It's starting to feel like a house...

Eben, after a little bit of thinking, started building the stairs. It all worked out like he planned. As the last light of the day was slipping away, he put them all together. Here are Eben and Elia sitting at the top of the stairs, a week ago, watching a squirrel drop pine cones from the tree. This is one sign that the long time locals are saying means that winters coming early! (Please no!)
My Dad, Papa, came up on Thursday to help us out. He's a building pro and can work harder than anyone we've met! Elia was so excited to work with Papa. She kept saying, "I love Papa!"
Eben and my Dad started out by putting up the giant ridge beam for the second story roof. There were many tall tall ladders on top of a tall floor. Up in the trees, yikes!
Here's Eben working on getting the steel piece to fit the beam. Yep, he's pretty darn high.

Using a sharp power tool!
They used a genie lift to lift up the huge glulam. It was very heavy and a neighbor came to help out a bit. It made me nervous to watch, and Eben a bit nervous to crank up that huge beam.
But it went off without a hitch and here they are, setting the beam into place.
The second glulam was not quite as long and by now they were pros at it.
Eben loves to build huge heavy walls and then stand them. Luckily, on this day, when they had to stand a 32 foot wall, a bunch of guys from up the street just happened to be walking by on thier way to play tennis. They were happy to help out and the wall went up easily. They were coming back from tennis when Eben stood the opposite wall. Just our luck!

We had two good friends help out all Saturday, Eddie and Justin. They are friends from church and were such a blessing to us. Elia is our little monkey, and here she is walking along the planks.
She loved climbing up there.
The heavy heavy rafters were cut and put up the rest of the weekend. It was not an easy job and we couldn't have done it without my Dad!
This is what the weekend brought us. Our friend Bill came back on Sunday to help us out some more. Almost all the rafters are up now. Everyone worked so hard. It was pretty impressive.
There's a lot more to go, but with this much done, we are feeling more confident that it will be closed in before the snow flies! Even though all our local buddies up here keep saying, "Winter's going to be early and big this year."

The floor is in!

I actually parked in the garage last night! Notice the big steel beams in there! I missed the big event, but we hired our neighbor who has a bucket loader to come down one morning to help Eben and some friends set them. Eben quickly got the floor joisted out.
Yesterday, Pete and he sheeted the floor and put in some of the big support beams upstairs.
Here's a view from the top!
The opening is for the stairs which Eben is working on right now!

A little bit of help...

Things are moving right along. This last week we had quite a bit of help. Tel, Eben's dad, came up for awhile. Our friend, Bill, came over Friday night to put in a few hours after work. They got a wall or two up in a couple of hours. Elia was having a good time working with Grandpa.
She is a big fan of the tape measure and insisted on carrying around her plastic turkey in her bags all morning. Everything she measures is either, 30, 6, or a combination of the two.
Eben had the big beam saw home from work. Man am I glad I don't have to run that thing. Yikes! He's pretty darn good at it!
This is Eben using one of his chainsaws to knife in a metal plate. It was a tricky, skilled maneuver. The plate is a hidden connector for the two beams around the entry. He did a pretty good job at the whole thing.
One of our two steel beams for the garage arrived on Sunday. We had a bunch of friends around to help move it since it weighed a whole lot. The other steel beam is twice as long and Eben tried to pick it up while he was in Reno on Friday with his truck. The truck would have done the job, but he wasn't so sure about the rack. The beam weighed over 1300 lbs. He actually had it on the truck and while driving away decided it wasn't such a great idea. So he decided that we could wait a few days and have them deliver it instead of risking tacoing his rack and who know what else. Good descision Eb!

Here's Tim and Pete working on a wall. Good friends to come around and help out.
Tel and Eben installing the beams for the entry.
Tim and Eben putting in a support beam in the mudroom.
Eben putting up boards around the top of the first floor. (Can't remember what this is called) We are all ready to put in the second story floor now. Just waiting on the steel.
Tel and Donna working on the front entry deck.

Once again our friend, Pete, was over to help. Don't know what we'd do without this guy. He even came over at 4 am to watch Elia while we went to the hospital to have Zeb. He's one of Elia's favorite folks (and ours too!)
And this is where we ended up. Eben put on the shear so he could have an accurate measurement to order the trusses for the mudroom roof. The plywood decking is temporary for now and real steps will be a way off into the future.
We are probably going to add some windows to the garage wall since Eben has 3 free ones from work that will match our windows which are coming. But besides that, the first floor is framed!
Thanks to all our helpers. Eben's working until dark every night and for 12 hours on the weekends and is always glad to have friends around. Amazing!