Before April 2006

Here are some pictures leading up to the excitement of last winter. When we bought the 10 acres last spring, it was completely forested, save for a small meadow in front of where we put the house. In the spring we had the site for the house and septic field cleared. During the summer we had the house site excavated, and spent a week in August building the forms for the footings. A great learning experience, but not the most fun part of the building process. We gave Joe's new tractor a great workout though.

In September we had the foundation poured using ICF's (insulated concrete forms), and we (Eric) spent the better part of a couple weeks hauling, spreading and compressing gravel under what would become the garage and basement slabs. Good times. Nice job Eric. Oh yeah, he installed the drainage system around the outside of our foundation too. More gravel spreading. And yet he still came back to help us this year. Small miracle.

The foundation of our house is buried under ground on the west side, and exposed (with a two car garage) on the east side. We started framing the east end of the house in October. A significant amount of the work we've done on the house has been in the rain, and raising our first wall was no exception. It's a cute little thing. Once we had framed around the garage end, we set the 45 foot steel carrying beam down the center of the house. With the help of an excavator. It was a heavy thing. After that, we got the joists in place and spent a weekend laying down the wall sheathing and the plywood that will become the subfloor on the first level of our home. A trip to the Home Depot netted us a 2400 sq. foot blue tarp that covered the floor and did a nice job of keeping things dry for the winter.