Roof decking complete, interior wall almost complete

   I think the winter weather is finally done.  This weekend hit the 70s and night time temperatures are only going down into the 40s.  On this visit, we were greeted by a nearly complete roof decking and nearly finished interior walls.  There's a small section at the turret that still needs to be finished, and the pantry and powder room still need their walls.  We got the chance to visit the site with my family, and this is the first time my dad got to go inside and take a look.  Ever since I was little, I could remember watching home building shows like "This Old House" with him, and I think that sparked my interests in building my own house.  By building this house, I think, in a way, I'm fulfilling both our dreams.

   The roof is on the turret now and it looks fantastic.  The scaffolding around it makes it look like a witches hat, but that will be gone soon.  It was difficult to see if the curved fascia was installed and with all the family members there, I didn't get a change to take a good look around.  You can kind of see the small section of the roof that still needs completion and I think they have it open for access.  I'm still pushing Ken on getting that roofing quote to us because with our selection of Inspire composite slate, I'm sure it's going to go outside the budget and we're anxious to see by how much.  Plus with the copper roof on the turret, we'll be paying a nice amount out of pocket for the upgrade.  We've decided on a dragon weathervane for the turret and have to place the order so the mounting hardware can be installed while it's still relatively easy to access.

      Here's a shot of the completed great room roof decking.  As with the rest of the roof, there's a gap at the peak for a ridge line vent.  There's also no dormer end on this room so the water will be shed from all three sides.  This will be one area of the house where we might want gutters.  There's a little covered porch here, but not for most of the great room so any water will fall straight down.  Since we have a walk out on the back, we won't want any water falling off the roof near the door.  Ideally, water should be taken at least eight feet from any foundation.  Since we have an eight foot porch around most of the house, it's not an issue, except here.  At least we'll have somewhere to connect a rain barrel to if we want.

   We decided to have a flat ceiling in this room since it's tall enough already and we would just be heating more empty space.  The divisions for the upper windows still need to be built.  It's too bad we couldn't get one gigantic window.  I can't even imagine how much that would cost, or if it's even possible.

   Kind of a spooky shot of the rotunda, with most of the walls installed.  They installed an awesome temporary staircase so it's much easier to get up and down.  The inner and outer rotunda walls have been installed but they still need to put in the powder room and entry closet walls.  Just to the right of the rotunda will be a small entry closet.  Just past it is a short hallway to the elevator and beyond, where the diagonal rotunda support is, will be the powder room door.  I swear, it's feeling smaller and smaller, but I'm told it will feel bigger when the walls are in.  Tanja is starting to feel the same way.  I know the numbers are there.

   Here's another shot of the right side of the rotunda as you enter the house.  There will be a wall that goes across the inner and outer rotunda wall here which will have a door to the entry way closet.  The inner rotunda wall for the powder room is in, but the straight outer walls still need to be erected.  Oh, there are some short walls that will be installed at the greatroom corners and the fireplace column still needs to be made.

   Looking back towards the front door, standing in the kitchen area.  This short inner rotunda wall section is the powder room wall.  The gap between the walls is the pass through hallway to the elevator.  The diagonal supports will be hidden inside the closet wall and the powder room wall.  We worked very hard to have no visible supports and posts.  It's going to be amazing to see how they pull off the curved drywall.

   Moving up, this is the second floor landing.  The stairs come up on the left of this picture and this wall is to the non-turret bedroom.  The fireplace column will continue up here and there will be another gas fireplace here.  Railing will go to the left and right of the fireplace column and you can look down to the great room below.  The stair railing (style yet undecided) will continue around the rotunda.  This wall is mirrored on the other side of the landing, by the master bedroom.

   Here's a shot of the rest of the upstairs rotunda, looking towards the front of the house.  The non-turret bedroom is on the right, the turret bedroom is in the middle.  Just to the left of that is the turret bedrooms bathroom, then closet, then laundry room.  If you keep going around to the left, you'll encounter the elevator then master bedroom.

   Another shot of the rotunda upstairs, framed by the first bedroom (non-turret) and the master bedroom walls.  I'm pretty much standing where the fireplace column will go.  There's a little extra floor concrete on the stairway curve, when compared to the framed walls.  I wonder if they'll have to grind it down or something because drywall will need to be installed on it.

   Here's the master bedroom wall in the landing.  There will be a wall in the middle of the room that will divide the bed area from the more forward sitting area.  We kind of added that in after the blueprints when we realized that there wasn't a great place to hang a tv.  One of the first world problems of having a huge master bedroom.  The master walk out to the balcony is on the left and the master bathroom is on the right.

   Here's how the walls for the turret room turned out.  It's hard to make out unless you know what you're looking at, but we're standing in the bedroom, looking through the attached bathroom, with the walk in closet beyond.   Due to a miss-measurement of the rotunda floor, we had to move the door to this room a bit, so it clips a small linen closet in the bathroom, which was mostly hidden space anyways so there's nothing really lost.

   You can kind of see that the roof decking at the turret is completed.  This is a shot standing in the rotunda looking at the turret room.  There's a little art niche just to left of center in this frame.  No idea what we're going to put there.  Might be neat to install some shelves that follow the curve of the walls, that we can put some pictures on or something.  Totally necessary, but kind of crazy how close the studs have to be on the curved sections.

   One last shot of the bedroom rotunda walls.  The upstairs is basically done now.  Once the remaining first floor walls are in, we can call in HVAC to route their forced air heating and cooling paths.  The plan is that the first floor will just go through the floor, as per usual.  The second floor will be supplied from above, with a main trunk and return being routed through the guest bedroom and non-turret bedroom closet, so both of those rooms will have to sacrifice some closet space.  It should be fine for the guest bedroom, but I hope it doesn't cause strife with whoever uses the non-turret bedroom.

   I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to stand out on this great room catwalk but it does provide some great shots of the house.  You can see the walls sections for the master and non-turret bedroom that extend past the ICF.  This will be mirrored down stairs.  With the fireplace column cutting right up the middle of this, the pass throughs on the first floor and the "look downs" on the second floor will also be mirrored.  I know there's a hugh push for "open concept" on TV, but I don't think it's necessary for a house this big. The openings to the great room are about 4' wide if I remember correctly, so it's much more than a door.  We're still deciding on what the fireplace column will look like, but we have some tile ideas in mind.

   Last shot of the last piece of the roof decking that needs to be completed.  They might be keeping this open since it's the only way up to the roof from the inside, but they'll need to close it up before shingles go on since shingles start on the bottom.  Once this is closed, they'll need to get on the roof from the outside, which isn't horrible, since they could go up the garage to the upper roof.

   

   So after I get word from Ken about the shingle quote, that will probably be the next step.  We might be able to get HVAC to come in and mark floor pass throughs but windows will have to wait until shingles are up, just to mitigate possible damage.  Shingles should go up quickly and windows will take about a week.  Things are moving forward!