April 8...We are hoping that the weather will be good enough to start the framing this week. We will drive my mother's car up to Oklahoma and arrive around 3:00pm and go over to the job site to see the work that has been done.

Ok. It is 4:00 and we arrived to find that nothing else has been done due to the rain. It has rained for several days and the lot is too muddy to work. However there was some lumber delivered.

April 9....Jan's birthday... I had hoped to have the basement walls framed by this evening so Jan and I can celebrate her birthday in the house and watch the sunset. Sure enough the framers showed up and the basement framing went very quickly with only minor problems along the way. The basement got framed and the first level floor joists went into place. Unfortunately, the lumber yard didn't have the needed joist hangars, so Jan and I had to drive to Tulsa (about 90 miles away to get the joist hangars. Had we not been there, the job would have probably shut down before the joists were all up.

I cleaned out the basement and the area in front of the house and swept. I also hung some lights that I had found in Sacramento, CA on the trip last week and ran into town and picked up a quick birthday cake. Joe and Velma Adams down the street loaned me a tape player so we would have music. Now the scene was set. Mom brought Jan over to the house at sunset. The lights came on, the music played, and Jan never knew what hit her. Joe and Velma came down in their golf cart and joined us for birthday cake. All in all, a successful day.

     

     

April 10....The crew shows up early at 7:00am. The work goes smoothly until we discover that the plan calls for a recessed area as a front porch. That was what we had planned on, but nobody thought to pour the basement wall accordingly. The architect, the builder, the concrete guys, us.....nobody. With the front door inset above the basement walls, there is no way to seal the basement from getting wet every time it rains. After discussing several options, it became clear the only thing to do was move the front door out even with the rest of the house, so that is what we did. Oh well, if this is the biggest problem we encounter, the process should be a breeze.

No such luck. At 10:00, the framers run out of some needed material and it can't be delivered until noon. I offer to buy them all lunch and go to order it. When I return, they have all left. I waited the rest of the afternoon for them to return but they didn't. A little frustrating, but Jan and I had plenty to eat. We cleaned up the place and called it a day.

April 11... The crew has returned and are working at a fast pace. The flooring is now in place and the main floor walls are going up. The decking is being put on the exterior walls and the building process gets back to normal. Lots of decisions on walls and windows that we assumed were clear on the plans, but we now realize that it is necessary to spend as much time as possible at the site to answer any questions that come up. There seemed to be hundreds of major decisions to be made. Another great sunset followed and let Jan and I relax to plan for tomorrow's problems.

     

     

     

April 12.....At first, we couldn't get them to work fast enough. Today, we are all but praying for rain so the process will slow down and we can take our time to make the necessary decisions and changes needed. It isn't hard to convince the crew to shut down about noon on Friday. Jan and I fly back to Houston to regroup and get ready for next week. Judd left Thursday afternoon for a religious retreat and is out of touch until Monday anyway. As suspected, when we looked around we found several problems. They weren't large ones, but irritating never the less. Five major windows had to be changed, moved, or maneuvered to get the results we wanted. It all got done, so now it is back to Houston and I get to leave on a 4 day trip and Jan can handle it until Wednesday. I will get back to the job site Wednesday and Thursday. We will see how it goes then.....

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