All I want for Christmas is a finished roof...

The shingles are complete, as is the facia. With the help of Keith's dad and brother, John, we now have a finished roof. I am very greatful that they could come and help him finish that up. Now he can move on to finishing up sheathing the gables, and wrapping the house in Tyvek. After that will come windows, and the siding (the pretty stuff, as I like to call it!) It also looks like we are going to get some decent weather next week (sun, mid-high 40's) which will make for more enjoyable working conditions for Keith.

We are also getting ready for Christmas. The kids are both looking forward to Santa's visit, although they have already seen him twice this season-including in our neighborhood on the firetruck. I think Andrew probably thought he was having the best dream ever when he saw both Santa and a firetruck! The kids also had a Christmas program at school last week. My normally "shy" boy (as his teachers call him), was clearly not shy in front of 100+ people. Clearly, he just is looking for an audience. Lastly, we had the opportunity to go with Grandma Merranko to the Calvert Marine Museum this week. It is a great museum for kids and we look forward to it being 20 minutes away from our new house.

Merry Christmas, eveyone!

A little snow, and a lot of progress!

Well, as you can see in the slideshow this week, we got a little snow. Enough to make everything look pretty...everything except a new roof! Luckily, the weather was decent (30's, no snow, rain or wind), which greatly improved the overall working conditions from last weekend. They finished sheathing the porch, and got all the sub-facia up on Saturday. On Sunday, they were able to get up facia and the shingles on the porch. Keith ran out of daylight hours to take the pictures with the shingles, but I hope to have more pictures mid-week when Keith's dad and brothers come down to visit and help out. I don't think I have ever been more interested in shingles on a roof in my life-I guess building a home will do that to you.

In addition to house pictures, I also included a picture of the porta-john we purchased from Ebay a couple weeks ago. Fancy, I know, and just in time for the holidays!

New adventures in homebuilding

This week brought many adventures at Green Glass Road-some good, and some we could have lived without. First, the good. Although the weather was dreary, the rain held off pretty good until Sunday afternoon. So as you can see, they made a lot of progress getting shingles and fascia up. Keith will be working tomorrow on the roof again, and we are hoping the weather will be decent next weekend so they can finish the shingles. In addition to the shingles, they need to complete the porch roof. They certainly have their work cut out for them in the next couple of weeks!

Now for the bad. On Sunday evening, someone stole the trailer from our building site. Because we are actively looking for it, and encouraging others to do so as well, I have included a couple recent pictures below. If you are in the area, please keep your eyes out for it. We are offering a $500 reward. The main thing to keep in mind is that it has a hydraulic beavertail. While flatbed trailers with wood decking are pretty common in this area, most (or almost none) will have the hydraulic beavertail.





I don't want to end on a sour note, however, as well are still very fortunate to say the least. Overall, building is going very well, and we enjoyed another fun-filled weekend with the kids trimming the tree, and decorating cookies with some friends.

Old man winter stopped by to see the new roof, too!

Baby it's cold outside! Not Wisconsin/Minnesota cold, but cold enough for this gal who clearly has no Midwestern blood left in her body. Which is why I really did feel sorry for my husband and his crew when they were working on top of the roof all weekend in 40 degree weather-but not so sorry that I had them stop. I am compassionate, but not crazy, after all!

So while the kids and I ran errands and decorated the house for Christmas, our new house was getting the sheathing put on the roof. As you can see, the majority of it is finished, with the rest to be completed tomorrow. In addition to the sheathing, they also worked on the gable overhangs, which I think looks fantastic. It looks like we will be ready for shingles on Friday. Very exciting.