a garage!

This Thanksgiving weekend, we had an extra celebration: a toast to the garage, which is mostly done! Now, we get to take a break 'til after we all go to Hawaii in January. :)















Everyone, including some good friends, worked hard this weekend, putting shingles on the roof, finishing the fascia, installing windows and doors, and moving the contents of the storage container into the new garage. (A real garage!)




















Karen and Ryan the Builder brought tasty lunch to give us energy. :)














Jay added shingles, moved windows, put down tar paper, and did just about everything!

















Emily and Dad wired the garage, so it's all 'lectrified, and everything...














Here's the garage, as night sets in on Julian.















My most fun of the weekend, though, was a just-before-closing visit to Home Depot on Friday; we left the boys in the wood shop and took ourselves to get the 1/2 ton of shingles we'd need to finish. Shan had to resort to climbing up shelving to get attention, and it took 3 people to push the cart when it was laden with all those shingles, but we made it. :)

thanksgivings' progress

House building is slow going when you're doing it yourself. So, I thought it might be fun to measure our progress in bigger intervals. How 'bout in "Thanksgivings"?




Here's Thanksgiving 2004--back before we had a building permit, when we were still just dreaming about design options. We went up the hill to dig access to the septic tank, as I recall, and had our Thanksgiving leftovers as a picnic. You can see, as we eat from the road, that the spot where the garage is now was totally empty...





These 2 pics are from Thanksgiving 2005--when we were anxious about being ready for concrete, and were moving dirt around. The garage pad was just potential back then. (Well, potential and a lot of rebar.)

Ryan looked smaller, too.

I'm looking forward to adding this year's vision!

on passing muster

Matt met with our building inspector today, and we got official sign-off on our garage walls. And have just a few things to fix up on the roof. Now, we can begin to see windows and doors in our future... Hooray!!!

Which leads us to our next invitation:
Anyone wanna come work on Thanksgiving weekend?

We'll be up in Julian on Friday and Saturday. :)

up on the rooftop, again

Matt, Mom, Dad and I went up again this weekend, and finished (!) the sheathing on the rooftop. So, we're (hopefully) ready for inspection when we get a chance. We also worked at putting more of the fascia up. Again, I realize that I'm not of value for my sheer strength.

I'm glad Dad was there to lift those boards with Matt!

On the way home, I was noticing all the very nice-looking houses that have MUCH smaller fascia boards. ;)