Raising The Roof....

 The pile of of wood is looking like a home.... The framers got a ton done this week.  The peeks look good, the rooms are in place!

We met with our PM Friday morning.... we went over a bunch of concerns... including some broken windows, crooked windows, some bad wood and some gaps in the walls... turns out most of our concerns we didn't need to worry about.  The PM was on top of them and indicated he'd be doing a full walk through that would catch all of the things we were worried about.

The below are all the newest pics:

Front of house from street

Waterfall stairs from foyer

 

Looking up at the second floor

Looking into the family room from the kitchen

Looking at kitchen from laundry room

Morning room from kitchen

Kitchen from family room

Kitchen from family room

Office from foyer

Foyer from upstairs hall

Foyer and upper window (with idiot balancing on boards) from upstairs hall.

Master bedroom from top of the stairs

Master bath tub from entrance

Back of house

Second Floor Looking Good :)

Hi Hun Bun, thanks for the pics.... I miss you down here in DC.... cant wait to get home :) 

The pics Donna sent me look great....The second floor is going up!   We're running into a few issues with the broken windows and gaps in the plywood and walls.... but we think our PM will be able to handle it (we're meeting with him on friday).  We're hoping to see the finished framed structure by friday..... and by next week we should have our pre drywall meeting scheduled.... things are coming along nicely...below are some pics of the progress over the past couple days.

HAS ANYONE HAD BROKEN GLASS ISSUES WITH INSTALLATION????

I havent read on too many blogs that windows have been damaged or broken while being installed, but I think this is a little excessive that five of our downstairs windows have been broken already during installation and the 6 of plastic pieces to push the window down have been bent. I know Ryan will fix them , but it seems excessive  (or careless by the workers )that so many are broken. That is only our downstairs too!! Our upstairs windows have not been installed as of yet .. has anyone had issue with lots of their glass or windows being damaged during installation??? Please let us know?? Also is it typical that they install the downstairs windows before building the second story????

First floor framing.... looks good!

We are so excited to see our first floor framing going up... and it went up fast ... in just a day... Ryan homes delivers the framing in pieces that are prefabricated at their factory.  So putting up the walls is just a matter of putting the puzzle pieces together. 

The second floor should go up on monday or tuesday... at which point we'll really be able to see the house coming together....

Below are the latest pics...

From the street...and from the back yard

From the front door foyer...

and looking up from the foyer to the second floor....second floor not yet framed :)

Looking into the office from the foyer...

As your enter the kitchen...

From the kitchen looking into the morning room

And finally... from the kitchen looking into the family room.

Waterproofing, Grading and a Start to Framing.

Ok three items on the agenda for todays blog:

1) Our waterproofing (sorry no pic... they back filled so quickly)...

In the model homes and selection centers they advertise their use of delta-ms.  Delta-MS is a dimpled waterproofing system applied to the exterior foundation walls which is supposed to aid in prevention of water penetration.... (see www.delta-ms.com).... Now this all sounds really cool... however what was applied to the outside of our house doesnt seem to be delta-ms....which is a brown colored sheeting that says delta-ms on it... what was applied to our house was a gray sheeting that doesnt have any brand label on it....

While exploring the delta products website I came across one of their products called delta-fl which is used on basement floors as a vapor barrier.....so, did they use delta-fl on our exterior walls...or did they use some other unknown product?

Now the question is is delta-fl suitable for exterior foundation walls (I've sent that question to the delta folks via an email) any body here know the answer?  and if Ryan didnt use delta-fl what is the gray sheeting they used.... it doesnt seem to be the delta-ms they advertise....any ideas?


2) Grading

They did they grading this week.   The PM thinks it looks great.... we like it but we think the back yard is a little steep and the driveway is a bit steep now too... We called the PM to let him know we are looking for a bit of a change in the grading... he seemed ok with changing it a bit but wants to hold off till the framers have finished....  we also noticed a lot (I'm talking a lot!) of small to medium sized stones in the yard that can not be there when grass comes in and we start mowing... the PM informed us there would be a fine grading later that should take care of most of these stones.... So the grading is a project that is not done yet....

3) The First floor flooring is framed....

We were happy to see that the framers had put on the first floor floor... standing on the floor and looking out over the lot the steeper grading does give us the feeling of standing up really high which we like a lot.... but we want a balance between aesthetics and functionality... so once again the grading is yet to be finished... we'll revisit it soon :)

Basement walls and Rough Grading set

This Friday we met with our PM and his Boss.... (Our PM brought his boss along for back up)... anyway we had a bit of a discussion regarding the recent going ons at our lot... we expressed our concerns about the amount or lack of work that had been accomplished over the past several weeks... we also mentioned that we though that there might be some corner cutting going on (i.e see our previous post about the missing gravel)... Se we hashed all this out... stone should be coming, its was never not coming.... our PM is going to do a better job contacting us when things are not going according to plan.... and due to our PMs work load an "assistant PM" is going to be helping him out.... which should provide our lot with a little more overall attention :) we also agreed to a couple firm milestones, our PM informed us that by no later than Sept 30th he would give us a firm end data that would be not later than Nov 30th!.

This all sounds good to us and we look forward to smooth sailing from here on out ;) (that's a bit of a sarcastic wink and smile, we think there will be more problems and these dates will be hard to hold, but we have hope)

So the other item on Fridays meeting was to set the grade.... Donna and I want the back of our house to sit high off the ground. At the morning room we wanted about 3 to 4 feet of the foundation showing above the ground.... at the front we were a little less concerned but wanted a couple feet of foundation showing.... So going around the house our PM was apprehensive about putting the grade at the level we wanted... right now its set at about 2 - 3 feet in the back and at about 1 to 1.5 feet in the front... This all looked good that the time but the more Donna and I thought about it the more we think the grade can go lower... so we plan to give our PM a call tomorrow to see if he can lower it about a foot in the back and 6 inches in the front. Finally.... the foundation walls look great... a few pics below...