Walled In

I woke up this morning to a lot of banging around. I wondered what on earth Joe was up to then I remembered getting up with him at 4:30 this morning to get him off to a ward temple trip to Oklahoma City. Then I heard the distinctive sound of a nail gun and realized that Eric and his crew were there and it was much later in the morning than I thought.
They worked really hard and fast and got the three remaining outside walls up before it really got raining here. We were very impressed.


I didn't get a picture of them on the job because it started raining and I was busy making yogurt and forgot. When I looked up again they were gone.
Mom was able to drive over after the rain went away and was actually able to climb up and take a look at her new house. She seemed very pleased and excited. The window opening are so large. We love them!
Miss Caroline is smiling down her happy 9 year oldness in her birthday apron. She is quite pleased with her present. :o)

South Wall

The crew got the South wall up today. I had no idea the windows were that big. They are going to be lovely. That Southern view is also the best on the property. It looks like something out of an English pastoral scene. It is always misty and just beautiful. What a gorgeous scene to wake up to.

The backhoe worked for a long time filling in around the house so if mom isn't too tired tomorrow she might get to peek at the floor herself.

Line Dancing

Sorry the picture isn't much to see right now but it was a very exciting day.

Eric and his boys put down the chalk lines for where the walls will all go. IT was very exciting actually. After they left I went out and hopped up on the floor and ran all over the place walking in and out of all the rooms. It was so fun to see where everything will be.
Eric and Diana came over this week and talked over the house plans with me and mom. We had been making notes since the project started. We made a few changes to Howard's original plan for mom's convenience. We have made it so the whole house can be moved through in a circle like the house she and dad built. She likes that flow. Every room has two ways out. You don't get trapped in a room that way. We also moved the guest bathroom and made her sewing room a bit larger.
Eric said that if all goes well, the first floor will be framed by Saturday. Mom and I are so pleased with how fast and well Eric's teams work. The back hoe guy was here again working on the drain field. That is taking a long time because of all the rain we have had the past two weeks. Today we dodged more rain. That made for good work days. I am so glad it passed us by. Newtonia is still in such bad shape and they are all frantically working to get their roofs back on to save what is left of their homes.
Interestingly, I visited with one of the older ladies in Newtonia yesterday and she said that the tornado ripped off the side of her house where she and her husband were hiding. (they were crouched behind their couch because they had no where to go fast enough. She is in her 70's and he in his 80's. She said that the weirdest thing happened though. The tornado ripped off the side of her house but left her genealogy room almost untouched. There was a lot of mud on the walls that she had carefully cleaned up but the wall of books and records she has spent her whole life collecting were safe.

Floored

The floor for mom's house is in.

Eric has had all four of his sons helping him on his projects this week. They all are good hard workers.


Caroline is standing in the far corner of mom's new house. She is in what will be the bedroom.
It seems so far over there. I am standing where the garage will be.

Caroline got permission from Eric to climb the dirt hill today. She wanted to let you know just how big they are. The are quilt the climb to the top.

Bugged Out

Today they were working really hard on the floor joists, delivered a ton of wood so they can put in the floor and start framing ASAP.
Then they had to stop because the Terminex guy showed up to spray the foundation before they get too much farther. There was some termite damage on mom and dad's house that we got repaired a few years ago and we don't want to repeat that here.

Brickin' It

I need to play catch up.
Monday the delivered the trusses for the house. I was surprised at how quickly they got here. We thought they were backed up but they are fast. There are many orders going in to the Truss place because of the tornado damage.



Tuesday
They delivered the block and laid the blocks for mom's foundation. They were really fast and sun burnt.


This shot shows the Granny Flat in relation to my house.


Toshi came running over last night so thrilled to tell me that someone was building a house for grandma right next to mine. He wanted to know if I had noticed it. hee hee. He is a pretty exciting neighbor.

It rained yesterday so nothing could be done on the house. Today they brought in several tons of gravel to fill in the bottom of the crawl space for the house and for the lateral lines for the new septic tank.

They put in the septic tank also today. It is HUGE.
The kids are loving the new hills all over the place. Only Hannah has been brave enough to climb them. The rest of the kids don't want to know what I'll do if I catch them on the mud slides. Hannah has no fear.
We heard from the contractor that an extra hundred bucks could be had if before they left they leveled all the hills off to less than 4'6". Someone has some serous little hill issues. hee hee

Pouring Puddings

Today the crew poured the footings for mom's house. Bryan came in and told me they were doing that and Jeddie popped his head up and said "Mmmmm, I like pudding!" I like it too.

Our neighbor Joe came over to enjoy the excitement of new construction. Our Rooster Boy-O is overseeing from the other side of the photo.
I worried all day about keeping the kids out of there and out of the septic tank hole which is HUGE. I tried hard but I couldn't keep everyone out.

I asked everyone who did it and they and said "he did it!"

If they keep it up we are going to have to discuss dinner options.

Construction Started May 13th

We started construction on mom's new home today. Eric and his crew came over early with a backhoe and stared moving dirt.
After scraping the top soil off and measuring with the laser we discovered that the ground was 32" lower on one end than the rest of the house. So plan B was put into effect with mom's approval and now her home will have a crawl space instead of pouring a pad like my home. This will still keep all floors on one level so there will be no steps up or down for her.
Here is how things looked by the end of the day.

As you can see there are Two dirt hills. They are each twice the size of Sam Hill. Joe is prepared to go place his flag at the top and stake his claim on the highest point on Brynhyfryd. hee hee