openings are extra tall so we are trying to find the most affordable way to get those doors. Right now the 3 sliders are going to cost more than all the rest of the windows put together.

I spent the weekend starting the waste plumbing. Of course half the time was making lists and going to the store to get the right parts. I also blocked up some windows that I decided made no sense, 3 in the kitchen that were nice for letting light in, but took up cabinet space and 1 in each of the upstairs bedroom closets (don't ask me why the architect put them there) I had forgotten to tell the framer not to put them in.

Framing Done (Almost)

Its been a little while sense posting anything, blame the holidays. I spent Christmas with sister Julia and her family in Sisters, OR. My brother Joe and sister Anne Marie and her hubby and dog were also there. Julia & David have a very nice house and I got some good ideas to incorporate into mine. I think Julia was starting to think I was a little strange (OK, stranger than normal) because I kept staring off into space. What I was really doing was looking at different details of her house. We did have a white Christmas as it snowed the 23rd and then again on Christmas night. This is what her place looked like on the 26th.

















Here is what the B.A.T. (Big Ass Truck) looked like in the morning. There was about 8"-10" of new powder. Wish I had been going skiing.








The drive home was fun but slow. It was compact snow from her place thru the mountains and down the other side. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people who don't know how to drive in the snow so we spent a lot of time driving 20 mph (I've never seen so many idiots chaining up their 4x4's, dumb, some on all 4 wheels, really dumb). Once those people were out of the way I could drive for a few minutes at 40+mph until we caught up to the next slow poke. Anne and Matt were following me in their Subaru. I think the return trip took an hour longer than it did on the way down. I would guess that we drove for 60 miles on snow and ice.










Ok, so back to the house. The roof sheathing is now on as well as the chimney framing. I have an inspection for the roof nailing on Friday (yes, they have to inspect that!) and the roof will hopefully be going on next week. I'm still tyring to confirm that with my roofer. They are also correcting the windows in the great room. When they got done framing the great room wall I realized they did not frame in the upper trapezoid windows. After thinking about it, and asking a few people for their opinions I decided that they needed to be there. I still don't know how the framers screwed it up but its being fixed. They have also finished off framing the stairways and balcony railings. The contractor said they would be done today, but they still have a bit to do so I'm betting they will be back tomorrow.

Oh, I forgot to mention the deck. Before Christmas I noticed a pile of treated 3"x6" lumber that had been delivered on the first load. I couldn't figure out what it was for so I thought I would ask one of the guys the next day. When I got there the next day about half the stack was gone, so I asked what it was for. In bad English (the crew was all Mexican) he said deck and signaled me to follow him. He took me up to the back master bedroom deck where they had laid half of it as decking. While it made a great deck (I could have parked a semi-truck on it) I wasn't about to pay for it. I quick call to the contractor and they started pulling it up. The funny thing was nobody, even the lumber company could say what they delivered it for. Anyway this is what it looks like as of lunch today (1-3-08). Hopefully, the next post will show it with the roofing on. Happy New Year.