Colorado Pictures: More of Our House Progress

Well, after three weeks (or maybe four), I'm back with more Colorado pictures of our house progress. Sorry it took so long, but you see...

You know Mr. Murphy, right? The "everything that can go wrong will" guy?

He's been having a laugh or two on us.

For a great portion of the building process, we're using a sub-contractor to help us. Pretty much until the house is enclosed. Great guy, but I guess he wanted a couple weeks off because he caught the swine flu.

Now, that's not how I'd spend two weeks off, but...

Oh. I bet he didn't intend to, either.

Anyway, it set us back a little (okay, it feels like a lot).

Then there were - well, just wait. I'll tell you below.

When Last We Met

We left off with most of the wall SIPs up. (You remember SIPs - the Structural Insulated Panels, right? Basically a plywood and styrofoam sandwich.)

Fortunately, we'd gotten to a point where we could work on something without our sub-contractor on the site for a few days. So, we began putting up the bearing walls on the main floor that will hold up the loft level and
the roof.

See? (Our Colorado pictures right now all seem to be of our house. I really ought to go take a few of something else.)

So the walls hold up the joists for the loft floor...

Then you put on the "decking", or sub-floor that will go beneath the real flooring (probably carpet on that level).

Only then can you add the upper SIP walls to that end of the house.

Now I have to warn you, some of our Colorado pictures are kind of silly. Like the putty knife that was poured into one of our cement blocks.

Or this odd place to store what I've heard them call their "chop" saw. (Ginsu? It's Japanese, I know, whatever it's called.)

The other thing you have time for when the sub-contractor's missing is putting in rudimentary facilities. We had the septic tank installed a month ago. It has a nice large hole on top of it perfect for a...

Bathroom? Is this all we get? What about showers?

Oh, well at least we get walls on our bathroom.

Well, actually, it's an outhouse, which comes in very handy for all of us working on the place. Don't have to walk so far now...

Back to the House and More Colorado Pictures

When we were in the final design stage for the house, we discussed whether or not to put a window in the entertainment room. For lighting, it's a nice going without, but for safety... not so hot.

So, we added an egress window to the design, and this is the "escape" tunnel, with ladder.

It really is below ground, so you have to have something like this to get out of it. Not a lot of view, but it'll bring in some light, and not be too difficult to curtain to block light, either.

Our sub-con
-tractor finally came back, and we could continue with roof beams.

Oh, and there are something like ten roof beams. Mr. Murphy was back, though, and two of them were moldy! I'm sure we don't live in Minnesota anymore, so where'd the mold come from? Weather-resistant wrappings and sitting in a storage yard outside, I guess.

The longest one also sits highest. That's 24 feet off the floor of the greatroom. Talk about high ceilings...

Along about then, our windows and exterior doors showed up.

No, we're not quite ready for them (but we might have been had Mr. Murphy left us alone!). Here are most of the windows, stacked in the basement (where the cement has yet to be poured for floors).

Finally, we got to put some roof panels on - also SIPs - 12 inches thick!

The gap in the back is for a small gable with a shed roof for a future half-bath on the loft level (so when I'm working I don't have to trot downstairs to use the bathroom!)

So for now, that's the end of our Colorado pictures. We hope to be done with the roof panels this week, but you never know.

I promise I'll be back with more, though. So keep your eyes open!

See ya soon!

The other pages of pictures:

Page 1
Page 2
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7



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