thursday, august 28 report

here's the front- coming right along, the porch looks great! yup, that lovely glow is the fire.... very smoky, but high, not settled near the ground.


















looking from the front door back to the kitchen. stairs to the left, and the wall behind the cooler will be solid- the windows are the enclosed back porch (legacy of our necessary additional 6 feet to meet the seemingly non existant covenants). it will be a nice place to put a couch & hang, and we're thinking a shower pan & nozzle on the other side for- oh, muddy dogs, wet boots, etc.

















view from the master bedroom. (the trailer will go away at some point!- the smoke too, pretty sure). big window to be walk out deck somewhere down the road.



















here's the back of the house. it looks big, but you can see it's just that it's the only 2 story on the block..... will finish out to around 1600 sq feet. steve's coming out the back porch- you can see the windows where there will be a sitting area to his left. kitchen sink will be under the smaller window a bit further back, and the 3 grouped windows are where the table will be.
















from the field behind- you can see the roof color & that, even tho we're taller then the neighbors they take up more lot space, being all of the living space is on one floor.

if ever we get the garage built, it will be to the left of the house.

we got the bathrooms laid out, had some help figuring out the master bath. we were given a nice big deep tub and since the house is so narrow it makes things kind of cramped. there are some code requirements about how much room there needs to be around the commode.

after figuring that out & putting in the sink the storage space to the side of the tub was pretty inaccesible. i thought it would be better to put the linen closet in the master & the framer came up with the idea of moving the door & building a vanity so we'd have storage under the sink. brilliant!

anyway- steve will be up painting this weekend- will post the paint chips here shortly.

So, here is the latest on the Fairfield house. In one week we've gone from the ground floor being just started to the whole thing almost completely framed in. Only missing some sheeting on half of the trusses and a few small interior walls. As you will see. Like any house the framing goes fast and it really looks like major progress, which it is to some extent. But when we move inside that is when it slooows down. Although this might be a little quicker due to it being a small house and nothing complex.
























See. Open roof and no interior walls upstairs, yet. Next week will be bathroom walls framed in.

This is upstairs standing at the street end looking to the windows in what will be the master bedroom. The really large window in the center will someday be french doors that go out onto an upstairs deck.























And this is the view of the mountains.

The altitude at the house is a shade over 5200 feet. The mountains go to 10,000 feet. Some smoke in the air due to a lightning caused fire that is 20 or 30 miles away as the crow flies. At this time the forest service is letting it burn.






















This is a shot looking out to the front door.






















And now looking out to the back door and what will be the kitchen.

That's about it for this week. Hope to start painting the outside next weekend. Labor Day weekend, so that means 3 days of time to work on it. Maybe even time to go downtown and see what the locals do on a weekend night. This place is very quiet. Hard to believe it is even a town, it is that quiet on Saturday nights. Maybe Friday nights are livelier when the school has a football game. We'll see. Oh, and quiet is a very good thing. Stay tuned.

August 16- Materials Delivered

we have wood! and half of a floor! going up quick, it is. steve very pleased with the grading on the lot. things progressing well.



















this is the house next door. it's for sale, currently rented out. you can see most of the houses are one story, garage forward types.



















here is home away from home until we can camp in the house. cute little 50s trailer borrowed from john & kathleen. it has electricity & gets good cross ventilation. halle & echo can sleep in the kid's bed made by taking out the table...... tho of course she isn't happy unless she sleeps with us at least part of the night......

August 3- Foundation

the foundation was poured last week. i am standing at the back of the house, echo is where the front porch will be. we were asked to wrap it around so the house didn't look so skinny, so that's what we're doing.

after the plans were approved by the city, we were contacted by someone purporting to be from the subdivision enforcing convenants. which was funny, because steve asked specifically, and the realtor checked and we found no record of any filed. the city clerk couldn't find any either.

we were told we didn't have enough sq footage on the ground floor. they allow double wides, and those ugly homes with the garages way out front, but our cute 2 story (though bigger overall than some of the neighbor's homes) was not OK.

we were faxed a copy of the covenants- not a notarized, this was filed with the county on such and such a date & time copy, but a copy without even a date or signature on it, and with the name of one sub crossed out & ours handwritten in.

after we thought about what we could do with 6 more feet off the back of the house (windows to the mountains, place behind the kitchen to hang out & lots of hooks & stuff for equipment & clothing on the other end by the utility room) we decided to go ahead & go bigger anyway. this is where we were asked to wrap the porch too, to make the house look wider. we're seriously hoping this is the end of the "covenant" requests, because we still haven't found it filed anywhere and aren't quite sure how binding anything is. if we keep getting requests that cost us money, we might be finding out.

















from the back of the house looking to the street. there's another lot to the left, the rest is built.

more to follow.

the site

here's the view from the back of the lot. we're in a small subdivision. have been told that the area behind, though surveyed, is too wet to build on- it collects snow run off.

hope that's true- if not, we can always add the balcony off the master bedroom.

floor plans & elevations