Friday, February 29, 2008

January 14th


House visits were more and more frequent now as every time we'd show up there was some new significant system or item in the house.

This time it was some water lines and venting.




















Earlier I watched the glass block guy install the glass block in the glass block window opening where the glass block goes. Some people don't like it but we both dig the look of glass block. It's probably our ghetto roots.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

January 13th

As we watched our house get built we noticed many of the houses that were almost complete or completed had brick with "No Park" painted on it, sitting on the driveway. I'm assuming to keep shoppers and tradespeople from parking on the driveway and screwing it up when it wasn't cured and getting it dirty when it wasn't sold.

When we drove up we found our very own No Park Brick. It seemed a (no pun intended) milestone for progress and we thought we should document it.

Progress progress. We found windows, roofing materials, and the lines for the AC units.

If you look carefully you can see the middle window is missing. The window team brought the wrong window for this opening. The opening was framed larger than normal because of the office space we selected. It took a few days for the right window to show up.

We also had most of the AC ducts, the air handlers in the attic, and the big air returns installed. The air handler in the basement is installed much later in the process because people steal them. Stupid people.



















They had to move a couple of pipes after the walls went up and they had to move them in the concrete.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Early January

There was a lot happening just after Christmas. The house became more and more like a matchstick structure. Depending on where you were standing and looking, the rooms would blend together and become unrecognizable. It was hard to imagine what the percieved size of the living spaces would be. What would it be like to live in this place?



"Is this room small?"

"Is this room big?"

Is this a bathroom?

What the heck is this?



You really start to realize how strange the perception of space is.





It took a long time for the framing to get completed. Every couple of days it would look more and more like a house.










We got a delivery of roofing materials.






The next day it was sitting on the corners of the house. A few thousand pounds of wood balanced just right.








Although I missed the actual crane opration, it was pretty cool to see this up on the house. These guys were like some crazy super human cat people. Climbing around with no ropes or safetly lines or anything like that. Granted, it was only 10 feet at the edges but from the top there was another six or seven feet or so. There were lots of nail-ridden 2x4s jutting out at acute angles that they could use to break their fall, so they should be just fine.


Once these panels were installed on the roof, the structure became even more house like.

I know this seems like stating the obvious, but there was a genuine sense of amazement to this process. Each component, as it was added, made the reality come closer and closer. This was the largest jigsaw puzzle I'd ever been involved in. The "picture" was becoming clearer.


Another interesting thing you'll see is all of the cross braces used to plumb the walls to make sure they were perfectly upright as the roofing panels were attached.




















One last note, there was a tumbleweed that had happened to find a purchase in our laundry room. It don't get more western than that.

Holiday Season

Although sparse, cramped, and sans tree, we were in Arizona. Good times.
Our cookware was in storage and the Happy-Mart discount cookware was completely falling about at this point.


We decided that we should go out for Christmas Dinner. We knew we wanted something special and in Casa Grande that can only mean one place.


Carl's Jr.