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.