another week, another story

A week ago,

The framers had started adding the I joists 

for the second story.

As a refresher, this is how the house looked when they got here Tuesday morning:

And this is how it looked when they left:

Wednesday night they called it quits here:

If you didn't look closely, you may have missed this through the front door:

Stairs!!!

Long time readers will remember how much I've missed having a beautiful staircase,

so that addition was very exciting.

What's especially cool,

is

it was mostly built

by Brandon

:-)

Thursday

we made a few changes to the plan.

We flipped the upstairs bathroom to allow for access into attic space

so it wouldn't have to be accessed via a bedroom.

And we also did away with a storage closet by the stairs (upstairs)

so we could have a more attractive foyer (downstairs)

(It was in danger of resembling a silo. oops!)

That evening,

Tyler and I got busy with the jobsite cleanup

(kids were at TKD, so we were on our own)

and I almost forgot to take the daily photo.

It was already fairly dark when I got out there,

but this is what the house looked like 

Thursday night.

Friday

I'd taken the girls to a birthday party

(they made a boxy zip pouch and we filled it with water color pencils

and gave several sizes of water color paper pads (like the last time we gave this gift...) 

While they were sewing, I hand stitched a tag for them. 

They were so tickled to put a label on their work!

They wondered if they should point out the fact that the bag had a designer label,

but I told them we should probably just let their friend figure that out on her own ;-)

All that to say,

I was gone,
so Brandon snapped the daily picture:

Saturday

the guys were slackin again.

Tyler and I were gone pretty much all day for a niece's college graduation,

but the kids reported that they'd only worked a little while,

then left.

They came back and worked about 20 minutes

then took their lunch break.

(They'd been lunching in the shade by the hammock

(or in the hammock...)

but once they'd floored the I joists,

they brought the chairs inside,

and they've been eating in the kitchen :-)

After their lunch

(they tend to take a full hour,

or pret' near it)

they worked for another 20 minutes or so

and called it a day.

They were only here for a short time yesterday before the rain started,

so no progress can be seen since Saturday's photo:

The house work has kept us a bit busier than we would have preferred to be

while Tony and Kacy are here,

but Ton' has been able to pitch in and help some,

and he said it was really great
to be a part of the dream that our family has worked hard for,
for so long,
 becoming a reality :-)