Building a House.

Have you every built a house with your own two hands?  We have just completed our 5th house. My husband and my Father-in-law and myself built it with our own hands from the concrete in the basement floor to the ridge cap on the roof. Building a house is an amazing process to watch.  Searching for land that is right for the house and choosing a plan that suits your needs and wants is a challenge in itself.  Then comes all of the labor that is involved.  First you call in the dirty guy to dig the basement and hope that he knows what he is going so you don't spend extra money on him digging too much and then having to pay him to back fill his mistakes.  We don't have basement forms so we had a guy come in and set the forms for the basement walls. The foundation is the most important step in getting the house straight and level.  This is the guy you really have to trust.  After the foundation and the basement walls are poured you have to lay the plumbing pipe in the floor and fill it with gravel and get it level so you can pour the floor.  Shoveling gravel one wheelbarrow at a time is not fun!  Then comes my favorite part, setting the walls.  First, you lay the foam and set the boards on the footing and then the floor joist are next.  After you wrap the floor joist with the banding around the outside you get to put the floor down.  You glue and hammer, glue and hammer, the 4 foot by 8 foot sheets of 3/4 inch boards down to the joist.  A nail goes in every 8 inches up the board on every joist.  Bending over the whole time.  Once you get the floor on you get to mark out all of the walls. You measure and measure again making you makes at all the corners making sure everything is straight so you don't have crooked walls everywhere.  If the first wall is crooked they are all crooked.  We then cut all the top and bottom boards to the size of the wall and mark them for windows and corners and doors and studs. Once you get to this point you put all the window and door headers together and assemble your corners and wall centers for where the walls come together.  Then you lay the wall out on the floor and place everything were it goes, corners to corners, headers for windows and doors and studs every 16 inches.  You put them together one at a time putting the main baring walls up first then the smaller interior walls.  You have to make sure that the walls are plumb and straight so they all fit together then you add the top plate and it is on the the roof trusses.  The trusses are big and have to be lifted to the roof with a crane.  Trusses are big and easily caught by the wind and stretch the full length of the house.  We put them up one at a time securing them to the face plate on the mark where they go then the lucky one, my hubby, climbs to the top of the unstable top of the truss to secure it with a brace to the house structure.  One by one they go up and are cross braced to one another and to the structure.  We then have to lift 4x8 sheets of tongue and groove to the roof and put them on making sure that each cut of the roof line is correct before we glue and nail them to the trusses.  Tar paper and shingles are then applied to the roof with the ridge cap completing the job. Plumbing and electric, heading and air are ruffed in for all the fixtures you want for the inside.  My job is always running the lines through the rafters.  Then you place all of the electric boxes and pull the wires through.  Insulation in the walls and ceiling and then the sheet rock and mud texture come in.  We hire this done because a team can do it quickly and for a good price.   Then we start all of the finish work.  Building the cabinets, this entails staining and sanding and spraying each and every board .  Once the cabinets are set and the window and door trip are up, the baseboards are put in we get to start the tile and carpet.  Once piece at a time the tile is set when it is dry we get to put the grout in and wipe it and clean it over and over again to make the tile pretty and then the carpet is laid.  Then all of the plumbing fixtures are set and the electric is finished, being careful to make sure every light and plug in works and every faucet has water.  Then I get to make it my own...I paint each wall, pick out my appliances, move the furniture in.  This is a long process and takes lots of hard work.  Don't forget to pour the pouch and the garage approach.  The dirt must be back filled and the yard made.  Try to get the grass to grow in this heat!  I have a huge deck on the back.  Once we get it all completed and get everything moved in the enjoyment comes.  Making a house a home for my family is the best part!  The atmosphere of the structure you have put together with love.  I love my family and I am am blessed with the challenge of making the house a home.