Building: Week 8

Another week has come and gone. This was a difficult week with the build because there were some misunderstandings within the group and the construction supervisor was holding a few people back for some reason known only to him, so most people just weren't able to be as productive as they have been and many hard feelings were starting to show between families. We had a group meeting first thing Saturday morning and went over a lot of points that needed to be brought out in to the open and discussed so that they could be dealt with and the group could move on and we can get back to building houses. The meeting must have worked because the group worked really well together for the rest of the day and there wasn't a single bad feeling between anyone, so we were able to get lots of work done on the third house. We got 2 outer walls up and a 3rd wall is nearly ready to go up. We are hoping that we can get back to our super fast schedule and have this house completed in less than 2 weeks. If we can do that, our supervisor will let us work on the next two houses at the same time. The build won't go any faster, but everyone will feel more productive at all times and we hope that it will help to keep the hard feelings at bay.

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Last week we finished the "punch list" for our house. That is the list of all the little odds and ends that have to be done before our part of framing is complete. I look forward to doing the "punch list" on the 7th house because that means that the framing part of the build is over and that is the hardest part of the build. So, we are 1 house down with only 6 more to go...and the "punch list" for the second house is scheduled for this week.

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As for the progress on our house, the roofing is complete, the electrical has all been installed, and our front porch was poured. I expected the roofing and the electrical, but the porch was a surprise. We weren't scheduled for that for a few more weeks.

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This is a picture of the professionals installing our shingles. The significance of this picture is that it was originally going to be our group that had to install the roofing. Since the build took so long to get started and they got such a great deal on the roofing they decided to contract it out saving us weeks on the build. You don't know how grateful I am for that.

Here is the roof completely finished. I thought that the shingles would be darker. I hate that they give you this tiny little sample to look at and expect you to know what it will look like on a grand scale. I also didn't know that they were going to have black vents on the roof. I totally would have picked a darker color for the shingles if I had known all that.

I am soooo excited to see the porch. Of course it means the house is that much closer, but I am also excited to see it right now because walking over all that re-bar was getting old and dangerous. It will be even better when there are stairs so that we can get to the house without climbing in through the 3 foot high garage door.

The rough electrical is finished. I am so happy to see tons of outlets in EVERY room. We are that much closer to having a functional house. They also installed at least 3 phone jacks that I saw. CJ said he saw more. I thought we only got one phone jack and had to have the rest installed ourselves. Bonus!!

Remember in the last post how I showed you that we got to clean our house and it looked so nice. Here is the same spot in the house after the electricians had their fun. The rest of the house looks just like it. I already can't keep up with the house work! LOL

This was the best part of all. My sister and my niece were in town this weekend and they stopped by for a quick visit. More on that in another post. Anyway, my sister was our first family visitor to our new home (it was too cold for my niece so she didn't get out of the car.) It was so much fun to be able to give her a tour! She especially loved the view from the back of the house.

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that the arch in the entryway to the front room was also completed and it looks great. On a side note, I have had a bad cough and a small cold for two weeks now. Every time I made some progress on getting rid of the cough I would have to go work out in the bad air and wet ground and the cough would get worse. Saturday my cough was really bad so I called my mom (she's a nurse) to ask if there was any better medicine I could take to get rid of the cough. The small cold I could handle, it was the cough that was driving me nuts. I haven't slept well (and neither has CJ) for so long because of the cough. My dad told me that I should get Cold-Eeze for the cold and both my parents told me to go to the doctor to have the cough checked out. So, after I got home and took an extra hot shower so that I could finally feel warm again I went to the doctor. I had a chest x-ray and she told me that I had mild pneumonia. It was a good thing I went in when I did because she said it could have gotten a lot worse if I had kept ignoring it. I did get the Cold-Eeze too so I could fight the cold as well as the pneumonia. I must say that after spending two days in bed (thank you soooo much CJ) I do feel much better. I sure do hope I survive this build. lol