Work has continued… the main work happening now is the house sheathing. After drilling bolts to secure various walls in the house to the foundation, leveling the walls and sheathing started. As you can see from the photos, from the first sheet of OSB on the corner of the garage, the sheathing has progressed around the back side of the house to the laundry room and onto the wall of the music room on the front side.

On the garage, the second floor framing will be done when the rafters are stick-built for the roof above the bonus room. In order to allow a sturdy tie-in, the top bit of sheathing on the end wall was left to complete after the framing is complete.

As the walls are leveled, interior bracing is added to keep the framing from shifting when the upstairs framing above the garage and roof trusses are added to the rest of the house.

The upstairs framing and placing trusses is scheduled to start next Monday. That portion is being subcontracted, so it should happen much faster than our two-person pace typically produces.

Yesterday we finished up the flooring for the bonus room above the garage. Starting at the stairs, we gradually got the entire surface above the floor joists covered with tongue-in-groove flooring OSB. After cutting to size, we hauled the pieces up the stairs, glued along each joist, maneuvered the wood into place and then screwed into the joists securely.

As we enter into the second week of interior framing, more progress is being made. Yesterday we got a good start on the walls for the kitchen and music room (after we swamped out the slab from the heavy rain). Today we set the floor joists for the garage bonus room. We still have a bit more work to do on that part, but it definitely is taking shape. Here are a few photos:

Well, with a few interruptions (Dr’s appointments, etc.), we got the first 5 days of interior framing done with a very short day this morning. Thus far, we have the entire north part of the house mostly complete, so here are a few pictures to try to give you an idea:

Well… it has been a long, hot week of framing! We finished up the last section of the exterior wall framing this morning with the 2nd garage door opening.

Here is a trailer-top-view of the building so far:

Next week we begin the interior wall framing… then comes sheathing, staircase and then getting the hired crew to set the trusses and build the hobby room (a.k.a. military history research center) over the garage. We’re getting ready to order windows and exterior doors. Won’t it be great when the house is dried in?

OK… this is going to be a really short post. We are on our way to pick up our boys from Mom and Dad’s, but wanted to post a photo of the progress thus far. We have done several short walls, and have most of the wall between the house and garage cut and ready for assembly. The hoist works really well on shorter sections of wall… we even lifted the laundry room wall with the window over the water supply line without any difficulty. We had a bit of delay this morning due to a little rain. We spent some time covering all the wood and getting tools out of the rain, but soon were able to continue.