October 5th - Roof sheeted (ready for shingles!)

Now that you see the sheeting on the roof, can you appreciate the importance of trusses? And the need for them to be laid out correctly? Well even if you can't it's important. 

After you fly trusses, you sheet the roof, straighten up a bunch of stuff I don't even know about because I don't do that, build facia (gives a clean edge to the sides of the roof), any other build-ups that need to be done (our roof had several) and THEN you can start shingling the roof. 

Skylar worked on the roof that Saturday and I was quite annoyed because the windows that were supposed to be delivered the day before were still not there. I had to find lots of random things to do and ended up leaving earlier than normal and for good reason: I didn't have much else to do at that point in time AND it was General Conference! I went and got us ready to head up to Brigham City to spend time with the fam.

This is what the house looked like at the start of the day:

Hey look! There's a porch on that porch cap now!

Bathtub

Back of the master bathtub

There's even some water in it already...yuck

This is the top of the pantry. See that big bird nest of 2x4s? Skylar's doing. Although it needed to be done so that the sheet rock can be installed correctly. It just looks silly now.

This bad boy goes on the roof! There are pseudo windows on our roof. Pseudo because there isn't actually a room up there. It's just for decoration

What's all that crap on the peak you ask? Shingles! And other roofing materials.

And this is what the house looked like by the end of that Saturday:

That little build up is where the windows go. Also notice that the rest of the sheeting was put on!

September 21st - Truss Day!

Truss day is a wonderful day. I love it for several reasons: 1) We get seemingly a lot done in a short amount of time (2ish hours). Before we fly trusses, the house just looks like a bunch of walls standing on a foundation, because well that's exactly what it is. Afterward, it really looks like a house. It's just so nice to see everything coming to fruition. 2) Generally for me, it's an easy day. I'll explain more about that later. 

Some background on trusses. It can be very dangerous. You have to take some precautions otherwise you could end up in the hospital and worse, the morgue. (Not to be too dramatic). This is the basic process: Lumber company drops off your trusses (def: rafters that support a roof), you arrange them on the ground to make it easier (and faster) for the crane to lift them up and set them on the walls of the house. Some trusses you have to prep, meaning, sheet them. Usually those are the trusses on the very outside of the house (on the front porch, on the garage, on the sides of the house). The crane comes once everything is ready with the house and trusses. A ground crew (which I usually am a part of) attaches the chains on the crane to the trusses, the crane lifts them and the flying crew stands on the walls of the house, nails the trusses in where they go and braces them so the trusses don't fall over. As you can imagine if it is windy, or the trusses aren't hooked up correctly, it can be pretty scary. Groud crew ALWAYS wears hard hats and the flying crew has to be super aware of where the trusses are coming down at.

This was Skylar's first time flying trusses, he had to work during the time we were flying on the other 2 houses and he was up on the walls. Good thing he was there because our good friend Adam who I am so happy is in our group got smacked in the head with a 2x4 an hour before the crane was supposed to get there and ended up leaving to get his head stapled back up. He came back. Trooper doesn't begin to explain it.

Adam has quite the history with truss day. On our very first time flying, he shot himself in the arm with a nail gun. The second house nothing significant happened. On our house, the third house, his head cracked open. If the pattern continues, his house, the fifth house, there should be some crazy incident on truss day for him. Poor guy.

On to the pictures!

Skylar is in the red hard hat bracing the trusses across the middle

On the left: Brandon and Adam (post head-stapling)

On the right: Nathan (our supervisor who teaches us everything) and Skylar

JC is in the blue hard hat, our next door neighbor. He's legally blind so he doesn't do much climbing

You can see the trusses laid out on the ground. This is what it looks like as they are first being lifted into position

JC has a guide rope tied around the trusses to help maneuver them to the correct place on the house

After all the trusses were on the house!

Skylar looking excited to be close to done after standing on the walls for 2+ hours

The finished product! (More or less)

Our view from the kitchen

September 18th - Walls are up!

Our house was just about ready for truss flying! (Curious as to what that is? See the next post!) Most of the walls were up, just the garage was left to finish. We were getting ready to start the punch list, all the little things to finish before inspection, get the roof started once the trusses were on and have the framing team move on to...drum roll please...the FOURTH house! We were getting faster and sometimes better at getting the houses up and ready. Each house presented its own problems, ours in particular.

It's so exciting to see the pictures below! We're getting so close and it's crazy now to think, this will be our house soon!

Front of the house

Front room

Front room/kitchen just behind it

Front closet

Kitchen/dining room

Front bedroom (more than likely Cohen's!)

Back bedroom

Side of the front room and half wall for the stairs

Master

Master

Master

Garage

Kitchen

Garage

Side of the house where the garage is at

Back of the house

Another view of the back

Side of the house