A lot has happened in the last few weeks!

For many months the walls looked like this:

The framers constructed the exterior walls with both normal vertical supports and these great little horizontal pieces (we’re not 100% sure, but I think the horizontal ‘studs’ are there for fire retardation…building code stuff).

Regardless of the reason they’re there, we grew to love those useful little nooks.

We loved them so much we added more of our own. Here’s Mark building shower niches into the wall.

When someone said, “The bug spray is in the medicine cabinet” we knew just where to go. For a long time it felt as if we had moved in. Who needs proper walls? Who needs electricity? Who needs running water when we have all these bottles of the stuff (and a port-a-potty)?

Homebuilding, the way we’re doing it, will make you crazy. Specifically, this definition of schizophrenia: emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations.

Delusions ran high at this point.

(Disorganized speech comes later – don’t worry, you’ll get to read about that too. I expect to be in full hallucination mode by the time this thing is finished. Social isolation is the worst though. We miss seeing our friends. )

Then insulators did their thing and we were snapped back into reality.

The crew sprayed a radiant barrier on the interior upstairs roof and it dropped the temperature immediately. Radiant barriers rock.

A member of our team had a bit of food poisoning, but carried on like a trooper regardless. Pepto-Bismol® and traditional insulation are practically the same color. It took an hour to find those tablets.

We insulated the garage ourselves. I’ve never lived in a house with a properly functioning garage. I am all sorts of excited about this thing.

In the meantime, the sheetrock arrived…

…and it went up.

Well, a lot of it went up – a lot went down too. This is very messy work, folks.

There are no pictures of the taping & bedding process. Mostly because finishing the deck consumed our attention while they did their thang, but also because they were incredibly large, half-naked men on stilts (thankfully it was the top half). Unlike some other tradesmen who shall remain nameless, these guys always showed up on time and they did a great job. After they wrapped up their work, I realized how much I miss their falsetto sing-alongs with techno mariachi music. It’s a quieter and less interesting place without them. I do not, however, miss the sweaty, naked beer bellies at eye level.

Next up, the texture guy – who remained fully clothed the whole time. He had his work cut out for him because we paid for completely smooth walls. It might not seem obvious at first, but the smoother the wall, the more work is involved. Texture covers up a multitude of sins.

By this point, we finished the deck and were ready to start our next job – painting inside. The texture guy was a fountain of knowledge and we’re grateful he shared some of it with us. For example, who knew buying plastic sheeting and tape at Kelly Moore was considerably cheaper ($11) than The Home Depot or Lowes ($25) for the same products?

And he gave us a tutorial on how to make quick work of prepping.

I don’t want to relive the nightmare of our first round of paint (it soaked straight into the walls, gallon after gallon after five gallon bucket – who knew painting new construction would be such a freakin’ headache?), so I’ll just skip right to the fun pictures.

Father-in-law worked the paint sprayer in about fifteen layers of clothes on a 100 degree Fahrenheit day. God bless that man.

Gunfight in the hall.

Teamwork.

Still smiling (and looking ridiculously cute) at the end of a long day. We’re so fortunate to have this man on our team.

It’s coming along. Slowly but surely.

In September 2013 , I posted a little note chock-full of foul language after we discovered the survey company got their measurements wrong* and our new home was to be built practically on top of the spring – not four feet away from the spring as intended. Fast forward nine months and here’s our solution.

It’s not quite finished because we’re waiting for the lumber to acclimate itself to the environment before it’s installed, but this will give you a good idea of how the thing will look.

Steel beams delivered.

Steel beams welded in place.

The beams are secured to the side of the house and (if I remember correctly) 4′ deep concrete pads.

Extra fun working conditions for David (in red) and Ruben (in orange).

Looking down at the deck from the second floor (my intense fear of heights is less than my desire to catch a cool breeze and that doorway on the second floor is – by far – the best place to cool off).

A view from inside.

We unloaded the wood for the top of the deck by hand.

It doesn’t look like much, but that’s 1684 lbs of ipe (also known as Brazilian walnut or ironwood). David and Ruben helped us unload it from the truck and even with their help I thought I might die under the weight of that stuff. Then, several days later, Mark and I moved the whole stack outside ourselves and I actually died. It might’ve just been a fit, not actual death – I have no idea because I blacked out after the last piece was moved. Have you seen these arms? They’re not designed to carry much more than a large bottle of gin…or maybe a small dog.

All that heavy lifting will be worth it after this thing is finished, right?

*It seems we’re not the only ones with survey problems – here’s a story about a home in Rhode Island that was accidentally built inside the lines of a state park. Their 4 ½ acre mistake makes our 4’ issue seem like nothing. http://www.aol.com/article/2014/06/18/why-a-million-dollar-rhode-island-mansion-must-go/20915250/

Framing, week one:

You know what’s fun? Jumping around those internal bracing boards like you’re on the set of Mission Impossible (okay, fine, it’s more like stepping over them gingerly with the gait of a middle-aged person, if you really must know).

Some measurements were off, but they’re easy fixes.

The windows in the kitchen are another story. In order to accommodate their weight, a larger header was installed, but that bumped the windows too far down. Moving them up just a couple of inches means replacing wood with steel. Fingers crossed it’s a quick and relatively painless fix. Even with the windows slightly off, it’s easy to see the prominent role the pond will play in the kitchen. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. The pond is the most wonderfully magical thing ever.

We’re hopeful this baby will have a roof next week!