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.