October 30th - Exterior of Guest House Painted

Below are pictures following the exterior of the guest house being painted - the walls and battens are complete and the fascia & soffit are only primed at this point.

3 sides are now complete on the barn in terms of the steel siding - they are now working on the back side and the small out building along with the fascia and soffits.

New Week - October 29th

The weather is gorgeous here in Minnesota as it approached the mid 60's today and another good day of progress on the project. Today, they started painting the exterior of the guest house/garage - finished primarily the fascia and soffits today and the pictures don't really represent the color, but it is Sherwin Williams SW 7048 Urbane Bronze and tomorrow they will be painting the siding and battens with Williams SW 7047 Porpoise.

In addition to the painting, they started taping and mudding the sheet rock in the guest house and they continue to work on installing the metal siding on the barn.

Plans call for us to move the majority of our belongings into the barn this coming weekend and the final cut-over to the guest house will occur next week between Monday-Wednesday. So, we will be living at Shelly's parents house for a few days along with storing the stuff that will be going into the guest house within our existing garage. They will also start decommissioning the existing house next week. So, we are probably 2 weeks away from leveling the place....WOW!

October 25th Progress

Good progress has been made this week - they sheet rocked the ceiling in the guest house/garage today, installed the dog door, made progress on installing the battens on the exterior, rubber membrane installed on roof of barn, finished siding one side of the barn and Wright Hennepin installed the electrical and phone cable line to the guest house/garage. See updated pictures taken tonight:

Here are the pictures from the barn along with a great view of the Mississippi River out of the window we added last week on the 2nd floor.

October 24th Update

A few pictures from today as they insulated the inside of the guest house, so they'll start sheet rocking tomorrow. In addition, they finished installing the James Hardie board on the exterior of the guest house and have now starting installing the battens.

October 23rd - Later at Night

Here are some other photos taken late tonight on the progress made today on the garage/guest house. Hopefully, Shelly will be able to get some better pictures tomorrow during the day.

Missing window from inside the house....lost our view of the river for now.

New home for the windows from the house.



Drive coming into our property with new window installed and James Hardie siding going up.



The low voltage wiring was completed this evening by STARDOT Inc. for the garage. This is phase one of the home automation to provide structured wiring throughout the house, audio distribuion and home security. Check out Mike Lockett and his website at http://www.smartcustomhome.com/

October 23rd Update

Well, it's been a week since we last updated everyone on the progress of the project. Overall, the past few days has seen a lot of progress with the nice weather. The plan is still to be moving into the garage/guest house over the weekend of November 3-4th. Plans are to install insulation on Wednesday followed by sheet rocking on Thursday as today they wrapped up the electrical, water and low voltage runs. Here are some updated photos of the guest house - pictures of the Tyvek along with the new gas meter and electrical box. Today, they started installing the James Hardie plank on the garage and the (2) windows from the house were moved and installed in their new locations.

Barn progress is continuing, yesterday they started installing the new siding - barn red and today they stripped off the shingles and the roof. In addition, we added a 5th window on the 2nd floor of the barn rather than boarding over this old door location in order to provide us an excellent view of the Mississippi.

Plans are to have the barn sealed up in order to start moving things in over this coming weekend. Pray for nice weather the remainder of the week.

October 16th - Progress Report

This is an update of the progress around the guest house/garage and the barn. The pictures depict the rubber membrane on the roof, roughed-in sewer and water piping, foundation completed, framing started - mechanical room, bathroom and laundry area for the guest house.

Shelly is standing in the bathroom - pretty small for a sink, toilet and shower.

The work being done on the barn include reinforcing the roof trusses to support the new metal roof to be installed and installation of the overhead door for the barn.

The weather has been miserable the past 2 days, but hopefully things will clear up so they can work on the outside of the barn with removal of the old siding and start installing new siding.

Other activity include the new well being drilled, electric and gas service relocations being coordinated for later in the week and a walk through with the electrical contractor on Thursday a.m. Plans for next week include sheet rocking in the garage, insulation, etc. and we'll be getting close to making the move in hopefully the first weekend in November.

Guest House/Garage Framing Completed - October 11th

New pictures of the guest house/garage following completion of the framing and roofing.

October 10th - Guest House Framing Started

We're finally back with an update on our project....not a lot of progress until today due to poor weather that we had on both Friday & Monday. However, significant progress was made today on the guest house/garage....I was amazed to see that they framed it up in a single day and started laying down the plywood for the roof. See the pictures below.

The only surprise for me is how small the inside of the guest house really is.....it should be an interesting 6 months of being nice cozy.

Work continues on the barn as the windows arrived and we are actually starting to wish that we would have designed the barn to possibly live in as it's 100% improved.

October 3rd - Block Foundation for Guest House Completed

Another day of progress....the block foundation for the guest house/garage was completed, the 2nd floor of the barn along with new steps were also completed. Over the next few days there won't be a lot of things to see via changes in terms of pictures as they are going to work on some carpentry around the barn windows to be prepared for new windows next week on Tuesday, run water lines to the garage, waterproof the block foundation, lay the drain tile around the guest house/garage foundation and then plan to backfill on Monday.

So, the plan is framing of the guest house/garage will start on Tuesday, October 9th.

Stay tuned to the blog as we'll update pictures next week. Everyone have a great weekend!