Philip, Jen and Peyton's Pages

Roof framing is almost complete

This week has proved to be another exciting and progress-filled week with our house.  Thursday marks the beginning of five weeks of our build and the progress made is nothing short of amazing.  We know that things will begin to slow down and visible changes won’t make the kind of “wow” impact that the past five weeks have had, so we are certainly enjoying the “wow” as it comes…

As I blogged earlier, Tuesday began the process of putting the trusses onto the house.  Thursday continued that work and as of today, we have most of the sheeting installed and the framers are working on the last piece of framing — the front dormer.  I spoke with the on-site guy today while I was there and he estimates that 95% of our roof will be completed by the end of the day.

And, as a side note, its extremely hot right now in South Carolina.  The crew was not working on top of the house when I went by around 1pm — they were working inside instead — but even not in direct sunlight, it was really hot outside.  Even standing by and not really working, you just pour sweat.  But, the good news is the humidity isn’t awful, like it can be sometimes here.  Fortunately, everyone is trying to be safe about the progress.

The felt will be laid and the roof will be prepped for shingles next week.  Shortly after that, I expect the house to be fully dried in…  So, lots of progress for us.

Raising a roof

Yesterday, as expected, the crew began raising the roof of our house.  Early in the morning, there was a crain on site to begin placing the trusses on the walls.  By 10am (the first picture below), the main section of the house looked to be in place.  By the time that I made it to the site (shortly after noon), the crew was already gone and all the trusses were lifted in place.

There is still a bit of work to do with the roof before it can be sheeted and ready for felt and shingles.  Most of this work will probably be done by hand with the crew, rather than requiring the crain.

Slab poured, foundation complete — now time for some walls!

To my delight, I drove out to the new homesite and found that the slab has been poured for the house and both porches.  When I got out to the site, the crew was busy taking down the edges of the porches and setting everything up to cure.  I am so excited that everything is poured.  Our family Bible has been encased in concrete in the block foundation under what will become our front door.  Friends of ours suggested how cool it would have been to slide in some photos along with the Bible, so that has lead us to a new idea for our kitchen – aka the heart of the home – but that will stay an surprise for now.

Easter update

We celebrated Easter at the beach last weekend and Peyton enjoyed breakfast with the Easter bunny at Market Common.  We ate at Travinia’s for breakfast and Peyton got to meet and have her picture made with the Easter bunny.  After lunch, we all gathered in Valor Park for an Easter egg hunt.  It was funny, because, the eggs were certainly not hidden.  There were thousands of eggs spread all over the lawn and in bushes.  The kids had a great time collecting eggs.  On Sunday, we went to church and then drove to my Grandma Hancock’s house to have lunch with family.  The kids got to hunt eggs again and Peyton had a blast playing with all her cousins.

Photo gallery & video gallery changes

A while back, I announced that we removed our personal photo gallery for security and privacy reasons. I’ve since been using Picasa’s Web Gallery provided by Google. I’m happy with a lot of their features, including facial recognition and grouping. As a matter of fact, the facial recognition works better than the one built into iPhoto… (that’s a topic for my other blog).  After playing around with other solutions, I really like using Picasa’s web gallery.  I have found a way to upload directly from iPhoto and so that’s where all our family photos will be.  There are lots of galleries, but most are private.  If you want to receive updates from me, send me an email – philip.sellers at gmail.com – and I’ll add you so you receive photos when I send them out.

And because I’ve chosen to put all the photos out there, I’ve decided to use the MobileMe gallery for videos.  I got a lot of feedback that the MobileMe photo galleries didn’t work so well, so I abandoned it for that, but I think the way it does videos and the fact that it integrates so well with my iMovie software, I’m going to continue to post my videos there.  I’ll also be uploading them to YouTube – but the MobileMe gallery will have better quality copies.  I hope to buy a new hard-disk based HD video camera soon – maybe for Christmas if all works out.

Gallery down

So, maybe I watch too much TV.  But, I’ve made the decision to remove our online photo gallery from this site and instead share our photos using PicasaWeb and the MobileMe Web Galleries.  These both have features for us to protect and share our photos with family and friends, while maintaining some privacy.  I want to ensure that Peyton is protected and photos of her aren’t just floating online for anyone to see.  I hope everyone understands.  If you’d like to get access to the Picasa gallery and you know me, just email me and I can share it to you…