Wood! Walls!

The view from below the house.
(Click on the picture for an expanded view.)

It’s been quite a while since the last update. After each visit over the last several weeks, I thought about posting new pictures and stories but what was being done didn’t really come across in pictures. (It’s hard to capture the essence of a drainage system or a driveway.)

The Sunday before Thanksgiving we had our first guests up for a picnic on the not-yet-covered patio. The weather was beautiful, the views spectacular, but not a trace of lumber could be found, only concrete. Things are different now. Last week all the sills were bolted to the foundation. This week we have walls. Even though there are no floors yet there has been a transformation; it is beginning to feel like a house. Individual rooms are being defined and paper plans are becoming reality.

The main part of the house from the covered patio.

Looking from the guest bedrooms back to the main part of the house.

Framing for the shop/exercise room/pool bathroom basement.

The plan is to complete the walls for the first floors in all sections of the house before the crew’s 2 week Christmas break. When they come back in January, the floors will go down and the upper floors started. The valley seems to have a history of heavy rains around Christmas so it makes little sense to expose the subfloors to rain any more than necessary. (The crew applies waterproofing to all floors immediately after putting them down to minimize problems due to rain exposure but why expose them any more than necessary?)

It looks like the pool won’t be built until spring. The pool has a relatively complicated bench built into the side and our general contractor felt that the design needed to be reviewed by a structural engineer. It is already very late in the season for the pool contractor to be building so we’ll be the first pool of spring.

Susan has always wanted a small pond to attract (more) wildlife and to provide another ecosystem. Since natural ponds are extremely rare in the valley, almost every pond is man made; constructed via excavation then compaction of the clay that is found. (If clay isn’t found, the construction gets much more expensive since a synthetic liner has to be used.)  We met with a pond engineer on this trip and he thinks that we have the right soils conditions and the location of the pond will meet with county approval. (The county has gotten very picky about new ponds since they feel they impede the normal water flow in the valley.)

I hope to have more frequent updates from now on since visible progress should be rapid now that the concrete is completed.