Day 134: Continuing to Work on the Roof

Today the porch roof decking ate up a good bit of the morning.  For some reason it was aggravating.  They did manage to finish the front half completely including putting up the felt.  That makes half of the house officially dried in.

Then they got to work on the backside of the house but did not get very far.  The weather will decide when the back part is finished.

Day 133: Decking the Roof

I spent a good portion of this day running errands.  I went to two different building supply stores to pick up things.  While the guys are working, that is pretty much my job.  Day 133 found W and the sub-contractors putting up OSB.  We are planning to put tin rather than shingles on the roof so OSB is an acceptable choice over plywood for us.

Here is a view from the inside. 

They finished one side of the roof with the exception of the porch on this day.

Also on this day an appraiser from the bank came by to check out the progress.    The appraiser seemed happy with the work thus far.  Hopefully we will finally get some money from our loan which was approved over a month ago.  

Day 129-130: Setting the Trusses

The day finally arrived when we were able to start on our roof.  We hired a boom truck and the sub-contractor who has been helping us throughout this project.  To save money the boom truck placed all of the trusses on top of the house and then left.  We were able to do this since W had built the inside walls first.  (That happened during the truss saga, and I neglected to post pictures.)

After that it was a slow process of getting them set precisely.

The living room and kitchen have a vaulted ceiling that goes up from 8 feet to 10 feet.

Everything was braced well after as we were expecting near tropical storm force winds.

The weather for the following day was going to be very windy and very cold so no work was done until the storm system went through.

Day 114: Deja Vu

The second set of trusses has arrived - finally.  Now we are just waiting until we can get a crane to set them on the roof.  We have been at a standstill for over a month, and it is a bit frustrating.  Once the trusses are set (meaning the roof is underway), the bank will give us some money.  Hopefully very son I will be sharing with all of you the roof construction.

Day 100: Dealing with the Truss Issue

A man from the company we bought the trusses from came on this day.  This company sends a person out to measure rather than having the builder submit measurements.  This was his second trip out.  He measured the trusses, asked to see the papers that came with the trusses, and measured the house.  At that point it was obvious there was a problem.  I expected to have more of a discussion before we reached a solution.

In the end we were allowed to keep the bad trusses and are getting new trusses.  With the holidays we are looking at a slight delay for them to be delivered.  We will get new, correct trusses (the man measured multiple times), but it will take a couple of weeks.  Expect a slight delay on updates depending on the actual delivery date.

Day 99: Construction Loan

Over the past couple of months we had been working with a bank to get a construction loan.  We were not the typical loan seekers.

First we already owned the land.  Second we were our own contractors using a floor plan we designed.  Third we had already started building the home with our own money.  I quickly decided that the bank would have preferred that we were using a purchased floor plan for a home to be built by a professional builder and that we would need to borrow money to pay for both the new house and the land.

We filled out the preliminary paperwork and were then asked to submit information on the costs.  I kept asking what was needed but never got a straight answer (or a crooked one for that matter).  After some research of my own, I found a free cost estimate spreadsheet  from Build Your Own Home.  I was able to adjust some of the categories to fit our needs.  I guess it was what the bank wanted.  We opted to get builders' risk insurance on our own ahead of time.

After about 6 weeks of waiting, the construction loan was approved, and we signed the paperwork.  We did end up asking for more money than we plan to spend to make the bank people feel better.  We are not obligated to use the full amount though.  We will need the appraiser to approve any amount we ask to use which is $0 at this point.  We do have one year to finish the house.  W plans to be done long before then so we have plenty of wiggle room.

I plan to keep a close eye on our spending and we will still use any of our money.  I do not want to use any more of the bank's money than necessary so we will be able to pay off the loan as quickly as possible.

Days 89-98: The First Big Snag

After W finished framing the inside walls and building the porch, we were ready to put the trusses up.  On Day 89 we were supposed to have a borrowed crane coming it to set them up.  W took the day off work.  I cooked tons of food to feed the people we had arranged to come help us.  The crane never showed up.

We regrouped and arranged for another crane to come in on Day 98.  That morning W sent me to the building supply store to pick up a few things and order some lumber for delivery.  I am standing in the checkout line when W calls. He says to forget the lumber and just come home.  I arrived home to find no crane and no trusses up.  It turns out the trusses were built too short.  I put in a call to the man at the company we ordered them from.  After some discussion he made plans to come back out to work on a solution.

Everything had gone smoothly for the most part up until then.  We knew to expect some bumps but it was still an annoying development.  Stay tuned for the outcome!