Looking good, Billy Ray

We took a quick run up the hill yesterday with the whole family, minus Bailey.  He's not our top choice for a guest after his last trip where he got himself lost for 6 hours and ended up wandering around Hoosier Pass covered in snow.

We were very happy to see some real progress when we drove up to the house.  This picture below shows our first glimpse of some of the exterior finish work.  On the front of the garage, you can see that the cedar shake shingles are installed above the garage door.  In addition, the corbels are all installed (the large timbers) and they've begun installing a bit of the lap siding below the shingles on the left side (right above where I'm standing in the picture).

Looking a little closer, you can see that the tongue & groove cedar has also been installed on the underside of the roof.  We think it looks really great and it's cool to see the way the outdoor lighting has been integrated.  In the shot below you can also see the exterior window casing detail around the window in the attic above the garage.

On the North side of the house, you can see some significant progress on the 8" cedar lap siding.  This will end up looking a lot like the garage with cedar shake shingles in the peaked part of the house and the horizontal siding below.

Some serious progress

Lots of progress up in the high country since the last time we visited the house about two weeks ago.  When I pulled up in front, I was really excited to see that the front of the house is finally looking like the architectural drawings with the big gable over the front entry and the shed roof just about done.

You can also see in the picture above how all the timber framing supports the shed and gable roofs and is starting to look pretty cool.

The first big change as I walked into the house was the great room windows are finally in! They look great and really open up the space.

I walked up close to the great room windows and took this next picture which shows just how amazing the view is out the back of the house.  We'll have this view from our master bedroom, the great room, the dining room and the guest master upstairs.  We are very lucky that the trees up in this area are all spruce & fir so we don't have any issue with the pine beetles that have destroyed many pine trees in the Colorado mountains.

Another unexpected piece of progress - the fireplaces are installed in the great room and our bedroom.  The picture below is the wood burning fireplace that can generate 50,000 BTU of heat when operated at full capacity.  We are really looking forward to burning this thing when it's cold up there which will be all winter long.

I hiked around back to take this last photo which shows the back of the house with all the windows & the sliding doors installed.  We are really getting a sense of what this is going to look like when its done!

She's buying a stairway to...the 2nd floor

We bundled up the girls and headed up the hill yesterday to check on things.  Our expectations of progress were relatively low given the Thanksgiving Holiday but we were very happy to find a ton of progress.    When we first drove up, we could see right away that the sheets of plastic were largely removed from the front of the house and there were a bunch of windows installed.

When we walked through the front door, right away we could see that we finally had stairs to the 2nd floor!  This means no more climbing up a ladder 12 feet in snow boots.  The original plans had these stairs as 'open' with no risers, just treads.  We decided to close them in and use the space underneath for a coat closet.

The other major addition is the framing of the 'catwalk' which connects the bunkroom above the master bedroom / bathroom to the bedrooms on the other side of the upstairs above the kitchen and dining room.  The catwalk is built with big timbers and will be covered by tongue & groove on top.  In the bottom of the picture below, you can see Greg's two sons, Ian & Alexander carrying a large, mulled window into the master bedroom.

This picture shows three of those windows after the guys have finished setting them in place.  You can't tell because of the glare but we have a pretty good view of Hoosier Ridge out those 3 East facing windows.

At this point the girls were getting a little antsy so we decided to play outside.  Natalie looks surprised at the cold weather but is happy to be out in the snow.

Somehow this next photo looks to me like a Yeti sighting photo that you see sometimes.  If only it were a little grainy.  The girls had a lot of fun playing around in the snow.  The backyard has a great sledding hill, if only we could figure out a way to stop the sleds before they head deep into the woods!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

After being caught in a freak snowstorm in Connecticut and without power for 3 days, we were enjoying being warm & cozy in our house back in Denver.  That is, until I headed up to the frozen mountains to have a look at progress on the house on Sunday.  It was a balmy 45 and sunny in Denver when I left, about 25 as I drove through the Town of Breckenridge and all the way down near 20 when I got up to our little place in the clouds.

Although it was chilly, the sun was shining and it really was a beautiful day in the mountains.  Greg has made some really good progress since before we left for our trip.  The roof is on and completely dried-in (covered with ice shield, not shingles yet.)

There was between 12 - 18 inches of snow on the ground where the driveway hadn't been plowed.  The big changes on the front of the house for this visit are that you can see the beginning of the shed roof that will cover the porch taking shape over the bump-out breakfast area.  Also, the timbers that will support the gable roof over the front door are installed and supported by temporary framing lumber.

Stepping inside, Greg and Linda (our kitchen designer) have laid out the cabinet design onto the floor so we can really see the size & flow of the kitchen.

The interior framing is all pretty much done now.  this is showing the wall between the entry hall and the office / 2nd guest room which is above the kitchen.  The left side of the picture is where the catwalk will connect the two halves of the 2nd floor together across the great room.

The stairs are going to be built next week but for now I was able to use a ladder to climb upstairs to where the bunk room is going to be.  Here's a picture of Greg standing next to the West window inside the bunk room.  It's a big opening, it'll be filled with twin casement windows.  

Downstairs, standing in our master closet (beneath the bunk room) I took this picture through the master bath and into the master bedroom. The section of concrete that is lower than the slab is going to be our master shower.

Next week we plan to go up and meet with the electrician to confirm locations of outlets & wall switches.  Greg should also have some of the windows installed by then which will make the house a lot brighter since right now the windows and doors are all covered by plastic.

Not much daylight left in the roof

The framers have made good progress in the last couple of weeks.  The house is mostly dried in now.  All the roof trusses are installed and the OSB sheathing is almost completely installed.  They were moving pretty quickly while we were on site today and by the time we left they had just about reached the peak of the main roof.  They also framed the two front gables and one rear gable which is cool because now the house is actually starting to look like our design.

To give you some perspective on the scale, here's a picture of me standing in what will eventually be a large sliding glass door separating the dining room from the back deck.  Above me is the gable on the guest bedroom on the second floor.

Another perspective shot is below showing me standing in the middle of our three master bedroom windows facing the backyard.  These windows will actually be made up of large rectangular windows with square transom windows on top of them.  The rectangles will be the operable windows and will be about six feet tall from top to bottom.

We're got some family travel starting the end of next week so we probably won't be able to get back up to the job site until the end of the first week in November.  By then the windows should be at least partially installed and the interior framing should be almost complete.  We finalized our fireplace selection this week.  We went with the Heat and Glo Northstar unit for the wood burner in the great room and a slimline gas fireplace for our bedroom.

We are also close to finalizing the interior doors.  We are going to go with Sun Mountain which was one of my suppliers when I had the door shop in San Francisco.  The picture below shows roughly how our doors will look except they will not have grooves in the panel and there won't be an arch on top.  

A roof over our heads?

More progress today up in the hills.  The crane was on site yesterday and the framers boomed all of the garage roof trusses as well as some on the house itself.  It got very windy and they had to shut down the crane operations but will be hopefully finishing up tomorrow afternoon.  They also used the crane to lift up some of the heavy wall sections that had been framed but were too large to be hand positioned.  One of these is the back wall of the great room.  You can see it in the picture below.  The large header above the big framed opening will support the weight of the roof table since so much of that wall will be filled in with windows.  You can also see some of the trusses above the guest room on the upper floor, left side of the picture as well as above the master bedroom & bunk room on the right side.

Below is a picture taken of that same framed great room wall from inside the house standing roughly where the front entry / foyer will flow into the great room.  

This next picture is taken from the front of the lot and shows what the garage looks like with the OSB on the front and shows the height of the main house relative to the garage.  There's still a connector roof that needs to have the trussed set (you can see them sitting on top of the framed front mudroom wall in this picture).

This last picture shows the scissor roof truss that will define the ceiling height / shape for the vaulted area above the great room / foyer.  The height is going to be about 23' above the finished floor.

Vertical progress

Things are really starting to get moving up at 11,400 feet.  After a couple of weeks on the road, I had a chance to head up to the mountains early this morning to see the progress on the framing.  It was very exciting to see the progress and start to really get a sense of the house taking shape on the lot.  

This first photo is taken from the driveway standing about 100' from the front of the house.  You can see that most of the first floor is framed and covered in OSB sheathing.  The breakfast nook is between the garage door and the front door of the house.  There was about four inches of snow on the ground this morning but it was a bright and sunny day today.

Walking around the back of the house, this picture shows the side of the dining room which will have a single swinging door and two windows.  It also shows the back of the house with the framed opening for the large, 4 panel sliding door that will lead to the deck from the back of the dining room.  The great room is still open in the back, the wall is framed but not yet raised into place because it's too heavy to do without a crane.  The right side of the picture shows the three tall windows that are in the master bedroom.

This picture shows those same master bedroom windows taken from a spot inside the great room.  

Taken from the same spot, looking straight out the back of the great room.  On the floor in front of where I'm standing you can see the framed wall that will be lifted into place with the crane on Tuesday. 

Slab & Concrete Flatwork

We made the trip up to Breckenridge this morning with the whole family.  We had thought we were going to see some of the early framing work but as it turns out the framing material has been delivered but there hasn't yet been any actual framing completed.

The picture below shows a picture of the foundation slab taken from a spot inside the back half of the garage.  Natalie is running through the middle of the garage and Isabel is standing roughly where the guest bathroom will be downstairs.

In the last site visit, I had worked with Greg to lay out the perimeter of the back patio where the hot tub and fire pit will sit.  In the picture below you can see that the concrete has been poured based on the layout that we did last week.  The steps to the deck will come down roughly at the edge of the patio.  The hot tub will sit on the square section which extends furthest into the backyard.  The fire pit will be in the middle of the half circle with chairs around it.

This last picture shows the girls all standing where the door between the garage and the mudroom will be.  We are enjoying a beautiful Indian Summer in Colorado.  Today (September 25th) it was nearly 87 degrees in Denver and up the home site it was sunny and in the high 60s.

Final grading & heat tubing

I spent about an hour on the job site today.  Greg was hoping to have the foundation and garage concrete slabs poured but the rain late this week has pushed the pour out to next Tuesday.  He did finish all the site grading (see picture below showing the driveway and front of the lot taken from the street :

It's amazing how much dirt was moved from the front of the foundation to the backyard and also how much had to be trucked out.  When we first bought this land, we figured it was pretty flat.  Now, it's REALLY flat in the front and quite hilly in the back.  We're pretty happy with the way it turned out.  You can see the water well in the front yard to the left of the driveway.  Before the lot was final graded, that pipe was only about 12" out of the ground.  Now it's maybe 5 feet.

I also took the below picture to show where the back deck is going to lay out.  You can see the concrete that will support the deck piers running parallel to the back of the foundation.  The deck will be L shaped with most of it being behind the house and a little wrapping around the dining room towards the garage.

The main reason I went up today was to have a chance to make sure the back patio (concrete off the site of the deck) was going to be big enough before it was formed & poured this week.  Greg and I measured out space for an 8 foot square hot tub and a 42" round fire pit.  You can see in the picture below the orange spray paint is showing the shape of the patio for when the concrete gets poured later this week.

The other thing that I got to see today was the heat tubing that's tied down along the wire mesh on top of the insulation.  This will be for our in-floor radiant heating.  On the main level, we'll have separate zones for our master bedroom, master bathroom, great room, utility room & garage.  Each of these will be controlled by it's own thermostat.

Next time we go up there, there should be a whole lot of framing lumber on the job site and the main floor should be on it's way to getting framed!

Plumbing Rough In

What a difference a few weeks makes.  I drove up to the site today to see how things were going and it's really exciting to start to see the structure take shape.  So far, the lot has been graded, the foundation walls built & insulated, the well has been installed and the plumbing has been roughed in (at least the plumbing that needs to be below the slab).  I took the picture below standing in front of the house between the breakfast area on the left and the corner of the garage on the right.

Now that we have the foundation walls, it's cool to see what some of the views are going to be from the main floor of the house.  The picture below is a little washed out with the sun but it shows the view to Red Peak from the great room.  I took this picture standing on the foundation wall at the back of the house roughly where the large great room windows will be when the house is framed.  Can't wait to see what the views are going to look like from the catwalk and the second floor!

Next week the foundation slab will be poured & insulated along with the tubing for the in floor radiant heating.  Greg expects to start framing shortly after, probably the week of 9/19.

We have foundation walls

Claudia sent us some new pictures this afternoon that show the foundation walls in place.  I think this one is pretty good since it shows the overall footprint of the house.  This is shot from in front of the  garage looking towards the master bedroom at the very end of the house.

As I understand it this is already a little outdated, the backfilling has been done and today they're working on the plumbing rough-in.  I'll head up there sometime in the next few days so I can show some pictures of the well that's been drilled (190') and the temporary pump.

Are you ready for some Foot(ball)ers!

Everybody has been worried about the potential NFL lockout and whether or not we're going to have a football seasons this year.  We have been more worried about when we were going to get our foot-ers formed and poured up in the mountains.  Good news, Greg has made huge progress since we got the permit last Friday and we now have a lot that has been cleared of (gulp) many trees and we have the excavation complete for our footers.  The forms are almost 100% in place and the concrete should be poured tomorrow.  Below is a picture of the hole with a form in it.

To get a sense for the scale of this, here's another picture that shows the twins standing in the front part of the lot.  This is taken with the girls standing next to the concrete piers for the deck and looking towards the front of the lot.

We have a lot of wood to use for firewood after the house is built.  Looks like we'll have to find a friend with a chainsaw who likes to chop and split wood :

Dirt is a flyin'

Well, the mountain house is finally happening after all this time.  We got the building permit yesterday and trees are coming down today!  Here are some photos our builder took for us of all the action:

1) Material for some serious blazing fires in the wintertime:

2)  The makings of our driveway (we think....).  The backhoe is where the house will sit on the lot.

3)  View from the back deck looking east out to Red Mountain 

4)  A girlfriend for Bailey perhaps??

5)  Serious equipment!!  

6)  View from our front porch looking West to Mt. Quandary - the only 14,000 foot peak in Summit County.  The car you see in the picture is on our street - Kimmes Lane

We're hoping to make it up there next week and check it out for ourselves.