I would compare building our house to baking a very fancy cake. It is critical that the best ingredients are blended together and cooked to perfection but the real magic happens with the icing.
The foundation of our house is complete. The walls are strong and tall. The roof skeleton is largely in place. While the carpenters finish that important work it is time for us to start adding the icing. It will go on layer after layer with lots of fancy trim work and decoration. Like a fancy cake it will have a theme and tell a story - our personal story!
In the last couple of weeks our team has begun this work. The tree armatures on the front of the house are looking amazing. Today Peter started welding up the porch railing and the smaller trees that will double for posts around it's perimeter.
My job was to put up the plywood forms for the overhead beams. These box and hide the heavy steel I-beams that provide the strength needed to hold up the roof. We'll soon staple on some galvanized mesh and then trowel on our special blend of fiberglass reinforced concrete which will be sculpted to look like heavy wooden beams. You still have to use a lot of imagination to see it all finished but the under structure it's pretty much there. The cake is perfect and it's time to to start adding the icing in a big way. Here's some pics of today's progress...
In the next week the dormers and eyebrow roofs on the upper floor will be put in place along with the balance of the roof framing. Sheeting the roof will follow and pretty soon it will be time for the roofers to apply the recycled rubber roofing, finishing the top end of the house in a dramatic fashion - like a beautiful layer of chocolate frosting on a cake.
Stay tuned to watch more pieces come together!
-grama dan