Category: RIVER HOUSE (Page 8 of 16)

As of Wednesday morning, every interior wall has been framed except the wall between the bathroom and the game room. I assume by the time you read this, that wall will be finished. In addition, the porch is partially framed. Also, they dug out the place for the garage foundation.

Here is an interior picture. This was taken at the front door looking at the front hall. You can see the stairs up the second floor on the left side and the living room wall just past the stairs. Going from the stairs towards the right are the guest bathroom, the place where there will be stairs down to the basement, and the laundry room. Across from the laundry room (against the front of the house) is the front hall closet.

Here is the river side of the house showing the progress on the porch. Our neighbor has been trying to convince us that we do not need screens, but after discussing it with the builder and architect, we are going to stick with built-in screens. Making them removable would add more cross bars and shrink the windows a little.

Finally, here is the garage location. You can see they have dug out the place where the foundation will be added.

There will be no construction camera videos this week because if the dreaded SD card error (I have thrown out that memory card, but I have been getting a lot of those errors.) There will also be no weekend update because of the long weekend.

This past week they were mostly working on the roof trim and soffits (the bottom of the roof overhang). I also noticed, when we visited this weekend, that they now have the roof over the front entrance in place. And they have started work on the porch.

I have two house pictures today. The first is the usual angle showing the roof trim work and the front stoop roof.

The second is the opposite corner, showing the work on the porch.

Finally, here is the river bank. The water is way down right now, and the mud flats are starting to green up.

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I have two construction videos for you this week. The first one is pretty short (although slowed down a lot). It shows them putting in the survey stakes for the garage foundation.

The second shows work on the river side of the house and the very start of work on the porch. It also shows the earth mover, which has been parked there for a few days.

They are working on the roof trim, putting in the soffits. Here is a picture of the front of the house. Those soffits (bottom of the roof overhang) will be painted black at some point.

The builder is confident that we are on schedule to be able to move in summer 2026. Meanwhile, here is the short term schedule:

• Roof trim complete – July 11
• Roofing will be done the week of July 14
• Windows will be installed the weeks of July 14 and July 21
• Garage foundation will be dug on June 30
• Garage footing and foundation will be poured the weeks of July 7 and July 14
• The basement slab will be poured the week of August 4

They are about to start on the porch, although they are short a few pieces of wood so finishing the porch will be delayed a little.

We (Daphne and I) need to finish the electrical plan (where all the plugs, switches, lights and Ethernet ports go) by July 14th. Then they will put up place holders in the house for our inspection. Today we picked locations for the outside plugs. Hopefully, I will be able to get an electric (plug-in, not battery) snowblower at some point.

Inside the house, the framing for all the interior walls are in place on the second floor, but not on the first floor yet. Hopefully soon, although I do not have a schedule for that.

A quick trip to the site today. The garage foundation was surveyed yesterday as you can see in this picture. This is in preparation for foundation work for the garage. Nobody was working on the house today as the temperature went over 100° F. Yesterday, however, they fixed the upstairs bathroom walls (I checked).

Our new neighborhood, Conantum, holds a fall harvest festival every year and last year Daphne and I attended to have our first chance to meet a lot of people from the neighborhood. One person we met, Carl, had built a new house further down the road a number a years ago and had some advice for us. He told us to visit the site every day so that we could catch any mistakes early, while they were still easy to fix.

Well, this is a challenge for two reasons. First, I do not have access to a car more than two weekdays, so I can not visit every day. And second, Daphne can’t really visit at all except on weekends and I would not be able to spot a mistake, while she would see something wrong right away.

Well, Daphne visited the site this Saturday morning and did a walk through and noticed that the upstairs bathroom walls (which were just put in a few days ago), reflects an out of date design. Remember all those “days since we moved a wall” updates. Well, the upstairs bathroom was where we moved the last wall.

The problem is likely that not all the plans on site that the construction crew are using are up to date. The architect says that she will fix this next week. Meanwhile, the upstairs bathroom walls need to be removed and put in the correct places (they are not load bearing). Below are the old bathroom design (left), which is what they framed, and the new bathroom design (right), which is what we want.

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Meanwhile, we went to the site this Saturday to pull more invasive plants and to go kayaking on the river before it got too hot. To fit all this in, we arrived at 7am, worked a little and then took a breakfast break on the second floor.

We ended up working for a few hours before we called it quits and brought out the kayaks. Here is the pile of oriental bittersweet and buckthorn that we removed just this outing.

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Instead of the usual picture of the outside of the house, here is a picture of the foundation from the old garage.

If you look closely, you will not see any foundation because it was removed on Thursday. This weeks construction video is very short since most of the week they were working inside (and I have not moved the camera inside yet). But if you watch to the far right in the video you will see them remove the old garage foundation.

All of my house pictures this week are interior shots. The outside has not changed much at all.

This is the first floor. I am standing in corner in the pantry facing the dining room (left) and living room which is past the opening in the wall and left of the stairs.

This is the first floor from the corner in the master bedroom. You can see the game room on the right (the big window openings). The ladders are all in the walk-in closet (isn’t that where everyone stores their ladders?)

This is the second floor. I am standing at the top of the stairs looking into the family room, or today only, the breakfast nook.

And here I am standing in the middle of the family room looking back towards the stairs and the front bedroom.

Finally, here is the second floor again. I am standing in the corner of the back bedroom looking towards the bathroom (whose walls are wrong).

And finally (really this time), here is the waterfront taken from ground level. We have to walk across that mid flat to find deep enough water to launch the boats.

Here is the weekly view of the river. The water is dropping. The mud is not turning green yet.

Here are two progress pictures. The first is from the Southeast corner showing the game room. This is the part of the house that still need the most work on sheathing.

Here is the Northeast corner showing the dining room and kitchen. You can see that on this side of the house, the sheathing is almost done.

The builder is on vacation this week but the subcontractors are still busy working away at finishing the framing. Lots of activity in the house, which you will probably not see on the construction camera. I will move the construction camera inside in a few weeks, but first we will watch the garage foundation work starting next week.

The architect met with the roofing contractor to work out the final details. Should be no issues. I also got to look at the bathroom and kitchen faucets we selected. While they look good, I am worried that the faucets have too much plastic internally and they will break after a few years. Not sure any other brands are any better. They do not make things the way they used to.

Here is a link to the kitchen faucet. And here is a picture showing the plastic internal parts that I know will break.

Another Sunday, and another morning spent removing invasive plants. We worked for a little over two hours, before heading home to prepare for a friend’s brunch.

Here are two pictures of the current river front. The first is from ground level, and the second is from the second floor window, where we will have our best view. They moved the shovel, which helps this picture but blocked the construction camera on Friday. The river level is down a lot from a month ago, but plants have not colonized the newly exposed mud yet.

There is a large shovel blocking my usually place to take progress pictures, so I have two other angles. First is the front of the house. You can see that the wall panels are all in place and the roof sheathing has been added.

This is a view from the Northeast corner. You can see that there is still a lot of work to be done on the second floor walls and roof.

Here is the interior of the first floor. I am standing in the corner that will be the front hall closet. The master bedroom wing is behind me. You can see that there are now stairs going up to the second floor, so we can give tours :-).

Here is a view of the second floor. I am standing in the Southeast corner of the family room next to the windows with the best view, looking back towards where there will be two guest rooms and a full bathroom.

Our builder is on vacation next week, but the workers should still be on site finishing up the framing and sheathing. We have an on site meeting with the roofer on Wednesday. On June 23rd, they will remove the old garage foundation (I will reposition the construction camera for that).

Here is this week’s construction video. I did not include Wednesday since that day, all the work was on the other side of the house, so there was nothing to see. This weekend, I moved the construction camera back to the original tree on the river side since that’s where I expect to see work being done next week.

This week’s Wednesday meeting will be on Thursday. But I made a quick trip out to snap some progress pictures.

They still have not cut out the window openings for the bedroom and closet. I am not sure why. But the roof is starting to come together and they have started to put in the roof sheathing (the panels that are under the shingles).

The builder says that in a few weeks they will start work on the garage. First moving the trailer (and rewiring its power). Then tearing up the old foundation and then putting in a new foundation. Probably pouring the new foundation near the beginning of July.

Air quality is bad this weekend so no invasive pulling and no kayaking. I did, however, visit the site to take some pictures and fetch the construction camera video.

Here is the current state of the house from the usual locations. (Sorry about the glare from the early morning sun.) All of the first floor exterior walls are up (but not all covered with green panels), and most of the exterior walls from the second floor are now in place.

And here is an interior picture of the second floor. I was standing in what will be the closet of the front bedroom. The large window opening is at the river side of the family room. The smaller openings in the far corner are from the back (and nicer) guest bedroom.

And here is a view of the house from the river side.

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The water level in the river has fallen by quite a bit, exposing swaths of mud that will soon be overgrown with greenery.

Finally, I have two and a half days of construction video showing the work on the second floor, but also the installation of the water pipe, which goes from the road into the basement.