Third floor framing

We had a great weekend in Anchorage watching Shiway and Dave get married and visiting with so many very close, now far-flung friends. It was good to reconnect and meet the newest members of the pack. 2006 produced an excellent and very adorable crop of babies! Speaking of babies, we should get a word or two in about the 2007 crop. Our first order of business upon returning home was our 20 week ultrasound on Monday. 2007 is looking to be another excellent year. The baby looks great, healthy, with the usual compliment of arms, legs, hands, feet, head, etc. It's bigger than average at this point...slow down little baby! (This does help explain something...I've been feeling movements for the last two or three weeks that other moms were telling me weren't baby movements, that they were too strong (and probably gas)...that what I should be looking for is a little "fluttering" of "butterfly wings". What I was feeling was a definite "poking" of something resembling what I would describe as a "foot". Turns out baby skipped right over butterfly wings and went straight for kicking and poking-looks like baby got Max's legs! It's fun now that Max can feel the kicks too.

Back to the ultrasound...before we walked into the room we hadn't decided whether we wanted to know the gender or not. This got a laugh from our usually stoic ultrasound doc. He agreed to put it off until the end so we could make up our minds. In the end, I'll put this one on Max...he couldn't resist :)


Moving on to the house...we saw the third floor go up over the last week. The house is starting to look pretty tall, and the view from the third floor windows really puts you in the birch canopy! Beautiful! We love how it's turning out so far. Here's a view from the driveway showing the main door on the middle floor and the master and guest bedrooms on the top left. We borrowed the three-side-by-side window arrangement used in both bedrooms from Adam and Danica's current house plans and we love them! Thanks again you two! The exterior of the house gets wrapped in a black waterproof adhesive sheeting. Not very pretty, but it'll soon be covered up with insulation and siding.



This is looking into the SW corner of the main living floor. On the right is the framed-in doorway to the basement stairs and on the left is the wall between the kitchen and the back room.

Here's the living room (taken from the kitchen) with the back door to the future deck on the right. The wood stove will be centered between the two windows, just to the left of the trash can. We're looking forward to spending lots of time in front of the stove watching birds, moose, trees, and snowstorms out these windows!

By the end of the week the guys were moving roofing materials up to the top floor. Now that August is here we can expect plenty more rain, so the plan for this week is to get the roof on before finishing the interior walls. Behind the action you can see the windows of the upstairs bathroom.

The trusses were delivered on Friday and we should have a roof by sometime mid-week. Soon Max can take a break from sweeping puddles off the exposed floors after every rainfall, and we can stop worrying about swelling wood!