Footprint

We can now see the footprint of the entire house.  

The foundation for the sunroom, kitchen, pantry, mudroom and laundry room is done.  The basement isn't under any of those rooms.

Front of the house minus the garage and breezeway.

The breezeway.  I'm standing in the garage looking at the breezeway.  The blocks are about waist high now but that is the level the floor will be when its finished.  In some of the previous drawings the breezeway was going to be quite a bit longer but I think I'm really going to like the size of it now.  There will be a porch on the back of it with a door to the outside.  Its going to be the only access to the backyard from the main level.  The big back patio off the living room and dining room will not have ground access so the porch off the breezeway will get lots of use.  If I can't make Spatz into a complete indoor cat, this is where she will come and go, I hope.

The back of the house from the garage side.  The garage doors will be back here so this is kind of the front of the garage.  Brad really wanted the garage doors to be at the back of the house but I didn't really care.  Now I love the idea!

The foundation for the sunroom is to the left.  Its going to be quite a ways off the ground so Paul is going to make a small storage room under it.

We'll be happy to get those two doors put up so we can lock things in the safe rooms instead of hauling it all back and forth.

No changing the bathrooms and bar now.  The plumbing is in place. 

The four squares of concrete on the ground are the foundation for the main level porch posts.

I found this device in the creek with a hose leading up to the house.  I wish we had one of these so I could burn some brush piles and feel safe about it.

Paul wants to wait a couple weeks to fix the driveway.  So I guess we'll be bringing the truck for a while.  We had to drive my car into the field to get around this and it isn't really made for that kind of thing.  You can see to the right of the drive way where they had to dig a four foot trench from the road to the new green box mentioned here.


The huge mess of mud and rocks and blocks and string and boards and plastic and Skoal cans and whatever else is up around the house is driving me a little crazy.  But the driveway looking like this just kills me.  It looked so good this summer.  

Basement walls

The huge pile of rocks sitting in front of the house is gone!  And we have exterior basement walls poured, as well as the tops to the safe areas.  There is still a huge pile of dirt sitting where the kitchen will be.  I didn't get a photo of it but it should be gone by the time we go back up there.

If you notice Brad standing at the opening of the basement it makes the house look huge.  It doesn't look that big in person.  Must be the wide angle lens??

The forms are still up on the safe areas in the back (or should I say front?  The front of the house seems like the back of the basement to me!)

The area around the basement.  I am standing at the exterior corner of the king bedroom closet looking at the actual safe room in this photo.

While we waited on Paul to get there we did a little work by the creek.  Brad cut up part of an old Cedar tree and it smelled so good!

Digging - Finally!

A couple weekends ago, Paul told us that the basement people had started to scratch the dirt so we drove up to check it out.

He was right!  They had all of their equipment there and had started to dig.  Its exciting now that we can see some actual progress toward the house....even if it is just a little!

All along Brad knew he wanted Murphy Basement from Ravenden to do the basement.

We were happy to see they were actually able to dig this far without hitting solid rock!

We had to lose another tree and there is still one more big one that has to go.  

This has nothing to do with the progress, but it's still the best part!

We can't wait to go back and see what they've accomplished since this!  It's hard to not just drive up there if we have a day off, but the drive from Little Rock to Mountain Home is HORRIBLE so we just have to wait until Brad is scheduled to work up there again to see what's going on.

Clearing

More clearing last week... We had the trees and rocks hauled away on Thursday.  It made the slope of the hill seem more steep than it did when all the trees were there. 

He pushed these two trees over in about ten seconds.

There were a couple of piles of the large rocks and one was right where the house will be.  So we had to have them hauled away.

After SEVERAL trips like this, that area looks a lot better......

The pile is gone but there are still a lot of rocks!

We haven't been able to actually get all the way to the creek up by where the house will be because its so grown up around it.  I worked to get a place cleared so we can get down to the water now.   The photo above is a "before" and the one below is "after".   I got pretty hot out there but it was nice to listen to the creek running and the birds chirping while I worked.  It would have been perfect except for the Nascar fan who lives nearby (not the Karey and Jerry kind of Nascar fans, the other kind).  He was out trying to see just how loud his engine could get with the transmission in "park".  God's people, as Brad calls them. 

Loren worked all day Thursday and Friday and was able to get all the way to the creek in the back.  He drove me down there in his truck and previously, we couldn't hardly even walk back there!  We hadn't really planned on him doing all of that right now, but he wanted the work and we decided he could do it now or do it later and we're glad to have access to the back now.