The Stairs

Beautiful week! Several sunny days, and even a few with warm temperatures. Andy started on the house wrap, and has the roof and a lot of the sides covered. We'll get everything nice and tight and secure when we wrap the house in foam.
Laying out the 2x12s to make stringers - you can see the marks on the boards in the big version of the photo. We cut them laying just like this, using the circular saw for most of it and finishing up the unreachable bits with the Florian. You can also see the bathroom framed in on the North end of the dining room. That will be a full bath attached to Chris and Karen's bedroom.

Laying on the treads. We'll use pieces of the tongue and groove 2x6 flooring to make the stair treads. We'll trim the tongue off, and they'll make a nice, solid tread. Kick boards will be 1x8 sheathing left over from the walls if we have to... if it's ok with the almighty code, then we'd all prefer to leave the treads open.

The four of us. It feels great to have stairs now, and it's hard to imagine what we did without them! This is the view from the window in Chris and Karen's bedroom, looking South into the rest of the house.

Karen and Mindy are laying out the kitchen - using sawhorses, 2x4s, and anything else not nailed down. They're excited about the layout, which is great news for Andy and Chris. You know what they say... happy wife, happy life. You can also see the mudroom framed in on the North end of the kitchen. We'll have a half bath there, some lockers for coats and boots and things, and other mudroomy stuff. The doorway into the kitchen is a full 48", and will eventually be arched. The angles are such that we will be able to walk into the house with a wheelbarrow full of wood. This was important to Chris, probably because he'd be too lazy to take more than one trip out to the wood pile.