Wonderful windows

As anticipated, our house now has some of its windows in place, which was great to see today. John and I checked them out from the inside (John on each of the floors and me from the safety of the ladder). About half of them have been installed, with the remainder left to go in (tomorrow, we think).

The doors are still waiting their turn, too. As we've mentioned before, we have a lot of ways to get outside, and, civilized as we are (sort of), all of those ways are through doors. In all, there are six doors leading to various outdoor spaces. They are all dark brown, and should match the windows. The garage door will go in closer to the end of the construction.

More on windows and doors tomorrow...

Roof wizardry

We're back!

After a week away, we came home to find good progress on the roof. The sloping and skylights posed a challenge to our builder last week, but after some calculations and discussions with our designer, the crew was able to pull it off. The roof is now just about complete; the team will install the sheathing and peel-and-stick membrane on the front gable, and then the steel roof by the middle of next week. We're a few days behind our target, but with the mathematical masterminding and problem-solving skills required for the "flat" roof, we are thrilled to have missed our goal by only a few days.

In very exciting news, our windows and doors are going in tomorrow! Windows and doors!

I am speechless with extreme glee.

More tomorrow!

Roof progress

Progress is being made on the roof, as you can see in these pics. Each of those joists represents a lot of labour, as the guys have had to lift each one of them manually from the ground up to the third floor. Getting those up there is no easy feat with the hydro wire cutting right in front of the lot. Each one weighs about 250 lbs. They are also very precisely cut to attain the perfect angle for drainage. At least the weather has been on the crew's side; spring has sprung here in Ottawa, and the warmer days are encouraging.

This will be our last blog post for about a week and a half, since we have a wedding and honeymoon to attend to. When we come back we hope to have some great shots to share of our fully enclosed home.

Bye bye blockhead

We arrived home today to find that our house no longer looks like the block-headed younger sibling of our neighbours' homes. Work on the second-floor gabled roof has begun, which brings the house closer to its final shape. The guys have also started working on the third-floor flat roof, but that has proven to be more of a challenge than our builder anticipated. Flat roofs are never flat, and creating the slope requires Einstein's math skills and Gandhi's patience. But never fear, our intrepid builder is on the case.

The third floor will house our bedroom, a full bathroom, and a second bedroom. The hallway that links these rooms is curved, which also posed some problems for the crew since the doors are not (come on Rona, where are your curved doors?). The crew spent a lot of time on Monday working out various radiuses (radii?) that would still give us curved walls but wouldn't look odd with straight doors. They settled on an idea they thought would work, and John went up to check it out while I shuddered below with every step he took up the ladder. He said it looks really neat, and that's good enough for me. I'd like to live to enjoy our curved walls, so I stayed off the ladder.

Making the news

Our community newspaper, the New Edinburgh News, published a little article on our house earlier this month. You can check it out here.

All walls up

The beam problem was resolved on Friday when an engineer confirmed that our builder could safely use four LVLs (laminated veneer lumber) instead of the steel beam, saving everyone the risk associated with getting a very large and heavy piece up two stories. With the LVLs a-go, the guys were able to finish the last of the exterior walls on the third floor, leaving only the roof, doors and windows to install. The windows and doors are now on-site and ready to go when the crew is ready. We thought the third-floor roof would be in place or at least well underway by the end of this weekend, but it didn't play out that way. We're hoping for a productive week this week.

John and I met with our designer, builder and deck builder on Friday and had a good discussion about the finer details of our decks. They sound like they will be beautiful and durable. In the warmer months, they will extend our living space by about three hundred square feet, maybe a little more. We love the idea of being able to go outside from every floor (the worry wart in me especially loves the idea of a quick escape at any time). Stay tuned...

Beam boondoggle

No change in outward appearances these days, so there's no new photo today. Our builder has run into some problems with a beam, which has unfortunately stalled the crew's progress. The plans call for a steel beam at the top rear of the second floor (bottom of the third floor), which poses a pretty big problem for us. The beam will weigh about 600 lbs, and can't be mechanically lifted into place because of some hydro wires in front of our property. The team is good, but even they can't lift 600 lbs. One alternative is to install a series of LVLs (laminated veneer lumber); an engineer is assessing whether this would work, but the answers are very slow in coming. Without the beam or a replacement for it, the guys can't do much on-site. We are hoping for some news tomorrow. This problem needs to be resolved soon.

John and I met our flooring supplier today, and he's quite a character. Think of a German David Copperfield with longish hair under a hard hat, and that's him. He's currently pouring a concrete floor at the Japanese embassy, so we walked over at lunch to check it out. It looks like we might be able to go with the "natural" finish, which seems to be close to the brown we're looking for. Our builder is going to request samples in "natural" and another brown for us, and we'll go from there.

John and I took tomorrow off and have a meeting in the morning with our builder, our designer, and the fellow who's doing our decks. There are some design issues to hammer out before we can get a final deck quote. We're looking forward to seeing the exterior structures; we really think they're going to add a lot to our house. We also have the benefit of having seen some of our deck company's work, and it's stunning.

We also got a message today informing us that our windows and doors will be delivered tomorrow, which is great, but also unfortunate because the guys aren't ready for them. We hope that they're wrapped and protected from the elements, because the roof isn't on yet. We're looking forward to checking out how the colour looks in person (chocolate brown).