Got a welcoming visitor today:

He was hanging around the kitchen and yelling….. sorry, the pantry isn’t stocked yet.

Looks a lot more like a house with sheathing….. here’s the rear of the house:

Lots of windows and doors. Brown concrete area is the outside covered patio.

For the geeky photographers: this was taken in pretty dark conditions, 1/6 second @ f2.8, no flash, hand held…. digital does have it’s advantages over film.

Yes, it’s a Sunday. But here we are, hard at work.

Front door just to left of centre, office window on right. They framed the exterior *house* walls first; then comes the garage walls, then comes interior walls, then the roof.

Living room windows, each one will be a 5′ x 5′ fixed window, so the view will be basically what you see here.

So in most places with decent building codes, you need to bolt the house down to the foundation…. sounds hard but is really pretty simple.

Step 1: insert some threaded anchors into the concrete foundation while it’s still wet.

Then when it’s time to put down the base plate, just drill holes, and add a washer and nut:

These are all mild steel, since it will be sealed from the elements inside the wall.

It’s a roof!

OK, more of a kit, some assembly required.

These are engineered roof trusses – designed and built in a factory to your specifications. They’re much stronger than building them yourself; we were going to need a supporting post in the middle of the living/dining/kitchen area, but because of the extra strength of the roof, the post isn’t needed.