Day 120 : Siding almost complete, garage door, flooring

By now, the siding work is almost complete. You can see the "olive" gable shakes that give a nice accent to the exterior.

The garage door has been installed as well. 

And on the inside, the flooring work has begun. First item is the tile work in the bathrooms. The (electric) radiant floor heating mats have been set in the Master Bath. And shower wall as well as tub platform and surround have been tiled. The tile layers put down wrong tiles around the tub (will have to be corrected), but here is a photo of our shower wall:

The hardwoord floor material (strand bamboo) has been brought to the site as well. Most of our flooring area will be covered with this, so there are quite a few boxes:

Day 115 : Painting, siding progress, garage roof

It was a beautiful fall day with temps in the low 70s again and a busy day at the site today. It is my second day of applying custom colors to some rooms, the siding crew is making good progress, the framers were back to install the little overhang roof on the front of the garage. And the painters came back to work on the outside trim.

Here are a few photos of the siding and garage roof work (and the final result of the day). The interior painting is still taking a bit longer before I can show results...

BTW: We seem to have a bald eagle in our neighborhood! There were numerous sightings although I have not had luck myself yet. But I noticed four ospreys circling in the afternoon thermals over Coyote Ridge.

Day 89 : Garage entry and exterior grading

Since most of the digging and exterior work has been completed, the ground has been graded close to the final elevations. Drain pipes for the gutters have been installed underground as well. For the 2 ft difference between garage and basement level, I and them build a stone wall with rocks from our lot (there are plenty of those rocks around). The area in from of the garage has been converted into a comfortable turnaround when backing out of the garage. Also, the last culvert on the driveway needed to be extended and its exit got embedded into a set of rocks as well.

See the result here:

Day 55 : Garage

Due to some weather-related delays, the crane for the lifting the roof trusses into place will be on site on Tuesday. Until then, the framing crew worked on the garage.

This is where the porch will be located

We met with the builder today at the site to (a) discover that the hobby room window has been repositioned and (b) to discuss the issue with the main floor ceiling height. There's no chance to change the exterior walls now, but he agreed to install a lowered ceiling (changing some interior walls to 8') with the cellulose insulation sitting right on top of the ceiling as before. The only drawback is that there is some extra lumber that goes into the design and that the house is 1' taller than necessary. This means that the exterior look is different. Still better than having to heat those extra 1200+ cubic feet!