House Watch Catch Up: The Walls

So here's a progressive show of the exterior walls coming up. They started just laid out on the ground like in this first picture. Talon Haynie is a real friend and has spent some time coming out to work on the house. When Talon couldn't come out to work he and his wife were real life savers and offered to babysit Damon so Julie and I could go out and work together. Talon and Lisa Haynie are two people on our list of "Couldn't have done it without you" heroes.

Next the front and the back wall came up. It took us a little while because mostly Julie and I were working by ourselves and neither of us had done exterior walls before. It was challenging. Quintin Jones took a lot of time (and used a lot of patience I'm sure) to show us what to do. Eventually those two walls finally came up.

The next two side walls went up a lot quicker. It took us like three or four days to get the front and back up but these two side walls went up in just about a day. We had some problems making sure that the walls were straight but in the end they come out nice. It just helps if the floor is cut straight and unfortunately that's not always the case.

This is the first interior wall. Julie built it. Quintin helped her but I like to think that Julie did most of the work herself. Quintin gave Julie a great compliment that night. He said that he didn't mind working with her because she worked. If you knew Quintin you would understand why this is a compliment. He rarely has anything nice to say.

This is a picture of (left to right) Kyle, Spencer and Lena. Spencer lives (or soon will live) just two doors down from us. His house was second to last and ours was last to be built. Kyle and Lena are married and live (or soon will live) down the street. Kyle and Lena are just about my favorite people to work with because they're so upbeat and encouraging. Their attitude seems to be "You don't know what you're doing but neither do I so let's figure it out together." Even when they do know what they're doing they're still fun to work with. This day was particularly difficult for me because a lot of people were helping to stand up walls and I didn't really feel like I was contributing much. I finally built this wall, with the help of Ashley Munoz, another soon to be neighbor, but I put the window right where the power box was. It was already late in the afternoon and I wanted to go home but Kyle, Lena and Spencer cleaned up what they were doing and helped me to fix the problem so we could stand that wall up before we left that day. That really helped me feel better about myself.

This last picture is a picture of the finished front of the garage. At this point all the exterior walls were ready for the next step the trusses. Here in the front of the house you can see the trusses all stacked up and almost ready to go. I'll tell you all about trusses in the next House Watch Blog. So tune in next time. Same...well, you know, the channel thing and "Bat-time" and...well you get the point.

Getting To Know Julie Bree

Since Julie and I decided to combine our two blogs into one and close hers down I thought I'd put this post in so you could all learn about Julie. When I first created Julie's blog for her I wrote this awesome "About Me" section for her. Unfortunately, for several months it was the only thing that was on her blog. I thought rather than lose it I could post it here. Here it is: The truth about Julie Bree.


Julie Bree
First and most importantly, you should know that I'm madly, oh, ever so much, so muchly-much-much in love with Joel Bree. Were I not already married to him it would be my dream to someday be his wife and I would fantasize about my wedding day and it would be absolutely perfect. Almost as perfect as my actual wedding day. I have a beautiful son named Damon and he's just as cute as his daddy. Aside from being beautiful I am exteremly intelligent and pretty dang funny every now and then. I'm also extremely talented: I sing, dance, play the violin, piano and mandolin, sew my own clothes, paint and invent new tasty recipies to try out on my family. I enjoy the outdoors. I love rock climbing, hiking, camping and biking. My favorite color is green and since I'm a dietician I love to eat the lesser loved veggies like squash, zucchini, and asparagus. And my husband eats them too Occasionally I cry for reasons beyond explanation but my husband is patient and has a talent for making me laugh so those moments pass. I love to read and play the occasional game of Lego Star Wars and I love my husband so much. Why else would I let him write this for me?

Housewatch Catch-Up: The Floor

Okay, so it's been a little while since we caught you up on the house and a lot has happened. But too much for one blog so we'll do this is stages. Stage one: the floor.

So, if you remember where we left off we had just finished the greenplate. The next step was to put on the floor. To do that we had to start by putting on what's called rim board. To the left is a picture of Julie working on the rim plate. At the same time we had to build a wall across the basement. You know, to support the weight of the whole house. A good friend, Jason Standring, came out to help put up the wall. It was one of my first times building a real wall. A guy named Derrick who will eventually live right down the street from us did all the real work of making sure that Jason and I didn't mess up. What to you think?

After the floor and the rim board were up and good to go we had to put on what's called the floor joyce. Long boards that run the entire length of the house. It took a few days because the main body of the group was still focusing on two other houses. Julie and I did one half of the floor, my brother-in-law, DJ, came out and helped with the other half. I even did a few myself. But eventually we got all the floor joyce on.

Once all the floor joyce was on we just had to put on the floor. It comes in big sheets. My father-in-law and brother-in-law, Gene and Greg, came out and helped. My other brother-in-law, Ben, also came out and helped. We had to glue the floor down and then nail it. A soon-to-be neighbor, Blaine, and his father-in-law, Darryl, also helped. In the end we got the floor on and we were ready to move onto the next step: the walls. But that will have to wait for the next catch up entry.