Almost finished!!!

We're getting so close to being finished! We still need to stain the outside and finish up the 2nd floor of the garage, but other than that it's done! There's now 4 bedrooms (3 upstairs and 1 downstairs that we use as a playroom/office), a garage, a few more cubbies (for storage), and of course the 2nd floor of the garage which will eventually be used as a studio for my photography, but right now is storage as we work to get it finished.

I'll be posting some more pictures of the inside, but for now here's the outside! Didn't it turn out gorgeous? We just love all the rooflines!

Updates...

The 2nd floor of the garage

Pete and his crew waiting for the sheetrock to be brought up into the room

The sheetrock was delivered on a huge truck with a boom to lift it into the windows

It's coming together!

They started this part of the roofline a few days ago and now that the bones of the structure are taking shape, it's easier to see what the finished home will look like! Sometimes it's hard to look at floorplans and really know what they will look like in reality. The addition to the roofline is directly above the entry and loft, but instead of opening it up inside too we're using the extra space for storage. Pete is putting in a floor and there will be a door from one of the kids' rooms leading into the space. There will be windows in the dormers, but right now they leave them covered so that there's no more exterior air coming in than absolutely necessary.






The kids' rooms are also coming along nicely. I'll try to get an interior shot today once the contractors leave (because when they are working there's so much equipment and material around that it wouldn't really show much.)

Slowly taking shape...

Today they started work on reconstructing the roof of the kids' rooms. Before we had 1 room that was about 18'x16' that the 3 kids shared. There was plenty of room for the kids and their beds (and even for all their toys!) but then we found out we were expecting a 2nd set of twins... so there would be 5 in one room. Obviously not ideal (no matter how large the room is) so we decided to create 2 rooms out of the 1 room by adding dormers to each side of the house on that end. By doing that we'll get 2 rooms that are approximately 14x16 (still nice sized rooms) upstairs. That's because before we had to work with the roofline and the walls of the room didn't extend all the way out. We had what was known as "knee walls" at the 5' line. So by extending the walls out to the end of the roofline and adding the dormers we'll get more floor space and full walls rather than half walls on the outside.

The playroom downstairs could also be used as a bedroom if we needed to in the future, and the 2nd floor over the garage could too. So if we needed to we could have 5 bedrooms. But 2 is perfect for us for now. The newborn twins will sleep in the loft right outside the master bedroom (which is the most convenient place for babies since they won't wake up their siblings and we can easily get to them in the middle of the night when they wake up). Our son will have his own room for few years (until the boys join him once they are out of their cribs) and the girls will share a room.

And the roof comes off!

There hadn't really been much to post about lately - everything was moving ahead, but not in any way that really lent itself to pictures. They finished up the windows in the garage (all except one) and started gutting the kids' room. But today they started work on the roof, and that was something that I definitely wanted pictures of!

This morning we headed out to a Dr's appt. and this was the view:

After the holidays...

Tthe holidays put us behind schedule a bit and you'd be right. Now that those are over, work has restarted! YAY!

Panels are up!

And the Garage Construction is starting soon!

As in next week soon! Yippee! They are bringing in panels for the garage (which will be finished with siding so when it's done you won't be able to tell which is solid log and which is panelized) and Pete called and said they will be here next week to start work on it!

The plan so far is to finish the garage so that we have storage space while they work on the upstairs bedrooms (because right now we have zero storage, which will only get worse when we have 1 bedroom to live in while they rework the roof and create the bedrooms.) Once the garage is done we'll be able to store everything in there, and the kids will sleep in the playroom (we'll probably just put their mattresses on the floor so we don't have to set up all their beds). Hopefully once they get started we'll have some new pictures to share!

The Garage floor...

Moving right along!

After the excavation was finished, they had to level out the area and block it out to get it ready for the cement trucks. Our son was thrilled about this part because of the huge pile of dirt they left!







Everything is coming along well! We're trying to finish up the inside of the playroom (they have the paneling up inside and we're putting the flooring down ourselves along with little things like painting, putting up the lights, etc...) It's exciting to see it moving along so quickly! I know after the cement gets poured it will slow down a bit because the contractor is finishing up another project before getting started on the garage. But it's still nice to see things getting done!

Excavation

The guys showed up to dig out the foundation for the garage! You can see they marked it out first, then started digging. This will be a cement slab foundation when it's finished.

Tearing down the doors...

Pete and his team showed up the morning and started construction on the garage. Right now it's a 2 car garage, with half of it being used for heating and storage (since there's no basement here on the lake). Once they are finished it will be a playroom/family room with a mudroom leading in from the new attached garage. The part that's storage will stay like that, but will be walled off.

The doors are off... You can see to the left is the other part of the garage with the furnace and storage. That part will stay but will be walled off.









And once they were done for the day. You can see they have the walls framed and it's starting to look like a real room!

The contruction begins...

We've finally decided to go ahead and start construction on the "Lakehouse". The Lakehouse is a full log home (built by Beaver Mountain Log & Cedar Homes almost 20 years ago!) Right now it's a 2 bedroom home with a 2 car garage downstairs. By the time we're finished it will be a 3 bedroom with an attached garage. The current garage will be transformed into a playroom/family room.


We have 3 little children and were quickly outgrowing the space. By the time this is finished we'll have much more space, the kids will have room to play (and we will get the toys out of the living room!) and we'll have an additional bedroom! We can't wait!

Pete Hathaway from Catskill Construction is doing the addition. We'll start with the playroom, then get the excavation and foundation done for the garage (before the snow comes hopefully) and then work on the dormers and bedrooms (which involves taking the roof off part of the house) and finish up the garage.