Walls--Cage or Home?

The walls of our house are all framed up!

Jonathan took this picture as the moon rose and the darkness settled over our new house in South Dakota.

We started work Monday morning with just Jonathan and Danny, and Hannah and me along to cook and run errands as more and more sons, nephews, and friends arrived later. 

Jonathan and Danny formed the back patio first with lots of rebar since it is also the ceiling of the storm cellar.

I'll have another post about the work we ended up doing at Hope Family Chapel Monday afternoon through Wednesday night, but then Thursday morning Tim and nephews Samuel and David arrived on their way back from their trip out west. They helped with the pouring--after an early morning rain almost annihilated our plans, but then didn't after all!

Samuel helping Jonathan while others shovel.

It was a pink concrete truck that came!

Hannah is watching the basement walkout patio being poured.

I asked if the outer edge could be curved, and without further ado, Jonathan agreed!

He bought flexible form stuff, which blew off his truck in Colorado, and so he didn't know what to do for forming a curved edge until Danny suggested using the rim board which we had for the floor, but could be used first for the patio edge!

It worked perfectly!

And I love the curved edge. Concrete seems so hard and cold, but having the curve softens the appearance, I think.

Then in the wee hours of Friday morning, Sam, Carrie, and Joey and Robbie Hagerty arrived. 

They set right to work helping to frame the rest of the basement wall at the walkout wall. 

I loved this scene of the two Samuels--ours and my nephew, born within months of each other.

If Jonathan isn't directing with just one hand, he's doing it with both!

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Finishing installing the joists in the L part of the house, which will be the livingroom on the main floor and an open space for company or activities in the basement.  

Then the walls were put together, with special frames for windows. 

That was Saturday morning by that time. David welded three steel support posts to the beam across the basement before he and Samuel headed off for Missouri.

That left our three boys and the two Hagertys to help Jonathan finish framing! 

The back wall went up first,

 

 then this front living room wall.

Jonathan took a picture of the scene out our future livingroom window.

I took a picture of the sunset out the same window hours later.

 Another wall up. 

The gable end walls still were not up yet when the young men strode in after supper at the travel trailer.

Up went the south gable end wall.  

It had an issue with fitting.  

Sam climbing high on the ladder to see what he could see.

I ran back to get a photo of the men working in the sunset.

Dusk fell, and when the final gable end wall was up,

I breathed, "It looks like a home now!"

"Or maybe a cage!" Tim gasped, looking at the skeleton walls where once was only fresh, clear air. 

To a young man who just spent a week camping in the fresh air of the mountains of Washington and Wyoming and Montana, it seemed like a cage.

 To a mother who has spent the last several weeks cramped in travel trailers struggling to keep water jugs filled, food prepared, clothes laundered and ironed, people cared for, and neighbors greeted,

the walls felt like home!

Someday, hopefully before too many months, we will have a roof over our heads and insulation in and a kitchen and bathroom,

and it will be a home!