WHAT'S HAPPENING?

Well as you can see the bath tubs have moved from the garage to new locations. The upstairs tubs are in place and I decided to test one out. The basement bathroom tub has moved out of the garage and into the middle of the basement but a least it is moving in the right direction.

The indoor fireplaces are in and hanging out. These and the tubs are the first things that make realize we are making progress on the inside of the house.

Hearth Room Fireplace.

This is the Great Room fireplace. It is just waiting for a lift and will be ready to be set in place.

Here is the daily look of the front of the house. They started caulking today and should be painting trim on Thursday and Friday. Roof should start on Monday.

This is unique view of the back of the house that we haven't taken before tonight. We spent sometime inspecting the back of our lot with our wonderful neighbors. Especially the handsome fellow below. This is from the Northwest corner of our lot.

Jack trying to keep the sun out of his eyes.

Jack trimming the "Albey's" lawn on "Jack's Tractor" as he would say.

Cardinals Party Suite 2008

The annual cardinal party suite game was this past weekend. I know, I said I wasn't going this year but, I gave in and went one last time. The good news is Scott and I made it two consecutive years without getting in a fight which means we are maturing or we are drinking less, either way it makes the trip home a lot easier. We saw a good game with lots of runs. We always hope for lots of runs ( or a rain delay which we have never gotten) because the more runs the more time we get to drink before they cut us off in the eigth inning. We also found a new place to go before the game. J. Buck's was a new downtown resturant that really treated us well.

Here are some of the cleaner pictures from the evening. For those of you that attended, I did delete the butt or no butt pictures so you won't be getting copies of those in your christmas cards.

Brotherly Love.Scott with his brothers Tim and Jeff.

Berkly Update!

Hanging out at Casa de Rental.

I know most of you reading our blog don't really care what is going on with Scott and I, you just look at it to see what Berkley is up too. Well we are in the dog days of summer, which for Berkley means lots of indoor time. It is too hot for this furry animal to go on errands in the car, house inspections, or walks. She does occasionally kick back and enjoy a tasty beverage though. Most of her time is spent napping, hanging out, chasing a ball in the house, or chewing/licking her favorite toy.

Loving her one eared bunny.

House Update!

The house is progressing but most of the progress has been in the inside. The above picture shows the current outside of the house. The trim work is all in place and the front porch is built. They are supposed to start painting the trim early this week and starting on the roof by the end of the week. Our shingles have been delivered so all that is delaying the roof is the trim painting. The brick and stone will be started as soon as the roof is finished.



As for the inside, the electrician, plumber, and HVAC man have all paid us visit. We did the walk through with the electrician on Saturday to mark outlets, cable jacks, phone lines, and light fixtures. The plumber has started putting in all of the pipes and drains. The furnace is in place and the duct work is about half way finished. Since the duct work is almost all in place, this brings us to the point were we will need to finish our framing project in basement and running of network cables for the speaker system and intercoms. Good Luck Scott! When we were working on the framing in the earlier stages the house was nice and cool, but I am afraid the second half of our project is going to me much sweater!



My major stress right now is deciding on cabinets. There are so many choices and they are so expensive. The kitchen design is such a big decision and everyone we meet with has their own opinion. Scott really doesn't want much involvement with this step. This leaves me with a lot of responsibility. Wish me luck!

Trim above the garage.

Furnace in the basement.

Duct work in progress.

Plumbing in the laundry room.

Bathtubs waiting patiently in the garage for instillation.

Windows and Trim!

As you can see, our workers are wasting no time. Yesterday the windows were delivered and they are all installed except for one small one in the master bathroom. The trim crew also started today and they got about half of the trim done on the outside. The front porch was also started on today. I am really amazed by all they can get down in a day. There are still a few odds and ins to finish on the framing. We are told the next steps are HVAC guys will start and roof will be started after trim.

The Great Room Windows. I am really pleased on the way these look.

The Back of the house.

The Inspector's Visit

Here is the Inspector!

Here are some of things that the inspector sniffed out over the weekend.

The Front Entry!

The Front Stairs! She was a little scared of these!

The Great Room!

The Kitchen but no food!

One of the Bedrooms!

The Basement!
Another view of the basement. Look at that Great Framing!

Just inspecting the front yard from the sitting room!

Framing Nearly Complete

So the framing is nearly complete. Framing should be complete before the end of the week. They have a few things to fix on the interior and finish out the garage. The windows should be in this week. They will start to go in along with putting up the trim and the hvac guy should be coming. We have finished most of the basement framing. We were waiting to finish because they had to put in the framing for a window and they did that today. We should get the rest of the basement framed this weekend. Barring major setbacks, we have been guaranteed our goal of getting in before Christmas.

Framing Update!

As you can tell from the picture above, the framing is really progressing. We were told today that the framing my be done by the middle of the next week and then we will be moving on to the next steps. The next things to come should be the outside trim, roof, and windows. We have posted a lot of pictures from the front but here are a couple of pictures of the back.

We did spend a lot of time on Sunday doing the framing in the basement. We are definitely not experts but we are getting more comfortable with power tools. I personally got to use the circular saw, nail gun, and a thing called a remington that drives nails into the concrete via of a power charged burst from shell that looks like a bullet. I know you are all surprised that Scott would trust me with items like this but I was very well behaved. Scott Matthews has been very patient with us and given us a lot of help. Here are some pictures of Scott and Scott working hard.

Starting the Roof!

Well, they have all of the floors done with the exception of the bonus room above the garage, but we think they are waiting to get the roof line before doing that, or at least that is what we are telling ourselves. They finally put in all of the staircases so we can get from floor to floor without climbing or walking around outside.

I have been working the last three days on finishing framing the basement. We had them do all of the load baring framing and the Scott Matthews and I are finishing the rest. Jen was so excited because she go to use a power saw, yes I let her use the power saw and yes I am doing construction believe it or not. I will give you pictures when it is finished. At the moment, all of the boards are cut and I just need some help and guidence from Scott to finish it up. Unfortunately it could be a week or two before that happens do to work schedules. I think my favorite part has been the Mexican music that I get to listen to the entire time I work.

Going Up! Next Stop 2nd Floor!

Upstairs Bedrooms

Our hard working framers started framing the second floor. We have one staircase in and they are working on the upstair bedrooms. We also got wood delivered so Scott can start doing some of the framing in the basement. If you know Scott, you also know that he has no idea what he's doing when it comes to construction. So our handy, experienced neighbor Scott Matthews is going to teach my Scott the tricks of the trade. I will be sure to post a picture of the Scotts hard at work. If anyone else wants to help let us know or just wants to watch!

A view from the second floor.

First Floor Framing!

Ok, today I am going to try posting my first blog. Today was a big step for the Alvey Compound. We started first floor framing. This is really exciting for me because I am having trouble visualizing our floor plan in real space and today I started seeing it come together. Now is the time that I start to panic because I realize all of the decisions that I have to make in the next couple of weeks and that someone is going to have to clean all of this space.

We did have a visitor today to see the progress. The visitor is already trying to tear down the walls. We still love him though! Hate to see what he tries to do after a couple of beers.

The Walls are Going Up!!!

After waiting out the rain and waiting for the lumber company to release the wood, the framing has started. It's finally starting to look like a house or at least a basement. They framed out the basement today and everything looks good with the exception of a missed window and door. It's neat to see a drawing of something you think you'll like go up into the real thing and see if it's what you imagined. So far so good.

New York, New York

New York was a blast. We did a lot of site seeing and ate a lot of wonderful food. We started out visiting my cousin Clint to pick up our Yankee's tickets and to catch up a little bit. This is a picture of Clint and Scott on the top of Clint's apartment building.



Our seats for the Yankees game were great. We sat in the lower level directly behind home plate. There were several homeruns and the Yankees won 12-6. After the game we had dinner with Jason's friend and then had drinks at a bar on top of the building. We were right in between the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building it was pretty cool until we saw how much we were paying for a drink. I hope Jen enjoyed her $15 martini because I know I enjoyed by $9 bottle of beer.
Sunday we were a lot more active. We saw about everything there was to see downtown New York City. We walked the Brooklyn Bridge, saw the Statue of Liberty, ground zero, Wall Street, Chinatown, Little Italy, and I'm sure there are other things that I can't remember right now. That evening we ate at a wonderful mexican restaurant called Maya.


Monday we walked out of our hotel into a street festival and enjoyed crepes from one of the vendors, then saw St. Patrick's Cathedral, walked down 5th Ave, to Central Park, then to Time Square and Bryant Park. Since we saw everything on Sunday and Monday that we had set out to see. We had a lot more relaxing day on Tuesday. We went down to the Today Show, had breakfast in Rockafeller Plaza, then went on the NBC Studio tour. We then went and hung out in entral Park. Jen got to see them setting up for the premier of Sex and the City, which Jen really wanted to hang outside of to see all of the stars, but we had dinner plans with my cousin and his girlfriend that evening. Dinner was great. We ate at a nice steakhouse, had lots of beers and I think we scared the crap out of Clint's girlfriend with all of our stories from back home. I guess we'll see if she makes it to Jennifer and Chad's wedding.
When we got back I was surprised Friday evening with a wonderful 30th birthday party at Victory Field. Jen arranged all of this without me knowing and had a lot of my friends and family there to enjoy baseball, food and some frosty beverages. The Indians won, we had fireworks after the game and everyone enjoyed themselves. It was by far the coolest birthday I have ever had. Who says turning 30 is a bad thing?

So it's been awhile since we have posted anything. Actually we kind of forgot about it since nothing real exciting has happened until now.
Since our last post, we finally sold our house in this cruddy market and are living in a rental with all of our stuff in boxes in one of the bedrooms. We finally started building our house. It has been a slow process to get it started but we are almost 2 weeks into it and we should have basement walls by this weekend. We have been taking pictures daily but until now nothing too exciting has happened with it. We leave for New York this weekend and are probably going to end up missing the walls go up.
We are very excited about our New York trip. We have both wanted to go for a long time and we are finally going. We are going with our friends the Eders. Should be a lot of fun and I'll have pictures to post when we get back. The thing I am looking forward to the most is the Yankees game, well seeing Yankee Stadium. Since they are taking down one of the most historic stadiums in the history of baseball I wanted to go to a game there before it happened. Thanks to my cousin Clint, we have awesome seats and Jason and I are pumped.