After what felt like forever, we finally got out slab poured! It was such an exciting day to see the house starting to take shape. During this time, we were also trying to get the house framed. Did I fail to mention that all the while we were doing this it was pouring rain? The weather was certainly not on our side, making construction tough.
Our crew was ready to get to work, but the pouring rain meant no power tools, which also meant that very little progress was being made. Little by little, the framing started and the job site (while a muddy mess) started showing the skeleton of a home.
We were really excited to see the interior framing come to life – little spots where there would be pass-through areas, built-ins and groin vaults! I was especially thrilled about the groin vaults. Groin vaults are created by intersecting the right angles of two barrel vaults. We have them going down the first two floor hallways – from the mudroom through the butler’s pantry, to the kitchen on the west side of the house and from the study to the master room on the east side.
We were also eager to see our roof! Although we originally requested a simple roofline, we ended up with an intricate, yet beautiful roof. Since the roof is such a prominent feature and the way the house sits forces you to look up, we wanted to line the roof with the best shingles possible. We chose a thick, multicolor shingle that gives lots of architectural shape to the roof. When the shingles went up, we were very pleased with the result. We’ll go into more details about the roof in our next post!
I arrived one day to see the progress of the house and realized that all of the dormers on the garage were in the wrong place. The dormers were sitting higher than they should’ve been while architecture is open to updates and modern interpretation, I did think dropping them would be more visually appealing. Unfortunately, they had been completely constructed and the shingles were in place, so the repair of this error was going to be costly.
My husband didn’t want to make the changes. His argument was that because of the height of the house and the layout of the street, you would never really see the house from a distance where the dormer placement would be noticeable. I, however, was torn. I sent the photos and plans to several architect and builder friends of mine who advised that we change them, so that’s what we did.
The architect agreed to pay for some of the additional costs and the framer was able to tear off the dormers faster than expected. Although we were disappointed in moving backwards, the dormers looked better in the end. Getting new shingles on them is another story that took months…
Stay tuned for the next installment of my Construction Blog Series!
