House progress report

Sorry about the bad contrast -- it's hard to balance highlights with deep shadows on a digital camera. This is a shot of the framing that's started, looking East. The framing crew is about 1 day into that portion of the project. We had a bit of a scare on this one -- my wife was on the job site and saw OSB subflooring starting to show up. We had specified plywood, which will probably be important this fall because we expect a lot of rain. By all reports, OSB isn't quite so nice in the rain because the exposed edges can absorb water and swell: and the swelling doesn't go away once the OSB dries. We called our contractor and got that straightened out before any of the OSB went down.

The above shot is taken from the East side of the house. The contrast is better because the photo was taken in the morning so there was more sunlight getting into the shadows. You can see part of the foundation waterproofing system (the brown stuff that looks a bit like plywood). We're looking across the garage, which still has to have a concrete slab put in.

Our framing crew will be done in about 4 weeks. In that time, we have to complete some (hopefully minor) design changes. Lisa wants an arch above the living room window, and we want to modify the powder-bath to improve its floorspace efficiency and give more room to the Den so it may be possible to use it as a bedroom, if need be. We may also change the master bath -- the outside door that's in the master bath has a major impact on the amount of usable space in the bathroom. We may opt to put a window in the bathroom and move the outside door to the MBR.

In addition to interior design decisions, we need to decide what to do with the basement window wells. It sounds like putting in poured concrete wells will be pretty expensive. Galvanized steel is relatively cheap but doesn't look as good. Maybe we can hide the steel (at least from the outside) with some stone or concrete placed around the wells.

A fairy ring of Coprinus (ssp undetermined) I found in the barkdust by the barn. Again showing that life continues elsewhere on the property regardless of the mayhem.