Day 45 - Hydro and Gutters

Phew! Busy day today. The gutter guys started in the morning. Then BC Hydro stopped in to switch over to our buried cables for power and install the new meter. The plumber was in and out throughout the day. And Gustavo, Dad, and I worked on getting all the necessary little things done in preparation for the siding.
As you can see we got all the strapping on except for the front gable end (above the garage door). Tomorrow we put on our first piece of siding...

Day 44 - Almost there

We are getting close now! We are nearly ready to start putting up the siding. And, the interior framing is 99.9% complete (I have a handful of pieces yet to be cut and installed). The plumbers and electricians are doing their thing inside while we work on sealing up the envelope.

I installed the remaining windows and doors today...

...while Gustavo got almost all of the strapping up.

Days 42 & 43 - Loose ends

As both Friday and today (Monday) it was raining pretty hard, I spent most of my time indoors tying up loose ends. I got all the backing done on Friday (and a bit on the weekend) and today after framing the skylights, I crawled down into the crawl space to finish nailing all the cross-ties between the joists. I also spent some time cleaning up the jobsite. It's starting to look good in there!

Here you can see the three skylights and the vaulted ceiling are going to open up and add a lot of natural light into the main part of the house.

Day 41 - Lock up!

We are officially locked up! You can see the front door directly behind my van which we hung at the end of the day today. Obviously the garage is still open, but we threw up some drywall on the back wall and closed off the entry so with all the windows and the front door in, we are locked up!

We put up the paper on the east wall but ran out of time to strap it properly, so I had Gustavo tack some straps on to keep the paper from blowing away (we are supposed to have another storm roll in overnight). I guess he decided to get creative.

Days 39 & 40 - Strapping and Windows

Today we got a good start on the strapping in preparation for the Hardie-plank siding. We are using the 'rain drain' system which is now the code in BC, where we run vertical strapping under between the siding and the tar paper. This 3/4" space allows any water that might get behind the siding to run down the paper and /or dry up.

Here Ryan is preparing the window openings for the window installation. We now have seven out of eleven windows installed and sealed tight. We should get the remainder in tomorrow. We are hoping to have the house locked up by Friday.

Day 38 - Interior walls

So here's what the house looked like when I got back from my trip to Vancouver. Ryan is back for the week to help us get a jump on the siding. Today we mainly worked inside getting the remaining interior walls put together. The vaulted ceiling made things interesting but in the end it'll be worth it the time it took.

The Roofers Were Here!

After the snow melted, the roofers came and indeed slapped on the shingles. They arrived at 8:30 am and were done by 2 pm!
They did a great job.

Days 37 & 38 - Finishing off the roof

This is what the house looked like Thursday afternoon, and I forgot my camera on Friday. In this picture it looks like we're almost done, however the whole back and north side (above the garage) has yet to be done, but with the help of Dave and Don, we managed to finish sheathing the roof by lunchtime on Friday. It's now ready for the roofers to come in next week and slap on the shingles. I am taking a break from the project once again to head back home for a week.