Week 4: They are framing!!!! What a week!

Today is Monday and I was pretty excited to drive by our future home site to see about 8 men starting to frame our house. I wanted to stop and take some pics but since they are Amish, I did not want to offend them. But, I rushed to the store to buy supplies to bake cookies....bribery can't hurt, I say!
Then I remembered our lack of kitchen accessories in this apartment so I bought a big tub of Toll House and baked those up (cheating, I know, but whatever). These guys are probably going to laugh at my cooking!
At about 4:30, I stopped by the house to bring these men my AMAZING cookies.....and they were already gone!!!  Seriously? Guess who just ate two cookies in the car?
But, at least I was able to take a couple pics of day 1 of framing. For picture purposes, not a lot was accomplished but I'm sure organizing the sections of wood, moving them around to the correct areas, and doing the prep work were time consuming. It was incredibily muddy so I did not actually walk up to the house but it looks like they got the some of the floor joists done.

Tuesday: I rolled up at 7:30am with my amazing, homemade cookies for those hard working men...There were 8-9 of them working already!!! Only one spoke to me, (not sure if Amish men have restrictions on speaking with women) but he was very appreciative and as I pulled away, he was already eating a cookie...He was probably doing a quality control check and pitched them after I
left ;). 

 

Monday, September 24th 

 

 

Wow! Wow! Wow! What a difference a day makes (and I believe my cookies helped)!  Kids and I drove by on Tuesday at 4pm and this is what we saw......

Tuesday, 25th

The front of the house

I can't wait until tomorrow!

 



 

  Today, I called our SR because after reading other blogs, I realized we did not have prewiring done for future pendant lights over the breakfast bar area. Actually, our sales rep never discussed this option with us so I didn't think about it. I asked if we could add a couple to our plan and he said that he has to go to "upper management" about this because we are past the road map finalization date. So, I put on the charm and asked him to stress how many upgrades we have already chosen and how beautiful our home is going to be in their community.....hehehe...Why not swing for the fences, right! He laughed and said he would mention that.... I really hope they approve this since they are obviously nowhere near electrical yet. We will see!

Wednesday: It poured rain last night and this morning....Pretty sure they won't be framing today....
I was wrong! Drove by just to satisfy my neurosis and those crazy fools were working on our roofline! I took the ever sly "drive by photo" (you know, phone cam facing out the window while I looked straight ahead...very smooth!)

This was at 9am....Now for the 6pm shot....

Wow! They worked all day in the rain. Crazy!!

Thursday: To thank the framers, I brought a couple dozen Dunkin Donuts (Who doesn't love those?...Obvioulsy I do because they were actually one shy of two dozen...oops.). This time, a few of the men spoke to me and we thankful for the donuts. Can't wait to come by tonight......



Thursday Evening

AND NOW FOR FRIDAY.......

 The roofing materials were delivered...

See the empty doorway where my beautiful leaded glass front door is supposed to be? Well, apparently someone else liked it too....because they took it in the middle of the night! Our PM said that someone took two of our doors, a couple from another site and one beautiful front door that was already installed at another house. Hmmmmm....that isn't good.


Inside shots: I just can't believe that in 5 days this went from nothing to the makings of our home!

This is supposed to be a doorway from our office. Can you see the basement stairs behind there? Behind that will be the kitchen walkthru. I wanted to have a good eye line to the front of the house so we wanted that doorway so I could look out the front window. ...it was a nonstandard change that they approved for us but apparently the framers forgot to make it. Not worried, I know they will fix it once I let the PM know.

Our eventual tiled surround shower and tub

I love this room! It is the morning room that we added. It extends off of the kitchen. Since we deleted the formal dining room to make the office (we are not formal people), we wanted this one, big, sunny eating area.

Looking from our future kitchen breakfast bar area into the living room. We could have added two more windows here and moved fireplace to north wall. We chose to put the stone fireplace on this wall, between the window. Mainly because we wanted it to be focal point in the room (it's just so pretty). Also, the sun will set in our backyard and I was afraid it would be too hot. Our tv will not go above the fireplace, that will go on the north wall. This is probably the one thing I keep second guessing our decision on....I love sunlight so I am worried it won't be bright enough in here. But, too late now:(  The morning room will hopefully give us plenty of light.

 Looking into the kitchen from the great room. Because we added the morning room, we added additional cabinets along the backwall with a second pantry. We will have plenty of cabinet space!

 

One thing that Dan and I both wanted was an open stairway to the basement. We want our basement to be an extention of our home, like an upstairs would be. We are both very excited about having this open stairway...which is why we spurged and upgraded to the metal ballisters instead of traditional white spindles.

 

All in all, I'd say this was an impressive and exciting week of house stalking!!! I'm sure that from here on out, the progress will not be as obviously from day to day.