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!