Hammer and a Nail

Let me start off by saying in my defense, I teach essay writing to high school students online. This past year I had four classes and a total of 58 students. I know I mentioned that I would write a blog post once a week to get caught up with construction, but that was a month ago. I don't know what I was thinking :) I probably have a dozen posts to write to get caught up to where we are right now. I can literally see the light at this point. I mean that. David has lights installed, so I can truly see the light. But, where were we. Oh yes, framing and windows.

Remember February? Ah... back before we were all sheltering at home and social distancing? At the beginning of that month we had a bit of snow. Now, to this Yankee girl from New England, it was a dusting, but to southerners with little to no snow removal equipment, it was a blizzard and a reason to call off school. Ah, school...remember when the kids went there? But I digress. We had a bit of snow on February 7, 2020 and it looked so pretty on the newly framed in window sills.

Time to put in framing. The wall down the center of the building was put in before the roof went on. This is the door from the garage looking into our bedroom.

One of my favorite places in the house is the sunroom. This picture is looking from the front door to the back door. It is 50 feet of beautiful open space, full of light. It will be a place for eating, relaxing, playing music and games, talking, and laughing. I look forward to social gatherings here and sitting by the windows building jigsaw puzzles and grading essays.

The living room may look small to you, but it is bigger than the living room in our previous house. With all of the space we have in the sunroom, this is more of a parlor or front room (for my PNW friends). It will be cozy and comfy with a great view of our beautiful white oak tree at the top of the driveway.

Here are two shots of the kitchen. Same wall, just a different angle. One looks down the hallway past the bathroom and into the bedroom. I am so excited about my kitchen. I love to cook and bake. I have some great plans for this room that will be unique and make some people wonder about me more than they already do. Not much will be traditional other than the appliances, both of them. No dishwasher other than our own hands.

The bathroom is going to be perfect.  This first shot is looking into the bathroom from the hall. Just to the right is the edge of a dual-sided closet. On the hall side is the pantry closet. On the backside will be the linen closet. In the original house plan, this closet would have been on the left of the door much closer to the kitchen. As we were designing, David asked that we try to put as much of the plumbing on the same wall as possible. That request necessitated a move of the closet to the other side of the door to accommodate the vanity which was going to be on the other side of the room.

The white and orange pipe closest is the toilet. The one beyond is the shower. More on that in a moment.

Here is the pantry closet.  The sliding door for the bathroom will normally cover the pantry unless someone needs to close the bathroom door.

This is another favorite thing about this house - my shower. It is 4 feet by 7 feet of glorious space. For the last 30 years we had a very small shower. Now in the RV it is even smaller - and we have the pleasure of turning the water on only to get wet and to rinse off. No long, hot showers around here. I cannot wait for the shower to be finished and the water to be turned on!

Here is the bedroom looking from the sunroom doors to the garage. The windows in this room are higher than the other windows to account for the headboard to the bed that I have picked out. Hopefully IKEA will open up before we have to move in or else we will be without a bed and a whole lot of other things! I am excited for the extra space and room for my office here as well.

I have to say that Walker & Son Construction has been amazing to work with. They didn't even yell at me when I realized I had the wrong wardrobe dimensions and had to have them move the door over about a foot from where it is in this picture. Not even a tear :) But in my defense, we made very few changes from our submitted plans. Maybe two...or three.

And then they were able to start on the siding working around the garage all the way to where the windows start on the house side. We chose a white called Alamo. We purchased the siding from a local metal company, Simpson Culvert in Pleasant View. They had fantastic pricing and we love the product that we ended up using.

This is the back of the garage.

Here is the front side of the house and garage.

This is Thomas. He is the son of one of the contractors. I am pretty sure he fell asleep up there in the sun.

Once the framing was finished, we started on the electric, plumbing, fire sprinklers, and HVAC. I wasn't so great about getting pictures of those things. I wish I had, but... Next up, windows and siding is finished! If you follow our Instagram page, I post pictures much more frequently than blog posts! @notquitetinytn


Stay tuned!

Lizabeth