Today is Day 54

Here is what the house looks like today:

I'm not sure if you can tell, but they straightened out the windows, door, and porch roof last week. That's a load off.

You may wonder about the significance of the title of this post. To clarify it, let me back up.

When we had our original pre-construction meeting, the project manager, Trent, showed us the build schedule. According to that schedule, which is designed in a vacuum, we were to break ground on December 11 (they did) and have our pre-closing walk through on February 27. That is a total of 79 days. Trent says things are going very well, so we are hoping to close the first week of March. Then, we should be using the whole month of March to paint and move stuff all the way over to the new house.

On Thursday, we had our pre-drywall meeting. Everything is looking good. The house is all framed, electric and plumbing rough-ins are done, as well as phone, cable, and security rough-ins. Later Thursday, they were to start loading in drywall. They did. For those of you who might care, they are using 1/2" drywall inside the house and 5/8" drywall in the garage. That was a pleasant surprise: during our meeting, we found out that they were going to drywall the entire garage. That was a pleasant surprise. We have been told by many different people that builders usually only drywall about 4 feet into the garage. I think that is the minimum that most building codes require. I guess Farmington's building codes are quite a bit stricter than many others, so it is probably Farmington code that the entire garage be drywalled. I know builders don't do such things out of the kindness of their heart. However, we also found out that they weren't going to insulate. This just wouldn't do. Marianne took a couple of Home Depot gift cards and bought 5 bundles of R13 insulation while I worked from home.

Thursday night, I gathered some help and headed over to the house to do my first project: insulating the garage. Thanks to the kids, Ranney and Buddy, my friend from work, Tom, and Marianne's Uncle Jason and cousin Catherine (sorry if I mis-spelled your name). Thank you so much for your help. We got the insulation done in a little over 2 hours and it looked like professionals did it. We did this on such short notice because Trent told us that they would probably start hanging drywall Friday or Saturday. You know that if we didn't do the insulation Thursday night, they would have shown up to hang drywall Friday. As it turns out, they hung all of the drywall today! Every last panel, including the garage and all roofs.

This is what the master bedroom looks like as of about 4:45pm today.

It is really starting to look like a house on the inside now, too.

In fact, when I showed up after work today, there was a truck in the driveway from Monroe Insulation and Gutter. I looked and didn't see any gutters. I thought they would put on the siding first. Then I noticed the guy turning on some big machine in the front of his box truck. About that time, I noticed the hose running from his truck, through Ranney's window, and into the house. Apparently, all of the insulation is in now. The guy was there blowing the insulation into the attic.

They should be starting the siding in the next week or two. That is when this will really start to look livable. I guess they should be spending the rest of the week mudding and taping the drywall.

I will keep you posted. I am taking pictures almost every day.