Hopkins' New House

The rooms are starting to take shape as the drywall crew continued to make progress on Brian & Tish Hopkins' new house. Drywall being installed in the entrance foyer.



Another view of the entrance foyer.





The master bedroom and bath.



After a weekend of cold wet weather there was a break in the weather today and another crew was busy back-filling around the foundation.



Back-filling and rough grading on the back side of the house.

Spring Migration

The calendar says it's Spring, and the days are getting longer, but the recent cold weather this week didn't make it feel like Spring. While I've spotted hundreds of robins and other migrating birds in the neighborhood, I've also noticed the local deer have moved back to the hilltops from their winter feeding areas in the valleys. This isn't a very long migration for the local deer, only a couple of miles, but the numbers of deer feeding in the fields has increased over the past weeks.Within the next couple of weeks we should see the flocks of turkeys move back to the neighborhood as they prepare to start nesting.

Hopkins' New House

Brian & Tish Hopkins' new house entered another phase in construction as a truckload of drywall was delivered today.



The drywall crew didn't waste time whittling away at the stacks of drywall.  Cutting a 14 foot long sheet of 5/8 inch drywall for placement on the living room ceiling.



The first sheet of the living room ceiling going into position.



By the afternoon all to the drywall for the second floor ceilings had been hung.

Hopkins' New House

Today's cold/windy weather may have stopped the siding installers from working on the outside of Brian & Tish Hopkins' new house, but the insulation crew was busy on the inside installing cellulose insulation on the exterior walls.



This type of cellulose insulation is blown through a hose onto the wall where a layer of the insulation will build up to fill the wall cavity between the studs.



Once the stud cavity is "overfilled" with cellulose insulation a special tool is used to level the insulation flush with the studs.



The excess cellulose insulation from the filling and leveling process is vacuumed up and recycled back into the system and used to fill other areas.



A view of the kitchen area after installation and clean up.



Down in the basement, the hot (red) and cold (blue) water lines have been connected to the distribution manifold.

Hopkins' New House

With today's warm weather the construction crews were busy working on the inside and outside of Brian & Tish Hopkins' new house.

On the outside, siding started to be installed on the front of the garage.



On the south side of the house, another crew was busy installing siding.



Inside the house, the electrical crew was busy connecting wires to outlets and switches.



In the garage, the heating/ventilating crew was installing duct-work from the basement to the second floor. 

Winter Wildlife

As this cold/snowy Winter continues to hang on into March, several of the neighborhood deer have taken up residence in our backyard. With hard, packed snow covering the area, the deer are having a hard time breaking through it to the underlying grass. The deer are now making several trips a day through our apple orchard looking for late drooping apples.



Another favorite food source for the deer is the periwinkle plants growing at the base of the retaining wall behind our house.  The deer have started using our lawn as a daytime bedding area and don't move out of sight as we come and go.

Hopkins' New House

It was another cold, but dry day as a crew started to back-fill the garage area of Brian & Tish Hopkins' new house. First, the outside of the garage wall was filled with stone to form a solid base. 



Since the soil excavated for the house foundation was frozen, the back-fill material was trucked in.



Once the outside wall area was filled it was time to start filling the inside of the garage floor area.



By the afternoon the garage floor was full of stone.



A view from the outside.