Memorial Day Weekend

Since we had a light rain at the end of the week, we decided to skip work Friday evening and just take care of some burning. It was actually pretty relaxing just sitting around the fire:

We were there awhile...

Chatting with my Dad about electrical plans for the house!

The next morning we returned for a long, hot day of work doing more ply-wood stuff:

Ken moved the windows down a bit

Still loving the new house colors!

Bathroom window

Sweaty

 Pandora is what gets us through the day. Today we were bumpin' R.E.M.

I spent my day climbing up and down the ladder, nailing the ply-wood with a (heavy) nail gun.

View of the house as of Saturday. Now that the ply-wood has been hung, it will look like this for awhile...

Sunday we took the day off to do a little of this:

(Boy in the blue is Ian!)

Can you tell Nat is a cheerleader with all that air?

That's some good form...

On Monday, it was business as usual. We continued our work from Saturday, doing the same thing; more nailing, more hammering, more cutting:

Banging in some nails

Filling in the ply-wood gaps

I am still sore today from all that overhead work. (Have I mentioned the nail gun is heavy?) I am only about halfway nailing, and I definitely have my work cut out for me. Ken finished what he was doing with ply-wood, and has moved on to building the staircase for the bonus room. You know what I'll be doing the next several days...

Garage sheeting

Yesterday we were rested up and ready to knock out some more work. (Well, I was ready. Because I certainly couldn't get in the groove Saturday...) So after having our usual Sunday morning Cuban coffee, we were ready to get down to business. We began hanging ply-wood, and we started with the garage:

Ken hung all the ply-wood, and I filled in the rest of the nails that needed to be placed. 

In order to hang the ply-wood on the bonus room walls, I had to climb up the ladder to crawl inside while Ken hoisted up the boards. This was my view from up there.

Going up the ladder was no biggie. But getting back down made my heart race a little. (Must I remind you how scared of heights I am? :) This step is by far the scariest! Worst part was even after shaking the ladder a bit back and forth to make sure it wouldn't budge I climbed on to it, moved down about two steps, and it slid on me! (a few inches, a foot, who knows...) I was still high enough to grab on to the 2x6 to catch myself, but my heart was pounding for a good minute and I was shaking even when I got down. Scared the beJesus out of me!

Ken was a master nailer, and he feared no heights nor the ladder.

There was a lot of nailing to do, so that's where I come in:

That nail gun became pretty heavy quickly, especially because of the awkward way of holding it. I'm still a little sore today!

I was not a very good nailer; I would make a lousy framer! As you can guess, those nails were supposed to end up in that 2x6 stud, and not on the outside of it :) I had to bang these nails out and go back and re-do them (a lot of them). It took me awhile to get the hang of it, and it was pretty frustrating. It was hard to determine the correct angle of shooting, since there was variation on every stud. I can't even imagine how many nails I wasted. Not to mention, there are a ton of holes in those boards now, where I had to remove the bad shoots.

This is also an example of "what not to do", lol. The place where two boards were nailed to the same stud was most difficult, because this is where angling the nails just right was important. Nails had to be placed about 4" apart on the seams, and every 8" on the studs. Sidenote: See the nail hole I was talking about? There are many more where that came from...

Here is an example of me getting the hang of it!

We had more visitors today- Wes and Sonya were nice enough to brave the heat and come out and see us. They were also sweet enough to bring this lemonade. Boy this stuff was good (and much needed in the 93° heat!) 

Hot half day

Since the guys Ken hired to help complete the roof decking finished it all by the end of the week, it was time to lay the roofing felt (AKA tar paper). Ken wanted to knock it all out in one day, and luckily him and Ian were able to do it all yesterday- before 2pm! This was not an easy task; it was 93°, and working with that black paper made it that much hotter. I was on the ground and could see the heat coming off the paper! They would unroll an entire spool of it and it would still be fairly cool, but when they went back to nail it off, they actually burned their hands. 

They worked pretty quick; they used up all 5 rolls of paper we had, and I had to run to Home Depot twice for more.

Ken, papering the dormer.

Ian, trimming up the edges

Hans and his boys stopped by! Unexpected but welcomed surprise :)

Feet dangling from bonus room

Ian up above

Also, it's about that time we decide on a window design. Should we go with muntins, or without? We're leaning towards the muntins...

With muntins

Without

It looks like a house

Remember when the house looked like this, just last week?

This is what it looked like when I drove up last Saturday:

 It looks like an actual house now. With a roof. And shape.

 In this photo, you can see the spot above the garage where the dormer will eventually be built. This will be a part of the bonus room, to be completed later.

There's Ken, nailing it all together.

Front door. You can almost see straight through the entire length of the house, almost like a "shotgun" house. 

A porch will soon be built

I decided to be brave and climb up on the roof for a better view.

Climbing up wasn't so bad, but once I got up there and realized I had to move around is when the nerves set in. So, I sat here awhile. The view wasn't so bad :)

I'm not sure Ken could have been more comfortable up there

Remember that backyard? We sure do miss that pool... It's hard to get work done when you can hear splashing coming from the next yard over.

This is what the neighbor's yard looks like who lives behind us. Hence the need for planting a fast-growing plant along that fence!

Ken had the camera at this point, since I wasn't budging from my spot 

Garage. Decking for above bonus room to be laid next week.

View of master bedroom, looking in from back porch.

Master bedroom on left, living room on right. View from back porch

View from back of garage

Dining room, kitchen, bedroom on the left. Living room on right. View from master bedroom.

Bonus room above.

Dining room on left, kitchen on right. View from living room.

View from kitchen window.

What long day would be complete without some fire burning?