Starting to Take Shape

Up went the walls, topped off with the roof trusses. These pictures are from Saturday, May 21st. Despite rain and sometimes snow, the contractors have accomplished a lot.

This will be our front entrance. The deck is yet to come. Two bedrooms are on the right.

This is a view looking at the bedroom windows:

And finally, the garage is taking shape as well:

Important but not visible, we have our water line into the crawl space and our electric feed has been buried and terminated at the house. Of course the electric transformer is on the opposite corner of the lot. Our contractor did a great job running the conduit trench in between all of my tree seedlings.

That's it for now. Hopefully a roof will start to appear.

Have a safe Memorial Day, Dana & Sandy

The Foundation

Things are starting to take shape less than a month after the dirt moving started.

Here is the view as you drive into Game Trail. That is Mt. Yale, one of Colorado's fourteeners.

And here is a view of our foundation. Let me just say, that is one expensive hole in the ground.
The next time I snap a picture from this angle there should be a front entrance taking shape. The materials in the foreground are the makings of the floor.

This is the garage floor.

If you look closely, the far side of the floor doesn't have the same slope down to the ground. This will be a separate workshop area when the garage is finished.

It is fun to walk around the foundation and estimate where the windows will be and then what the view will be like looking out. We have water and sewer into the crawlspace. Our contractor is hoping that we will have electricity this week, even though it is still almost 300 feet from the meter to the house.

The Big Dig

Everything looks different already. Lots of pictures now that I know how to paste pictures into this blog.

We have a driveway.

This turned out much better than my original location. Our builder really located the best entrance.

Future garage entrance

If you can see it, there is a red stake in the lower, right corner of the picture. This will be the "upper" corner of the garage. This view will be looking at garage doors someday.

There are stacks of firewood around the perimeter of the building site, all of it stacked by son-in-law Mike Hartman. Many thanks to Mike.We worked our butts off in a snowstorm to get the site cleared the day before dirt moving started.

These last two pictures are looking at what will be
the back of the house. Right now you are
looking through the house. Lots of dirt to move
In order to create a flat spot for the foundation.

The bottom picture was taken from the same
location, before the dirt started to move.

Off To a Good Start

Hello,

This is my first post on my first blog. So please bear with me.  I thought it would be fun to track our new home building journey through a blog with plenty of pictures (and hopefully of progress on the house).

Sandy and I bought this piece of land in 2004. 2.1 acres in the Game Trail subdivision approximately six miles  northwest of Buena Vista. It is in a beautiful spot and I'll try to highlight with some pictures as we go along.

Up until this winter we have just been doing site work like erosion control, tree thinning, and tree planting. Sandy will tell you, LOTS and LOTS of tree planting. But hey, you marry a forester, whatdidya expect?

We started to think seriously about the home last fall when we went on a home tour within our subdivision. Just down the street from our lot we toured a new home with a very practical floor plan. The owners raved about what a great job their builder did for them and that got the ball rolling. We'll see where it stops!

We have no plans to move from Woodland Park any time soon. This will be our retreat in the mountains for the next few years.

The driveway and foundation dirt moving started Monday, so we will have some pictures of the big mess soon.

Scroll down for pictures.

Thanks for reading, God Bless, Dana