Frameophobia

Well, the dreaded time has arrived…we begin framing this week. Although we plan on hiring a couple of workers to help us with some of the more difficult stuff, and we hope to recruit family and friends for some of the repetitive work, the majority of the framing falls on our own shoulders and hopefully DOESN’T fall on our shoulders (hee, hee…cheesy pun intended). We’re scared out of our minds!

As soon as our first round of lumber was dropped off this last week, we used a stencil to spray paint and mark our lumber to hopefully deter any lumber thieves, since we’ve heard of a lot of theft horror stories in the past few months. If it doesn’t work, at least we know we’ve made their lives more difficult since they will have to mark over it all!

So what have we been up to since our waterproofing? See the slide show below…



We had our plumber come out and install our under-slab plumbing, we had the excavator backfill and prep for the concrete slabs, we had the concrete guys POUR the concrete slab, and we ourselves built picnic tables. Wait a second…Picnic tables? Why would we build picnic tables? Because we figured if we couldn’t build picnic tables, then we wouldn’t even attempt the framing. Plus, they make a nice addition (combined with the park-style grills we installed) to our “riparian area” (also known to our boys as “the ditch”)…so we hope we anchored the tables down well enough that the monsoons this year don’t wash them away (if the water even reaches that high).

Along with the tables, we’ve been cleaning out all the dead branches, debris, etc. etc. that was all around the area. It took two trips to the dump, with a 24 foot U-hall truck packed each time to haul away our piles of debris. That day almost killed us! But hey, at least we have a nice little retreat area when we get tired of swinging hammers! Plus the boys got to see a packrat that had been living in a pile of debris. It was so cute that I didn’t have the heart to kill it, but I’m sure our neighbors would rather that I would have.

Because of a miscommunication with our subs, we at one point ended up having to compact some soil in a deep plumbing trench. I think people must have been laughing their heads off as they drove by and witnessed Melissa and I trying to haul a 200 pound rammer tamp up through trenches and up to the back of our house. Or, maybe the people at the rental store laughed even harder when I crammed this massive thing into the front passenger seat of my Mazda hatchback, pinning Darren into his car seat behind it. Or maybe our next door neighbors laughed even harder when they saw the thing whipping me around until I was able to learn how to maneuver it. But, we did what we needed to do all in an evening (and made a deal with our concrete guy for a small unfinished portion), and I’m sure we’ll laugh about it pretty hard ourselves someday.

Since the picnic tables turned out fairly nice (with some good lessons learned), we figure we can now attempt the house! Famous last words? We’ll keep you posted…