This is a big one!

A lot has happened in the shared Jones/McCarthy household over the last two weeks and so I haven't had an opportunity to post pictures of the house. Ryan is coming right along with the siding and the house has been insulated and the drywall has been hung. They are in the process of taping the walls and should be done be the end of the week. Part of the drywall package was to sand and prime the walls too, so that should be done next week. Then we need some serious cleaning to get rid of all the drywall dust before we paint!! Here are a lot of photos!


We're further along than this now...this gable end is completely finished and the other gable end is almost done. The first floor on the back and portions of the garage are done too - just no photos of that yet.

The family of turkeys that visited daily through the month of September. There were two adults and a million "babies" - they're not so small anymore in this picture.

Spraying the insulation. Thank goodness it was a cool day, this poor guy was in a full body suit!

Yes, this is the drywall mud! Thank GOD we're not taping it ourselves!

And the 16 foot sheets of drywall make me even more grateful that someone else is doing the drywall!

Garage...kind of a funky ceiling in order to get the geothermal heat up above the garage.

Mudroom.

Hallway looking from mudroom into kitchen.

Looking into the family room from the front entry. I have no idea what we'll put in this skinny little nook on the wall, but we thought it would be a cool built-in - anyone have ideas? It's kind of narrow for pictures...

Family room.

Looking into the hearth room from the kitchen...ASIDE: We've been made fun of for calling this the hearth room like we're some fancy schmancy people instead of a carpenter and an environmentalist so I feel the need to explain the origin of the term "hearth room". It was late one night after a marathon CAD session re-doing the floor plan (yet again). We had been looking over numerous custom home floor plans that Ryan had built and made fun of the term "hearth room", wondering why they just didn't call it a living room. So, delerious with plan revisions, when we labeled each room on the set of plans, we jokingly labeled it hearth room...well it stuck. And now when we try to call it the living room, we get confused about which room we're talking about - the family room or the hearth room. So it's the hearth room. Make fun of us if you must!

Kitchen

More kitchen - this is where the fridge will go and the doorway leads into the pantry. The built-in on top of the fridge is a shelf for cook books.

Hallway looking from the kitchen into the mudroom.

Looking from the family room into the front entry.

Brody's play nook!

Going upstairs from the living room...just testing you there! See, when I say living room you don't know if I mean family room or hearth room! The stairs go up in the family room.

Master bedroom with a peak into the master bath.

Brody's room.

Brody's bathroom.

Closet.

Looking at the window above the stairs from the second floor landing.

And now...the moment you've all been waiting for...

...SIDING!
OK, maybe we're the only ones who have been waiting for this moment, but the siding is going up. Ryan started with the largest and most difficult side of the house - just to get it over with. It was slow going to start, but Ryan has figured out a system for cutting the trim and now he's on a roll.

This is the newest NASA space station that resides in our basement. This thing is huge! It's the heat pump for the geothermoal system with the HVAC trunks attached. Thankfully Ryan is building walls around the mechanical room in the basement so we don't have to be blinded by it's super reflective shell everytime we turn on the basement light!

And our enormous gray bullet of a hot water tank. Yes, that's right it's as tall as Ryan. We've never seen a water heater this big and had no idea it would be this size.

Subcontractors...

So I have mixed emotions about subcontractors. On the one hand, they're great because they come in and do work so we don't have to...On the other hand, they make a terrible mess, they don't really care about the house, they aren't nearly as careful as we are, and sometimes they just don't show up. It's a love-hate relationship. Regardless, the plumbing, heating, and electrical are well on their way. The rough plumbing was finished and inspected last week. The rough electrical is supposed to be finished and inspected tomorrow. And the heat...let's just say that the heat is in progress - we went from a crew of 4 down to a crew of 1 today. Rough heating may take a bit longer than anticipated. We'll see.

On a more optimistic note...Ryan installed the front door knob - very exciting! And even more exciting is that we can now completely lock up the house. Ryan and I spent the day on Monday installing siding and at the rate we're going, it might actually be done by 2012! Seriously, there is so much siding and I didn't realize how complicated it is to install vinyl siding and try to have it not look like vinyl siding. I have complete faith in Ryan that he will make it look beautiful...and he will hopefully be done by the time the drywallers have wrapped up so he can start on interior finish work! So here are some pictures to enjoy...if you like wire and PVC pipes!


Our front door...outside


Front door...inside

Lots of wires.

Lots of plumbing

And shiny metallic heat ducts.