Can you tell the difference?

A great deal of work was accomplished this weekend with the interior wall framing. I understand the average person might find these pictures to look a lot like the week before, but trust me, more walls went up! Keith and Ronnie worked mainly on getting the bedrooms and bathrooms framed-up this weekend. As such, most of the slideshow pictures this week are from that end of the house. We are also busy getting quotes from electricians and plumbers for when we are ready to move on to those steps.

While my husband was working hard this weekend, I was spending lots of time "partying". Don't worry, it was mostly at parties for 5 year olds. Julia was the one that really made out this weekend since she had cake and ice cream Friday, Saturday and Sunday! A lucky girl, indeed!

Frame of mind

Last week I was not able to blog, because I was doing my annual volunteering at Camp Boggy Creek in Florida. Lucky for me, only my mom seemed to notice I took the week off :) Because I was gone, Keith was spending the majority of the time keeping the kiddos busy, but he did get one workday at our new house thanks to Grandma Lorraine and Grandpa Bob. He and Ronnie were able to frame-up more of the house, which I included in the slideshow this week with captions. I realize that it is difficult to piece all of it together, but I wanted to give everyone some idea of what they were looking at in these photos.

This weekend was extremely cold (20's), so Keith did not work on the new house with the exception of taking down some supplies and chalking out the remaining area that will be framed. We also spent sometime discussing some additional details on the floorplan and some of the items we will need to order soon, such as the shower and bathtub.

Our house was pretty peaceful this weekend with the exception of some cheering during the playoff football games. I never questioned that our marriage could survive building a house together, but having our two teams play one another in the Superbowl is a whole new ball game :)

That's a wrap!

This weekend Keith, Craig and Ronnie were able to finish most of the house wrap to help protect the sheathing until the siding goes up. They also finished the hurricane strapping on the house. Hopefully that helps keep all the hurricanes far, far away! On Sunday, they started framing the interior walls. Everything looks like little boxes to me, and I am not sure how anything that we own will actually fit in those boxes. I will trust that my husband (who actually measures things) knows better than me. Considering that I have been known to have a deficiency for visualizing anything that has to do with distance and space, it is probably wiser to place the bet on him. I am comforted by the simple fact that if all else fails, we have a big yard to put our stuff :)

At our current house, we got a dusting of snow Saturday morning. Just enough snow to mess the roads up for a couple of hours, but not enough to make it worthwhile to bundle two children all up. Especially when it typically takes three times as long to get them dressed as the average time they want to spend outside. So I decided to bring some snow inside for fun instead. They had quite a bit of fun with it, until the end when the snowman was melting much faster than Julia could finish him. Hence the end photo where she is also melting down :) True to form, however, they had a great time and were asking to do it again sometime.

2011 is off to a good start!

I am sorry that we have been so busy that I have not written an update since last year :) All kidding aside, we did have a very busy and productive holiday "break". Keith and I are very fortunate that with our professions we are both able to take off a couple of weeks at the end of the year to enjoy friends and family. Since the beginning of the break was quite cold and windy, we enjoyed watching the kids playing with thier new presents and did a little more future house planning. By the end of the week, temperatures warmed up to the 50's and Keith had help again at the house. As you can see in this weeks pictures, they got the gables on the bedrooms and porch sheathed. Keith also rented a plate compactor for the garage floor to start prepwork for the concrete pour which will come later. The floor is even enough now that I got to park in the garage for the first time today!

In addition to house pictures, we have some nice ones of the kids enjoying Christmas.

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.