The roofs are in progress.

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Because of the height difference between the garage and the rest of the house, I was wondering how the builder was going to handle the roof. On the plans, the house and garage roofs are at the same level and connect at one point. But with a six or seven foot difference between the two, the roof line was going to have to change. And that's expensive. The builder is smarter than that, though. He just made the garage taller, to bring the garage roof up to the level of the house. This brings up a different issue, in that there's a space above the garage that we were going to finish, eventually. Now, it's going to be quite a bit higher up. And I don't know how he's going to handle the stairs to get up there. I'm sure he'll think of something.

Went appliance shopping last week. We're going to go with an induction stove top, this time. I like the glass-top electric we have, except that it's slow to respond to changes in temp. Gas would be better, but from everything I've read, induction is even better than gas (and cleaner, and more efficient). We'll have to replace most of our cookware, since what we have isn't induction-friendly. But that's OK, I guess.

The builder's allowance for appliances was about 30% too small to cover anything in the store he sent us to, though. And we could've easily spent twice what he allowed for, if we wanted to have the kind of kitchen that you see on Houzz.

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Basic framing of the walls is about 75% done.

Suddenly, the house appears. It's all just 2x4s and some plywood sheathing: barely a sketch at this point. Even so, I can see it. I can walk from the kitchen to the living room, out onto the front porch, then into our bedroom. I can see where the walls are, where we'll be walking, what people will see when they come in, what we'll see when we look out the windows.

Framing has started!

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Joists are in and subfloor is starting. By this weekend, all the framing should be done - we'll have a skeleton of a house.

Very exciting.

But, I've developed a concern; and it's just under seven feet tall.

The part on the left is the garage, the stuff on the right is the house. Though it might look otherwise, the height of the wall between the garage and the floor of the house (counting the joists) is about seven feet on that back corner. The garage level will rise once they put the concrete floor in, but so will the level of the house once they put the subfloor and floor on it. So, that difference will stay.

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That's what it looks like standing in the garage, looking towards the house. The 'mechanical' room, where the hot water heater will go, is the space on the left. The door between the garage and the house (into the mudroom) is supposed to go on the right, roughly seven feet up. Assuming standard stair pitch, that's at least twelve steps. The primary point of building a one story house being to avoid stairs, this concerns me.

Builder says there's nothing that can be done about the foundation now.

Here's the relevant part of the floor plan:

I was standing on the word "GARAGE", for that last pic.

That's assuming a flat lot, with garage and house built on the same level. And it shows four stairs (right), with room for maybe two more. But if we need twelve steps, we'll need eleven-ish feet of horizontal space. Where the hell does that come from?

After talking it over with the builder, the garage entrance door is now going be in the mechanical room area and the staircase will snake around the corner to get there.

It's still a lot of stairs that I wasn't expecting. But... oh well. Always learning. Always surprised.

Looks like the foundation might be nearing completion.

Garage is on the left, and it's being filled with gravel. Sealant is being spread around the bottom of the blocks. Pillars have sprung up in the middle. Dirt is being piled-up here and there.

This past weekend, there was a 'tour' of 'green' houses in the area. For whatever reason, this house was listed on the tour's website - but with a picture of a different, completed, house. So, a bunch of people ended up in the neighborhood looking for the house. They asked some of the neighbors where the green house was, where 123 Cleek Lane was, but they only found a partially-completed foundation. Still, they were there, and looking. This caused the head of the neighborhood watch to send our builder a letter complaining of the traffic and how it's a "private" road. Yes, it's a private road in the sense that it's owned and maintained by the residents. But it's not a fucking gated community or anything. It's a publicly-accessible road like all the others in the area, and our house is going to be something the builder will people want to see. I'm getting a bad feeling about our future neighbors.

The foundation is coming along, slowly. Block by block. I swear the guy who did our current house does his foundations in less than a week. They're also only about three feet tall and are on flat ground. Current builder is about four weeks in to this one so far, and there's a lot left to be done.

For scale, note that there's a hole for a full-height door on the back wall. That wall is 11 cinder blocks high. Assume 8" per block, and a half inch of mortar between each... that wall is just under 8 feet tall - so far. That will make for a much nicer crawlspace than we have now. I won't have to crawl at all, for most of it!

Windows! As you'd expect, our current house has windows. We didn't have anything to do with what they look like, how the trim is designed, the type, style, size or placement. But they're there and for the most part, they haven't caused us any trouble - except for the fixed window, 12 feet off the floor, that spontaneously cracked itself last month and is going to cost us many hundreds of dollars to replace.

This new house, though... we picked out the size, location, placement, glass type, and trim color and style of every window that's going into the new house. The options for windows are pretty amazing: double hung, single hung, crank opening, wood, vinyl, metal, various hardware materials and finishes, built-in shades, auto-latching, built-in child safety latches, insulation differences, etc.. But, as with the plumbing, the builder provided a reasonable baseline and we made a few cosmetic changes. Mostly, we made every window a bit taller. I have no idea how much 'a bit taller' works out to, given that we're talking about dozens of windows.

We also started the process of picking out doors. The options for doors are pretty much limitless. There are countless door patterns, dozens of glass styles, sidelight patterns, transoms, all in a range of materials (real wood being the most expensive). You're really only bound by the size of the wall where the door goes and the amount of money you want to spend. But even at modest levels, options abound. And the multiple catalogs we were given to pick from don't list prices. So, we have to pick something and then ask the supplier to provide a quote. This is not an efficient way of doing things.

In crappier news, there are now seven houses for sale in our neighborhood of just over thirty houses - and four of them are brand new. All of them from the same builder, so are similar in style and features. This is the part that freaks me out the most. When we go on the market, it will make eight. How can we compete?

Almost three years ago we did our shopping spree for appliances, and lighting and plumbing fixtures for our current house. We were rushed and clueless and it was kindof miserable.

Tuesday we went to the showroom and picked plumbing fixtures for the new house (tubs, faucets, etc.). This time, unlike last time, we went quite a bit over our allowance - nearly all of it on the master tub. But, we're telling ourselves that this is the last house we'll ever live in (which is a depressing and soul-crushing thing to assume, IMO). But, if this is where we're at till they wheel us out in body bags, we might as well get what we want.

Also unlike last time, the builder's project manager had pre-selected a default slate of all the stuff we needed. Her choices were pretty good and were right in line with what we'd mentioned to the builder in previous conversations. I think we would've been perfectly satisfied with her picks. But when we got there and got to see all the stuff for real (instead of on-line), we noticed a few other things we liked better.

Next week we pick out windows. I didn't know there could be options. Windows are clear and rectangular. We're not installing stained glass, or iridium-coated things like Oakley sunglasses. At lwast I don't think we are.

Someday soon we'll get to pick out kitchen stuff (which I'm excited about), and lights (which Mrs is excited about), and cabinets, and counter tops, and paint, and ... on and on.

So, we're starting it all again. But it seems like it's going to go better this time. We know more about the process, we know more about the stuff, we have a better builder, and we're not rushed. The big problem is, of course, not spending too much - because there is sooooo much cool stuff out there.

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The footings are all in and the lot is jammed full with piles and piles of concrete blocks: hundreds, thousands, maybe.

Now things will start moving for reals.

Tomorrow afternoon we go to pick out plumbing fixtures (faucets, tubs, etc.). I don't really need to be involved in that, since we've already decided on most of it and I trust Mrs to handle the rest. But I'm going anyway, because it's a good excuse for taking a half day from work. This builder has a 'project manager' working for him, and she is going to meet us at the store and help us through the process of choosing all the various things we have to choose. The last builder just made us an appointment with one of the salespeople, and she wasn't super-interested in our side of the transaction (and got 1/4 of our orders wrong). Hopefully, this will be a better experience.

We're writing a check to the builder today for our first change order. Because the house is on a slope, the back foundation will be pretty tall. So I've asked the builder to put a ground-level storage room back there. It's just going to be a concrete floor and some rough walls - nothing fancy. But it will be 10x14, so, pretty big. I'll keep the lawnmower, rakes, shovels and other bulky junk in there, and out of the garage.

In current house news, the termite inspector guy who was there last week for our annual inspection told us that we did not have a pipe connecting the dryer's exhaust vent from the inside of the house to the outside of the house. So, for two and a half years, our dryer has been blowing hot wet air, and tons of lint, directly into the crawlspace beneath the house. And nobody noticed this until Thursday. Because I hate crawling around under the house, we paid a handyman to come out and fix it. It took him three hours and two trips to the hardware store. He left covered in sweaty lint and dirt and spiderwebs.

The era of destruction has come to an end. And now we enter the age of construction.

The rain stopped for a few days, so the foundation people were able to get out to the lot and start putting in the footings for the foundation:

These are channels dug into the ground, maybe three feet deep; dams are set at specific heights and the channels are then filled with concrete up to the barriers. Concrete blocks will sit on these, and then the wooden floor joists will sit on those.

I've watched the guy who built our current house put up many houses in our current neighborhood, and I don't recall him doing footings anywhere this extensive. Honestly, I don't recall seeing any footings at all. It always seems to go from bare dirt directly to concrete block foundation. But maybe I just missed them. Maybe because our new lot is sloped they have to do more and more complex footings? Or maybe the new builder is just plain better.

The builder wanted this step to be done by February. So we're all happy to finally see progress.

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The lot is cleared! And the new bathroom is still lookin good.

The rain let up enough for that crew to finish its task. This week, rain permitting (only Thurs & Fri predicted for rain, so far!), they'll start the foundation.