Gma's Pics

From 2 weeks ago...

"Man building a house is hard work!"

The building of the porch continues...

I can see why a truely custom home costs so much. If we were paying Eric, we'd be broke due to the man hours on the porch. But, it is coming along and looking fabulous. I can't wait for it to be finished...
Elena slept well at the house Saturday morning. I got to help make the trusses for the gable portion of the porch.

It gets dark pretty early now. This is Eric's and my wild Saturday night.

The end of the day Saturday.

A view from the lift Sunday after all the trusses were up.

At the end of day Sunday Eric got most of the roof sheathed. We just need 2 more sheets of plywood.

Elena's Touring Weekend

We took this weekend off the house to do some traveling with Elena. Friday night we cruised down to Frankfort. On Saturday, Elena attended cousin Kyle's game, her first high school football game and also celebrated cousin Sara's birthday. Then it was off to Evanston to visit Team Gemo. After a fabulous night of socializing, Elena slept through her first ride down Lake Shore Drive on the way to Indy. In Indy she got to meet a few friends, but not quite everyone on this trip. She also got to stay in her first hotel room. On the way home, she stopped by her other cousins' house in Rockford, so Daddy could change the oil in his motorcycle and take it for a short ride.

"You guys can sleep in the pack and play. I'm taking this bed!"

"Who needs strollers? These things carry so much more!"

Extra! Extra!

Suddenly, we have materials coming in all over. We have exterior trim I need to paint. We have the porch lumber. We have the sheet metal for the porch roof all broken up in standing seam style. We have a bunch of electric stuff. The steel doors are in at Menards. We still have roofing stuff because he still hasn't finished (The contractor still needs to do more flashing yet...) The siding was suppose to be delivered Wed, but we pushed it of until next Wednesday so Eric can make room. We have the soffit material ready to go. The columns for the porch got delivered twice yesterday... Once around 2pm the semi showed up and we unloaded our 500 lbs skid (6 columns) with the neighbor's skid loader. Then around 4pm we got a call from another shipping company driver who was 30 minutes away with my shipment of columns... Since these boxes actually said the names of the columns I purchased we took those too, but they are actually the same thing packaged under a different name. (The company is going to come pick them up...darn.) Eric's goal is to get the porch framed this week, and start siding next week. My plan is to get the trim painted and then I get to hang fixture boxes.

Here's el niche. The elliptical will be cut out...but that one looks too steep. So we get to stare at it for a few days and then decide on it. What do you think?

I'm overly super excited about the open hub grilles on the transom...so I had to include the picture.

This is me working at the house... well trying to work, but it turns into this more often than not. Isn't she adorable? I tried a less expensive carrier, but it was way uncomfortable. This one is worth every penny.

It's electric!

The electrician (aka my dad) and mom were up this weekend. First things first, we got the outlets in the garage wired and the garage door opener installed and working. We also got a majority of the boxes installed. Now we just have to run miles of wire...

We have working water! This is our well pump. It is a constant pressure system. We set the water pressure then if one person is showering and someone else decides to water the lawn the pump speeds up to maintain the set pressure. We also have the septic tank hooked up to the panel and it should work, but we have nothing to test it with...well no fixture that is...
And here's a picture of Elena watching me, but pretending to sleep. It's amazing how early you learn that trick when someone has a camera...

Prices not always as they appear at Home Depot

We went to order the garage doors at Home Depot a few Saturdays ago. On their display, the solid door is roughly $900 and the window panel says $300 (Prices are rough guesses. I don't quite remember.) So we go to order it thinking it should cost $1200 and the price is actually somewhere around $1500? What? That is not what the sign says. "Well since it is a special order we don't get as good of discounts from the manufacturer." "Okay but the sign says the door is this and the window panel is this. What are those prices then?" "Well you could order it separate like that but you'd have an extra panel and you'd have to assemble it." "Don't they come unassembled anyways?" "I wouldn't really suggest doing it that way" "But your telling me I can get more pieces for $300 less?" What a bizarre hassle! It made no sense, and I don't spend that much money on something so nonsensical. We ordered the doors from Menards where the sign says $590 and $335 and surprise! The special order total is $925. Plus, the door panels were the same R-value, just the glass was uninsulated.

Also, to special order 2 6-panel steel doors in a custom jamb depth at Home Depot, the Jeldwen doors (which I'm sure are really nice)are $100 more than the Pella doors and $200 more than Menard's Mastercraft doors. We will see if the cost difference correlates with a noticable quality difference. I doubt it. We opted for the Mastercrafts. On the garage doors, Menard's Ideal brand were really nice, so I'm glad we didn't pay the extra for the Home Depot ones.