Merry Christmas from our new house!

Just thought I would send out one last blog before I'm cut off from the internet for a few days.  Tonight we had our open house!  Most of the group was moving in, but we decided we would move on Saturday just to make things easier.  We did move a few boxes over and our plants and it was pretty exciting to see our things in our house!  We are for sure going to need to get a gate for the stairs because, of course, that is the highlight of the whole house for the kids.

Here's a few pictures from our open house, plus (almost) all of the houses.

We're thinking of sending this as our Christmas card.

All the families in our group at the ribbon cutting

House #2 (house #1 is in Payson and I didn't want to drive there, but it looks just like this one)

House #3 Jason and Lisa's new place

House #4 Monica's house

House #5 Our house

House #6 Rhiannon's house

House #7 Carina's house(my only neighbor so far)

And house #8 the Fraser's place

And there you have it. Our 6 months of labor and we finally have our houses.  Almost feels too good to be true!  Merry Christmas everyone!  

We Did It!

6 months, 8 homes, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears later we are finally finished!  Our open house is this Thursday, and we will be moving in this Saturday!  Its going to be an exciting end of the year!  We finished all the outside work the day before the huge snow storm.  It was perfect.  Almost if someone knew we needed decent weather to finish :)  We've been inside cleaning ever since grateful that we finished in the nick of time.

Its funny how when you are in the midst of something difficult it seems like it will never end at times, and then when its all done you think, "that wasn't so bad", and you even miss it.  That's where I'm at right now.  I am excited for the landscaping in the spring, and for helping the next group that will be starting soon.

I'm not particularly excited for the actual packing up and moving part of it in the snow, but its supposed to be 37 and clear on Saturday, so it shouldn't be too bad.  Still, if anyone wants to help it would be very much appreciated!  We are also sad to leave our awesome neighbors.  Vaeh has made good friends with their foster son and they play so well together.  We'll have to make frequent trips up to keep the friendships alive.  I am excited to have Jason and Lisa as neighbors again though!  For those of you who don't know we lived together for a little over two years, and even though its GREAT to have your own place its nice to have family close by.

I am so grateful to have had this opportunity!  We have made great friends with our neighbors, have learned a TON about building, and in general it was just good to work with our hands to accomplish a goal.  Even though there were many a hard time, it was generally a fun experience!  I would do it again!

I was going to send Christmas cards with a picture of our family in front of our new house, but it will most likely come after Christmas.  If anyone wants one email me your address!  Merry Christmas to all as I probably wont post again until after the holidays!

Our lot before the building started.  We are holding a golden shovel in case you can't see.

Here's Jason and Lisa's lot

Here's the mostly finished house.  I don't have a recent one.  One of theses days I will post a picture of all the houses finished.

More Pictures

I took a few more pictures today of our cabinets and counter tops.  They look awesome!  And one more of progress of the stone.

 

Here it is, our kitchen actually looking like a kitchen.

Here's a better picture of the glossy counters.  Looks like granite!

And more stone.  Yes, its taking forever.

Home Stretch

We finished framing! *happy dance*  I am so excited that I will never have to use a nail gun again!  It almost feels like Christmas.  My job from here on out is rock and probably some caulking and I couldn't be happier!  For a while there it was feeling like I would be building forever, and now I can feel it coming to a close.  Oddly I have ambivalent feelings about it.  I have had a lot of fun, even though it has been equally frustrating I think I'm going to miss it.  I guess I'll just have to go volunteer for all the other groups.

Update for our house:  Our house has been painted, we have all our light fixtures in, he have all our hardware(door knobs, towel racks, etc), we have linoleum in and our cabinets were put in.  We have vanities in our bathrooms with tops and mirrors, it looks like our finish plumbing was done for our showers, and our deck landing is done(it just needs a concrete pad at the bottom and then it will get stairs).   I think we will be getting counter tops today and carpeting will soon follow along with appliances!  Whoa man, its exciting!

Here's a few pictures of the finish work.

This is our kitchen and dining room before the cabinets were put in (That's the cabinets in the living room)

A close up of our linoleum. (even though its linoleum, I really like the one we picked)

The living room filled with cabinets

The start of our rock.  We still have a LOT left, but I SUPER like it!

A corner shot of the rock

Man, this is dragging on

Here we are almost finished with the 8th house and everyone is all but burned out!  We are all starting to hate each other and are getting sick, which you can imagine doesn't make for much of a working environment.  Today is the first snow of the season, which normally might have been fun, but for all of us it is a huge obstacle to finish the last two houses.  The 7th house still needs shingles and doors and windows, and probably some other things inside too.  The 8th house is almost ready for trusses.  Our supervisor wants us to have it ready by tomorrow, but with the snow I think it would be a miracle.  I'm sick as well, so I can't go out and help.  Our supervisor has put us on a schedule so that we can be in by Christmas.  Its pretty tight, and I still have hope that we can get it done.  I am begging at this point for volunteers!  Please, we need you now more than ever!  I promise you don't even have to use power tools.  You can help us put rock on the houses, which isn't hard, it just takes a long time.  Help us get in before Christmas!
Here's a few pictures of our house with the stucco on.  As of yesterday they put in all our light fixtures too!

Those boxes are our rock

This is from the south side.

its amazing how drywall makes your house look more like a home

As soon as we finished building our house the subcontractors came in to start working.  So far the drywall is on, taped, and mudded, and I think they have even textured it by now.  Last time I was at the site they were prepping for stucco!  I am really excited to see all the colors I picked for our house come together.  Here's a few pictures of the house with drywall.

In our living room looking at the plant shelf over the hallway to the bedrooms

The arches in our bedroom.  I love how the different heights make them look.  This is my favorite part of the house.  This is the only thing that I built on the house that you can see.

And this is from the hall way looking over the stairs into the dining room and living room.  To the left is the door.

We are almost finished with house #6!  #7 is almost ready for its roof, and #8's lumber should be delivered today!  We are all so anxious to be finished.  Its starting to get really cold!  My next task will be to start the rock work for the houses, and in the next week they are going to start putting in cabinets.

Although I was hoping to be in by Christmas I am starting to loose hope.  Our supervisor told us if we wanted to be in by Christmas we would have to be done the first week of December so they could inspect it and have the open house before we move in.  In the beginning we were really productive, but as of lately people are leaving when it gets dark(7:30) instead of staying until 9.  People are getting sick, people are tired, and some have just gotten lazy since their houses have been finished.  We need to hurry up and finish before we start hating each other!  No, I love our group, but its like family.  You know everyone so well, its a love/hate kinda thing.

That's it for now.  Could still use volunteers!  We are pretty burnt out, so we could use all the help we can get.

Lyndsey

Building update

I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I would update everyone with whats going on.  We FINALLY finished framing and shingling our house.  It went up really fast, but then we started another house and most everyone left to work on it.  So Aaron and I have pretty much been finishing it ourselves. 

Here it is!  Our house was house #5 and now we are ready for insulation, then drywall, then stucco, then soffit and fascia!  It took us a surprisingly long time to finish the shingles.  First, whoever did the front was pretty careless and made them crooked, so we had to try and fix it.  Then, you see the ledge over the windows on the right, and the two little ledges over the windows on the left?  Those took FOREVER!  We had to keep getting up and down the ladder and cut shingles to get it done.  It pretty much sucked!  But I love how it looks, and I LOVE the shingle color!

Here is a shot of the inside.  I didn't take very many because from an outsider this probably looks like a bunch of wood, but in fact this is our living room and that triangle is our plant shelf.  To the left is the start of our insulation.

This is a shot of the archways that I built in our bedroom.  You are looking into our bathroom/closet area.  I am so proud of these.  They were fun to make.

Here is the progress of all the other houses.  Here is house #2.(I didn't take a picture of house #1 because it pretty much looks like #2 and I didn't want to drive to Payson.)

This house is getting ready to be painted, then it will get underlayment for the linoleum and fixtures(door knobs, etc) and cabinets.

Here's house #3(Jason and Lisa's house)

This house has been painted and is getting underlayment right now.

Here is house #4

This house is getting ready for stucco.  Their drywall has been hung and just needs to be mudded and then it can be painted.

House number 5 you already saw(ours).

House number #6

This house is ready for shingles and will hopefully be done this week.

House #7

 

We just started this one.  These people are actually right across the street from us.  They have almost all the exterior walls up and some of the interiors up.  Hopefully we can fly trusses before Saturday.

House #8 (a.k.a. the last house!)

I didn't want to get out of the car to actually take a picture of the footings, but that's what's been done.  The walls will be poured on Monday and hopefully the lumber will be delivered on Saturday!

The roof and progress since wednesday

We put our house up in 7 days(excluding sheeting and shingling the roof)!  That is the fastest we have moved so far!  We were able to put the trusses on our house on Thursday.  Minus a few minor things that didn't quite go as planned, our house looks great!  We were able to start on the 6th house yesterday and are hoping we will be just as fast there.  We are all still hoping to be in before Christmas.

Aaron having fun setting trusses

The crane putting the trusses on

After they finished Thursday night

The inside with our vaulted ceiling.  You are looking from our dining room into our living room.  To the right is our half wall to the stairs.

The next two days were spenting sheeting the garage and the back of the house.  All that's left to do for shingles is two overbuilds in the front and sheeting what's left of the front.  This is our side garage looking from the north.

The front of the garage fully sheeted.  Aaron's handy work.

The front of the house with the roof.  Anyone want to come pull our weeds?

The back and side of the house.  The back was fully sheeted in one night!

Fastest built house so far

So on Saturday we started building the exterior walls at our house.  I was there in the morning from 8 to two and during that time the biggest exterior wall in the back got put up and two more were in progress.  I helped cut blocking and headers, and Aaron and Jason were working on the exteriors walls with Ryan and his dad.  Aaron, Ryan and Jason stayed until 8:30 and in that time they finished all the exterior walls, half of the interior walls and even started the garage walls!  Woohoo!

Today Aaron and I went in the morning to get the double top plate on and Ryan came with some of his inlaws to finish the interior walls and do the stairs.  So now we are just waiting for the garage walls to get finished and we can fly trusses.  From what I've seen that usually takes a few days, so I am guessing we can fly trusses late Wednesday night or Thursday.  We'll see.

As far as the other houses go the Wilson's and Jason and Lisa's have almost finished the drywall, and Monica's roof is almost all shingled.  So we almost have 5 down, 3 to go!

Lifting the longest back wall

More lifting

And its up!

Pausing for a pose

looking at the dining room, kitchen and living room from the front door

this is the hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms(our master is the last room in the back on the left, the kids rooms will be on the right)

The front

The back