Pictures! and Progress on the framing!

Here are some overdue pictures from a while back:

This picture is the view from the walkout wall towards the back after Shawn did the rough grading of the walkout area with the skid loader back on Thanksgiving.



These are other pictures of the backfill that Shawn finished right before Thanksgiving.
This one is looking east and we can see the northwest side of the garage.









This one is looking south east and you can see the west side of the house.











Now we can fastforward to Dec 17th: By the end of the day, the framer had all of the sill plate installed (except the garage and stoop area) and the beam and bottom plates of the load bearing walls.

Here Evan and I are going to check out the truck full of I-joists for the floor. The Framer got almost half of the floor joists up before the ice and snowtorm hit that night. Here are some pictures of the joists and the beams that are supporting the joists at midspan.














You can see the nice pile of snow that Shawn and I scooped out on Monday the 15th all piled by the doorway.
On Thursday when the framer started working, he blew a fuse at the old house when he tried to run the compressor for his nailers. He had a generator with him, but we needed to figure out something else or he would have to start charging us the generator use. We figured that an electric heater that we use to keep some waterpipes from freezing was plugged into the same circuit. We put the heater on a different circuit, now we have to see if that fixes the problem.
We also contacted an electrician to see if we can get a temporary outlet set up on the new power pole that we had the electric company install for the new house.

On Friday, a nice big 'ol snowtorm came through and we ended up with 6 to 8" of snow. So of course, this past weekend we had to scoop out the snow from the basement so that the framers could get back to work today. Here's Shawn buried in snow in the basement.
It was a balmy 2º on Saturday. Perfect for snow shoveling. But we pretty much had no choice but to work on Saturday since the weather was -25º on Sunday.

To help get rid of the snow since we couldn't pile it up in front of the door anymore, Shawn drove the lawn mower with the snow blower into the basement. We would scoop the snow towards the door and pile it up, then the we would run the snowblower to blow the snow out.

Here's another picture of the basement with 8" os snow.

I helped Shawn get about half of the basement scooped out while Evan napped. Then he did the rest. To finish the day, the lawn mower got stuck on its way out and since it was so cold on Sunday, we decided not to try and go out there. Maybe tonight we can use the truck to pull the lawn tractor out, if we can get the lawn tractor to start.

Shawn spoke with the framer today, and they were putting the subflooring in, and he estimated that the deck will be all done tomorrow. I have to call the flatwork guy to let him know and see when he could get out there so we can pour some concrete. Weather forecast is in the low 30's on Friday and early part of next week. So we'll see.
Pray for good weather. Also pray for my uncle Don who is hospitalized and in the intensive care unit. He is battling cancer, and the family is taking things one day at a time at this point.