Here is the current state of the construction. The first photo is from my usual picture taking spot. You can see that more of the Zip-R siding material has been added. From the left you see:

• the kitchen windows (the kitchen sink will be under the right end of the window)
• the door into the pantry
• the pantry window, which will be over the chest freezer
• the main entrance
• the window in the front hall
• and the window in the master walk-in closet (which does not have siding yet)

The walls to the master bedroom have to wait for the second floor to be finished because the master bedroom has a cathedral ceiling so the walls go up into the second floor space.

This second photograph was taken standing in the kitchen to be looking south. You can see that the floor of the second floor has been started over the living room. The gap straight ahead (over the table piled with wood) is where the stairs up will go.

Here is the river view from today. The water level is still very high and more rain is predicted for tomorrow.

No walls were moved this week. The architect did look at the kitchen window opening and thought that they were too high (although they are properly placed according to the plans), but after thinking about this later, we realized that it was intentional to have a decent sided backsplash and to keep the tops of the windows aligned with the dining room windows (just around the corner). And also the architect is short, so of course, the windows seem too high.

Cell reception was very bad today so in the future, we will spare no expense and wire the construction trailer with high-speed fiber optic internet — really. We are committing to a 2 year contract with the town so that same fiber optic cable will be the main internet input for the house, once built.

In two weeks, they will put in the helical supports for the porch. Meanwhile, framing continues as the primary goal right now is to get the house to the point where it is water tight, as fast as we can (but not in time for tomorrow’s storm).

Here is a picture from Saturday morning. As you can see, we have a few walls. In this angle (which is the usually angle I show), the wall with the ZIP siding is the front of the house, specifically the front of the pantry, an opening for the front door, and the front hall area. The wall closest to the small tractor is the dining room wall, with openings for windows which will over look the deck. (They are casement windows, not one big pane of glass).

In this picture I am standing in the master bathroom (the raised floor panel is where the shower goes), looking through the door to the living room. There are three door openings, from left to right, laundry room, living room (from bedroom hallway) and living room (from game room).

In this picture, I am standing in the kitchen facing the living room. Those large openings are the living room windows that will overlook the river (a total of six casement windows). The living room will start at the right edge of this picture. There are two doors on the North wall, one which leads to the bedroom hallway and one which leads to the game room. The corner on the left side is the start of the dining room.

And just to remind you of the plans, here is the first floor plan with red lines showing which walls are in place.

Here is my weekly view of the river. I am intentionally standing at one of the window openings in the living room so you get an idea of what the first floor view is like (the tractor is not a permanent feature).

Finally, here is this week’s construction video. I moved the camera midday Wednesday to get a much better angle on the action. We will see how long this spot works (it worked great until the first wall went up).

I got this photograph from our builder who wanted to show me the progress. I will have more pictures when I visit the site on Sunday.

In the following photograph you see the start of framing – building the walls of the house. They build the walls in sections, flat on the floor and then stand them up when they are finished.

In the meantime, we had another Wednesday meeting with the builder and architect. Days since we moved a wall: 7. A lot of talk about bathroom fixtures and doors. Boy are doors expensive — makes me wonder whether people really need doors on the bedrooms and bathrooms.

We also looked at the basement door which will be two steps below ground level. We picked a place for an exterior faucet to use as a foot wash. Because the plumbing will run through the concrete, we need to have a shutoff and open it up during the winter to avoid freezing, but we have always done that in our previous houses so it is a non-issue.

As you can see in the picture, they have back filled in the dirt around the foundation. But we will have to leave it as is until next Spring, when we can start doing some planting.

Windows show up on June 9th, but they will stay in storage until we are ready to install them. Good to know that we will not have to wait for them. Basement door comes a week later for us to decide whether we like it or not.

Oh, we also made one very important decision — whether to put the toilet flush handle on the right side or the left side. We voted for the left side (standing in front of the toilet looking at it) since that is more common and it is what we have now. And speaking of the toilet, the toilet paper will come over the top and not go around the back and under (yes, we are one of “those” people).

Today was a beautiful day. We went to the site in the morning to pull invasives for three hours. The river was way up. Here is the standard view.

This weeks work was finishing the drain system and restoring the grade of the ground. Here is a picture of the Northeast corner showing a small unfinished section, but you can see that the North side of the house has been all filled in.

Here is a picture of the basement. They have not placed the supports yet (the wood is temporary) and they have not poured the floor yet. I assume both will happen this coming week.

After pulling invasives, we ate lunch. With the water level at the highest we have ever seen, we did not sit on our usual fallen tree at the water’s edge (since it is now in the river). But we did eat on top of the foundation. Here is Daphne eating lunch in what will be the corner of the game room.

Then we went for a two hour Kayak tour downstream. Here is an action shot of Daphne. 1 mile downstream against a strong wind, and one mile back (mostly coasting with the wind).

Finally, the construction video for the week is boring. Only one day had any action and the position of the camera was not idea. But here it is anyway.

Here is a picture from today.

The white pipe is for all the downspouts. Every downspout from the roof goes directly into a white pipe and all the white pipes merge together into a dry well at the corner of the house.

The green tube is the drain system, which goes all around the house to handle any ground water. The drain system then has its own outlet away from the house.

They are also adding in gravel all around the house, and tomorrow they will do the rest of the back filling to bring the ground up to its original grade. Next week, they will put in the posts.

Since this is Wednesday, we had our weekly meeting. Most of this weeks session was meeting the electrician and our EMF consultant and discussing plans for the electrical design. But we also reviewed the tile selection for the bathroom and decided that we would have a painted bathroom ceiling and not put on a stone veneer.

Unfortunately, I am sorry to announce that we moved one wall of the master bathroom shower by six inches, making the shower slightly smaller. This was because of the standard sizing of the shower components we had picked out. Fortunately, the shower got smaller not bigger, since they have already sized the hole in the main floor to put the shower base. Shrinking the hole a little is OK.

This week, they put in the deck, which is the top of the basement on which the first floor will sit. I have two pictures for you. First the desk installation in progress from Friday, then the deck completed on Saturday morning.

We can now walk “into” the house and see what the view will look like from the first floor. If you are curious, here is the view. The river level is down from earlier in the year and the plants have not filled in the wet lands yet this season. That’s Daphne in the lower-right corner since today was another day of removing invasives.

No construction video this week. The first three days were boring since all the work was inside the basement. And the last two days were lost because the camera ran out of batteries.

Next week more back filling as they bring the ground back to its original level all around the house and finish putting in the foundation drain system. Then they will put in the basement support posts and start putting in the posts outside the house that will support the deck and porch.

We are getting close to having the house design finalized. One metric of how close we are is that it had been two weeks since the last time we moved a wall. Until yesterday. When selecting bathroom tiles, Daphne indicated that she did not want the second floor bathroom shower tiled, but would rather a nice looking fiberglass wall / floor combination. These are much easier to keep clean – no grout to attract mold.

Unfortunately, when picking out the shower assembly, we realized that the shower size had to be adjusted, which also meant that the bathroom needed to be rearranged to fix the new footprint of the shower. Here is the new second floor bathroom layout including elevations (side views).

Unfortunately, the redesign forced us to move the wall between the bathroom and the back bedroom’s closet, shrinking the closet slightly to make room for the larger shower. Hopefully, this will be the last wall change.

Meanwhile, they have started putting in the beams that will hold up the first floor. Here is how things looked mid-day on Wednesday.

Since this is a Wednesday, that means another meeting with the architect. From now on, we will meet on site with the architect and the builder. Right now, Daphne is attending remotely via iPad. In this picture you can see the architect showing one of the design documents to Daphne. The builder is in the white tee-shirt behind the architect.

The decision on what exterior door to use is not finalized. We decided to buy one of the doors we are are thinking of using. If we like it, we will buy three more. If we don’t like it, well, it will be installed as the basement door, hidden under the deck, either way.

We will play the same trick with the kitchen sink. We will buy one sink and faucet to make sure we like it. Either way, it will become the sink in the laundry room.

Anyway, work continues on the beams and soon they will put in the supports, but also drill and place the exterior supports for the deck and the porch. The framing should be completed in mid-June. Then the windows get installed and then the siding gets installed. Another round of back filling happens after the exterior supports are places, and then you will no longer see the orange panels (they will be entirely underground).

Correction on bathroom changes. Daphne pointed out that the main reason for the change was because the pre-fab shower assemblies only do three walls and the previous design had a fourth half-wall next to the sinks that you can see below. Also the pre-fab that Daphne has selected is not actually fiberglass, but stone.