Fire!

Monday night Jake casually informed me that our new house almost burned down. I was a little surprised, but not too worried....since he didn't seem to be. Here's the story in Jake's words:

"My dad and I heard fire engine sirens and saw them drive through the street behind our house. Then we heard them again and they were driving on a different street behind the house. We thought, 'That's sad, there's a fire somewhere.' A few minutes later, the fire marshal parked in front of our lot and started a conversation with my dad. I guess one of the neighbors, from across the valley, saw smoke coming from our house and flames inside. She also noticed me and my dad sheeting the roof and thought we were stuck above a terrible house fire. What the neighbor didn't realize was the flames were contained in our fire bucket and the smoke was floating through the unsheeted trusses on top of the house. The fire bucket works like a fireplace for us. We use it to keep warm while we are framing on cold winter days. The helpful neighbor was a little paranoid about house fires, because there was a bad house fire just a few days ago in Ogden. So, it was all just a misunderstanding. Because the helpful neighbor was witnessing this 'tragedy' from across the valley, she couldn't give the fire department a location. That is why they were driving back and forth on the streets behind our house. They could see the smoke but could not find the streets that lead to our house."

Although it was a false alarm, I'm really happy to know that we have observant (albeit distant) neighbors who watch out for our safety and aren't afraid to call for help when needed.

Thank you to whomever you are. This world needs more neighbors like you!

And More Framing
We've made lots of progress since I last wrote. This pic shows the house with most of the exterior walls, but no walls yet for the garage.













Between February 20 (when the picture above was taken) and the 24th when the trusses were set, this is what they accomplished:

Jake and his dad finished the upstairs exterior walls, poured the garage and front porch cement and set whatever trusses they could set without a crane.

This pic was taken on the morning of the 24th, right before the crane came.















Here are a couple of shots of the crane in action:

More Framing
It's been so fun to watch the progress that Jake has made on our house. Last Saturday was his birthday. I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to work on the house. So, we bypassed an opportunity to sleep in and dressed for the cold. We worked on the upstairs (outside) walls. Jake cut the wood and I nailed two by fours and stapled plywood sheeting. (I only made a few mistakes.) I guess I don't have a lot of upper body strength. After three hours, my arms and hands were sore from the weight of the nail gun. I wish I had more free time, because I really enjoyed working on the house. The only part I disliked was sweeping. Why do you have to keep a construction site swept anyway?

FRAMING
We started framing on January 22nd, and here's the progress to date:

This is the view from the back of the house. The basement walls went up very quickly. It's fun to walk through and more easily visualize where certain rooms will be when it's all finished.













This is the view from the front street. You can see that the south walls of the main floor are finished. From the side it looks like a saloon from an old ghost town...with one level and a big panel on the front to make it appear bigger.

So much has happened!
So much has happened since I last wrote...
After the foundation was poured, the forms were removed and then Jake and I removed the 2 X 4's that were lifting the foundation. (That will give us taller ceilings in our basement.) This is how the foundation looked, in all it's glory...













The next step in the process was to fill the foundation. Steve arranged for us to get some dirt from another contstruction site. Here are the piles of dirt, and in the background you can barely see the foundation hiding.














After the backfill was done, this crane poured our basement floor, and the framing could officially begin! This entire process was complete by about January 18th or 19th. Framing began on January 22nd.