Week Three Framing

Sara and I have had two conference calls with TJB early this week to go through our plumbing selections and figure out where we are going to deviate from standards, where we are going to upgrade and where we are going to go with what we started with.

It is kind of a grueling process with all of the options. It has been a productive two days of meetings, and I think after we put what we've learned back into the spreadsheet Sara has put together, we should be able to make our selections.

Now that they are nearly half way through the framing, and out of an abundance of caution, Sara and I met Justin out at the house to make sure the rooms are the correct size and dimension. Justin was great, and helped us get through the house and confirm that everything is as we planned it. We did catch the first very minor mistake. The walk in closet off of our bedroom appeared to have been framed up without a door. We thought it looked curious when we were out over the weekend. Sure enough, there were four walls but no room for a door. Needless to say, they will be correcting that.

We may add a small closet to the study. We looked at that with Justin today, and figured out what they'd have to move around to make that happen. It is always nice to have more storage out of sight and out of mind, and the closet allows us to call it a bedroom in a few decades should we decide to sell. I guess it never hurts to think long term.

As they get near the end of the framing, Sara and I are going to get to/have to spend a full day walking through each room with the electrician finalizing where each outlet, light switch, cable jack and phone jack will go. We posed the question to Justin about whether or not that process could be broken up into two trips. Like with the plumbing, our goal would be to refrain arriving at the point where we throw up our hands and say "sure, put it there." Unfortunately, this will all occur in one visit. And while there will be room to move stuff around, we're pretty much going to have to finalize those decisions in one . . . long. . . room-by-room walk through.

Last night, to start that process, I took our plan and printed screen shots of individual rooms or smaller segments of the house. I started going through the individual rooms and marking them up for outlets and switches. Of course many of them are no-brainers, and in fact many of the electrical outlet placements are dictated by code. But we'll likely have at least a few unique needs for either electrical or cable jacks, so it has been nice to try to isolate those in advance of walking through the house with the electrician.

It was good to get to see the guys framing the house this afternoon. It was great for peace of mind to know that the house and the rooms are being framed up in the right shapes and sizes. And it has been good to talk through plumbing options with many of the TJB team, and work on site with Justin to make minor adjustments.

As you can see, they've come a long ways and things are really starting to come together.