We've Been Framed!

Our daughter-in-law Nina graduated from Texas State on Friday, August 13, 2010 (Yay Nina!). Kelly and Ron both had work conflicts, but Winnie was able to attend and represent us. Winnie took the opportunity to go out to the property and check on the status. As you can see from this picture, framing is well underway.














The crew hard at it.














The foundation seems a lot different (cleaner look) once the forms were removed, but still looks pretty daunting standing behind the eight foot wall of concrete at the back.














Good shot of the 3-car garage. The bay on the front is the future home of the El Camino.









We'll be back in a couple of weeks to set locations for electrical outlets, phone jacks, speaker and other wiring. With a little luck, the plywood will also be down on the roof.

Now That's a Slab!

These photos were taken Friday, July 30th, the day after the foundation was poured. The total slab square footage under roof is 4,081 (even though Winnie thinks it looks small!). So far they managed to save all the oak trees. The one on the right at the front is very close to the foundation, so we'll just have to see if it survives.


















The elevation drops off pretty quickly, as you can see in this shot of Winnie standing just behind the back deck. The concrete is eight feet above the ground at this point.













And that eight feet really pays off when you go topside. We are going to have two 6'x9' picture windows providing this view from the back of the house.







We visited our neighbors down in the cul-de-sac to ask them about their exterior color selections (roof, stone, stucco, window frames). We really like the colors they chose. Our roof will be just a shade darker than theirs. Our stone will be a similar color, white vinyl window frames and a near beige stucco with a hint of yellow in it. Exterior color selections were one of our tasks to complete on this trip so we don't hold things up.






We also saw these guys hanging out in the neighborhood. They seemed just as curious about us as we did of them. Beep beep!




Framing starts on Monday! We'll be back in a couple of weeks to check it out.