September 7th - Second house to be inspected

We were 4 months into our project, first and second houses inspected, and ours was the main project at this point. Our floor was sheeted, our stairs were done (one of the projects Skylar and I always do) and the fourth house was just about at the same point. 

There were some issues with flooring our house. We were still working on the roof of the second house so I'm not entirely sure what all the issues were but apparently the house is too long front to back to have the normal floor joists put in, so they had to use 2 floor joists staggered in the middle sitting on top of the basement wall. That's why that wall is there! Also the sheets were a different size than normal, or something like that, so it didn't line up as well as the homes' sheeting. BUT it worked out and we are grateful to our soon to be neighbors for working so hard to finish it all up.

Stairs down to the basement that Skylar and I built!

This is our neighbors' sheeted floor. Again, at about the same point as ours was at this time in the project, and just below that is the first house we started working on waiting for finish work.

Our garage! Not entirely sure why it is so high up but that's just how it goes.

August 3rd - Floor on our home started

August 3rd! We were soon approaching our 2 month anniversary of starting on the houses. The next week the first house was getting inspected, the second house had walls up and our house had the floor joists finished so we could start sheeting the floor. 

That's right. I was up on the first roof waiting to help Skylar finish shingles on the first home.

Sheeting for the floor precariously placed on top of the floor. Our house is pretty high up. Those sheets had a good several feet to fall and kill someone if the wind blew hard enough. And it gets pretty windy out in Saratoga.

July 13th - Started basement walls at our home

This was the 1 month mark of starting on the house projects. We were almost to the point on the first house where the inspector would come, we had started on the second house and our house. Like I said, we had to shuffle a little bit. Here are some quick pictures of Skylar working on our basement walls.

June 29th - What our house could look like

The first picture shown below is a porch cap. Our porch cap to be precise. All of the house plans so far have cold storage under the porch, which means it's hollow under the porch. So how do you pour the cement on to the cold storage with out it seeping through you ask? You build a porch cap! You lay 2x6s across the hole, support them with 2x4s and lay sheeting on top. 

This shows the sheeting on top.

Here is the entrance to the cold storage and you can see some of the 2x4s supporting the sheeting/2x6s.

Another view. As if there weren't enough pictures of this already.

One of the nice things about Self-Help is that you are almost guaranteed to be able to find your house plan somewhere else in Utah County. Why is that nice? Because then you can actually go and look at the finished product instead of a house plan. 

When we first applied there was a home in Payson that was the same house plan as ours but we didn't take any pictures. When we knew for sure we were a part of the program, we found another home in Heber with the Jamestown house plan, the same as ours and went to look at it.

In our particular group, we already had house plans assigned to the lots. In some groups you can choose what plan you want but we were very happy with the house plan that was previously decided for our lot. Here are some pictures from the Heber house:

Front room

Upstairs bathroom

Upstairs bedroom

Kitchen

Dining room

Master

Walk in closet

Cold storage

Unfinished basement. Our basement will also be unfinished when we move in

This home was on a bigger lot than ours, so the home was bigger but still it gives a good idea of what our home will look like!

June 21st - Basement poured!

This was only a few weeks into construction but our basement concrete was poured which meant we could have started basement walls on our house, BUT our house is 3rd on the list for completion.

Each house is given a priority. I honestly have no idea what determines the priority but that is the order we follow on the houses. We start on the first house, get that home to the point where we can have an inspector come along with an electrician, dry wallers, plumber, and HVAC, and once we pass inspection, we move on to the next house while sub-contractors begin some of the work we do not do. AKA stucco, the aforementioned, more finishing work. After all the houses are at that point, we go back to the first house, do all the finishing work and we're done! On that house...then we go down the line of the priority. Here's the kicker, even if your house is done, you can't move in. No one moves in until all the houses are finished.

As I've said previously, the above is what is lined out, however, we've had to move people around depending on how quickly we finish tasks and possibly start on another house before the previous home was to the point where it would be inspected. Since we all have to work 35 hours per family, we've needed to move around to make sure everyone has enough work to do. Not that there isn't enough work, there's plenty, but a lot of the time one job depends on another job's completion. If it isn't complete, we have to find something else to work on. 

Every room downstairs! Nothing is separated by walls yet

There were tumbleweeds everywhere! I was being artistic in the garage.

The back room Skylar wants to turn into a home theater

Our neighbors foundation. And of course the killer view.

Driveway

Our walkway! But alas, no house yet

June 8th - House pictures and explanation of the program

This is being written retrospectively so I hope that I can remember 4 or 5 months previous to this post. Construction, meaning us going to the home and working, was slated to begin on 15th of June. These pictures were from the week before on our house.

This is the general set-up of the program: A collection of families apply and qualify to participate in Self-Help Homes. We contractually agree to work a certain number of hours per week on all of our houses. Yes, all of the houses. We have 5 families in our group, which means we build 5 houses. There are 2 teams: a framing team (green plate, floor joists, rim board, walls, roofing) and a punchlist team (everything else, you wouldn't think there is much else, but you would be surprised). 

Because our group is so small, we trade off a lot of these tasks and don't stick so adamantly to "teams" we were assigned to. So much depends on what hours we work on the houses during the day, individual strengths, previous experience, etc. 

Before we even started, we had our assignments. And the next week, we started working!

Our foundation! It was starting to look like a house. Well, at least an unfinished basement.

Not sure what that is. I just asked Skylar if it was underwear and he had no idea. Apparently he took the picture to remember to look at it and then forgot.

This is the cold storage in the basement of our house. The porch cap, which covers the cold storage, was one of the first things Skylar and I worked on. Not on our house though...on another homeowner's house.

Cohen looking cute as ever and me with a tire around my waist in the early stages of pregnancy. We found out about the house and the baby with in the same week of each other.

My safety glasses! I had huge ones that covered my eye glasses. And I never wore them.