Now comes the fun part!

 Framing is always the best part of any project, because you go from "nothing" to being able to see the whole thing in real three-dimensional space in such a short amount of time!

One of the highlights of this project was having this crew working here with us. The owner has attended our church for as long as Matt can remember, and his two sons do most of the work, along with a few other guys. Not only are they part of our church, but they're also distantly related, so Korey and Kelley both have memories of coming to our house with their mom when they were little to visit Matt's grandpa! (I think I've mentioned before how Matt and I moved in with his grandpa when we were first married, and purchased the house from his estate a few years after he passed away. It's neat living on property that's been in Matt's family since 1908!) Anyway, it just felt so *wholesome* every day to have this particular crew being the ones to build this project - much less like we'd hired someone and more like a good old-fashioned barn raising! Korey's kids also just happen to be our little girls' best friends.

Bright and early Monday morning, Korey showed up to get things started. Matt's planning on working with the crew as much as possible, partly because he enjoys framing, but also because the more hours he puts in the fewer we have to pay someone else to do!

Floor framing done and subfloor installed! Fun routine with Krassi - every day getting off the bus we would wheel over and give him a chance to see what was going on. 

Next is walls!! Here's the wall with our new main entry door.

As the work progresses, more help arrives. Today Gavin (who's also grown up in our church - in between Owen and Leah's age - he's also spent time at our house over the years shooting Nerf guns in the basement at Owen's birthday parties!) arrived to help Korey. Look closely at the picture - Gavin said, "I feel like I'm on Little House on the Prarie!" 

Good call. The girls had been invited to a Laura Ingalls themed birthday party, and took a day to make bonnets for themselves that they then wore out in the yard the rest of the season!

Back to building! We've now got the upper ledger on the house and are putting on the joists for the flat roof over the mud/entry! Another great thing about having the construction crew be guys we know well is that the kids got to be very involved.

And sheathing on the outside - it's like a real room! Gavin's starting to frame up the front wall of the garage here. (Framing happens on the ground, and then the whole wall gets lifted up into place.)

Here's Korey working on the cantilevered roof over the entry. This is a fun one to see structured, because they had to install the joist hanger *upside down* on the garage door wall because those forces acting on the cantilever are stronger than gravity at that end of the rim!

The garage slab is a nice, smooth, open surface for wheeling around on! Krassimir has gotten pretty good with his one-handed-controlled wheelchair.

And here's my oldest and youngest boys twinning. :) Ebs isn't quite as tall as Krassi yet (at 6 years and 20 years) but he's working on it!