This weekend my friend from middle school and high school, Matthew, came for a short weekend visit. Although I had just visited with Matthew a few weeks ago at a mutual friend’s wedding, it was great to have more time to catch up. And to show him our home site!
master bedroom far wall with French Doors
master bedroom wall with two windows
master bedroom fireplace with two windows
master bathroom shower stall
master bathroom water closet
master bathroom – where the tub will go
small library where John will have an office space
Some things we noticed right away is that the master bedroom and bathroom was fully framed out (above). Yay!
We also had our first cocktail with company on the porch too! Picture by Matthew.
After walking around the property a bit, we took Matthew on a tour of the house. And the windows are all framed out now (except the kitchen windows for some reason).
Great roomliving and dining room Looking into the kitchen – the only room that doesn’t have the windows fully framed out
While visiting the house, Matthew took pictures to send to his mom so she could know what her guest room looks like. 😂
The bracing is up so they can begin to frame out the roof next.
One comment Matthew made (other than, “this does not suck” – praise indeed Matthew), was that he thought house guests would feel like they are at a resort. I think that would be great! That has been part of our goal – we want the house to be very comfortable both for us and for friends and family when they visit.
Enjoying the view with our friend At Monument Hill on Sunday – another great view!
We love having friends visit – our home is designed for entertaining – and we look forward to other friends and family coming to see our progress as the home builder continues.
On Tuesday we went up to the home site after work and found some of the exterior walls have been put up!!
Holy cow! Walls are going up!
What a difference a day makes! We can finally get a sense of the size of the rooms and how tall 10’ ceilings really are…
Door to nowhere? Actually, it’s from the smallest bathroom out to the pool porch.Here’s the wall just off our entryway going up!
They really made great progress this week and it was fun to visit the site every day after work or on a lunch break to see the walls going up! As a thank you, I made some lemon poppy seed muffins for the crew.
Lemon poppyseed muffins to say thank you to the framing crewWhen I asked Russel if I could take his photo he responded, “it’s up in every post office around here, but sure!”
Now John and I can walk around and really get a sense of the home we have designed! A few notes for those who are curious about our forever home – it is a single story so we don’t have to worry about cooling an upstairs (which can be very expensive in the Texas heat), and it has 10 foot ceilings to make the home more energy efficient during the summer months. Add in the planned ceiling fans in almost every room and the deep covered porches, and you can see how we have thought about the 40+ days of 💯 degree heat we will experience each summer.
Here I am in my future office on November 6th. Yes, I am wearing shorts in November because it was 84 Fahrenheit that day!Guest bedroom and pantry wall going up.
Great room fireplace and built ins
Looking into the great room
South wall of the great room – opposite the fireplace
Small bathroom off the great room
Storage behind the great room
John in the storage room
More walls ready to go upDining room looking into the living room
I finally asked one of the framers why they don’t have the bottoms of the windows framed out. He said they will get all the walls up, make sure they are perfectly square, and then add the lower threshold for the windows. Who knew?
The exterior walls and walls around bathrooms are 2X6 construction while the other interior walls are 2X4.
We’ve had a couple days of rainy, cold weather (well, cold for here), so I’m excited to get back to the site and see what progress has been made. Next comes the roof framing!
Previously I wrote about finding an error of omission while visiting the home site. After arriving home from my latest work trip, John and I went out to the home site to see the progress that had been made and I immediately found another error.
That’s a lot of lumber ya’ll!
John has now nicknamed me “eagle eye”.
In our architect’s drawings, we had a mechanical closet planned near the front door. Originally, it was supposed to be a second, matching coat closet, but when our Illinois-based architect (with whom we had worked during our multiple home remodeling projects) realized that we don’t have basements in Texas, he suggested we turn part of the library (shown above as a sitting area) into into a mechanical closet.
Edited plan with our home builder and site supervisor
Our home builder, however, suggested that we put those mechanical elements up in the attic. Duh – when we remodeled the lake cottage in 2010, we put the new furnace up in the attic. Why didn’t I think of that? Maybe because the architect suggested putting the mechanical closet in there? Hmm. Isn’t it funny how quickly we give our power away because of someone’s title or expertise….
Re-designing your house on the fly is not recommended… We also changed the entrance into the laundry room.
Same thing happened near our laundry room – the architect added a mechanical closet off the mud room and laundry room for cold air return, water heater, etc. Again – all of this can be put up in the attic.
The obviously incorrect closet on the right.
So although our home builder and site supervisor had these small changes on their plans, somehow this did not get translated to Cody’s framing crew.
Where is my red pencil?
When we arrived Monday morning to talk about the issue, the framing crew was great and we made all the corrections on their copy of the house plans.
What mistake?Already fixed!
It also gave us an opportunity to rearrange a slight awkwardness with the laundry room and mud room. Now John will be able to come in from the barn and go straight to the laundry room to drop off dirty work clothing.
Improved laundry room layout
Some aspects of the house are easier to envision once you begin seeing the green-treated lumber laid out on the slab. And that’s when you notice the issues – like how a door is going to open the wrong way.
Thank you to Victor and the other members of the framing crew for fixing these issues so quickly!
Later, we came back after the work day was over and saw that they were beginning to frame up the exterior walls. Wow!
This is the picture window in the living room with the two small windows on either side. Not sure why there is no lower limit for the windows yet. Future doorway into the dining roomButlers pantry and guest room to the left
The crew has been great to work with, but we are again reinforced in our belief that it is important to be onsite and to check on the construction every day. Like the previous error, this was an easy and quick fix because we caught it early. It would have been a bigger pain once the wall studs start going up.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the process in the comment section below. Thanks for stopping by and see you soon!
