It's April....and we have a roof.



A lot has happened since February, and I couldn't be more happy about that. If only people would STOP telling me that NOW  is when things really seem to slow down in the building process. Plumbing and electrical are now both in the works. Windows should be arriving tomorrow.

I have found that it helps to be a decisive person when one is building a house. Conversations involving me usually go like this, "How do you want this ___________ to be?"
I think for about ten seconds and reply,
 "I don't know. What do you think?"

I'll admit it, sometimes I'm not much help, but sometimes it's simply because either I truly don't know or I truly don't care. And when I admit this, I fully realize that I'm giving up my right to complain about it later if I choose not to like it then. In defense of myself, I DID go to East Chattanooga Lumber last week and
decide on a door color ALL by myself.


 

The front of our house.



Another shot of the front.

Getting shingles.

The front of the house is rooved, or it it roofed?

To the right is the outdoor room, that WILL contain a fireplace eventually.

What an awesome outdoor room this will be......facing Lookout Mountain!

Prog·ress (pr g r s, -r s, pr gr s) n. 1. Movement, as toward a goal; advance.

After enduring several months of weather not conducive to building a house, we are finally back in business.

foun·da·tion [ fown dáysh'n ]

support for building: a part of a building, usually below the ground, that transfers and distributes the weight of the building onto the ground

After all of the blasting and digging....we now have a foundation.

Digging the footers for the foundation

Lower garage area

Pouring the footers (apparently footers are the foundation for the foundation)

Footers for the lower garage

Laying block

Back of house facing Lookout

Septic tank woo hoo

Georgia Power

Temporary power pole

If you can't dig it.....blow it up!

After seven days of digging, we finally have a half basement and lots of large rocks left over. Today we find out how much more digging or leveling we have to do to get ready for the foundation. Hopefully it won't be much, but seeing as how we have chosen to build on an ancient rock burial ground, I'm sure it won't be easy.


Before we broke ground, we had to make sure that the water works.



Day 1




Gage hanging out with Tim


Getting ready to dynamite


Covering the areas TBD (to be dynamited)


BOOM!


Papa Kenny cleaning up the mess


And a week later...welcome to our half-basement.



Simba, Stella, and Gage hanging out on the dozer


Rusty and Gage

Playing in the Dirt

What I have learned so far:

1) Rocks are bad.
2) Dynamiting is expensive (I may be in the wrong profession).
3) Power and water can go in the same trench, but you have to refill the trench
with non-rocky dirt.
4) Simply staked out, the house looks really small.




Clearing the way



Yes....that tree should definitely go.



What a neat trench....


such a straight, precise line....


until we hit rock, big ones,


and the digging got messy.

Water line!

Stella supervising

Gage is more interested in the Nintendo DS in his hand.

A handful of dirt

Georgia Power giving us some voltage.

Stella's first lesson on operating a bulldozer.

Staking out the position