Baby Update

Here's the latest image of baby Banner. Cody and I went Friday afternoon for a quick appointment and the doctor said it was still a little early to hear the heartbeat with the doppler, so she did a quick ultrasound, which we weren't expecting. On the right is the head, and on the left you can see the little legs. Every few seconds, you would see him/her do a little jump! It was nice to know that everything is okay and the baby's moving around in there. I'm in week eleven right now so the first trimester is almost over with no sickness to speak of. I've got another appointment the first week of September and then again in early October. The end of October I'll be at 20 weeks and so that's when we'll have the full ultrasound.

All OSB is Up

As you can see here, all the windows are installed and all the OSB is up around the outside. The headers on the front porch are finished, the posts for the porch are made and ready to install, and the exterior doors will probably be installed this weekend. Then Cody has to install around 400 hurricane clips along the inside (10 nails per clip!), and we should be hurricane ready!

On this side of the house the window you see is what will be our bedroom, the front room will be the nursery/guest room, and a closet runs along the wall so there are no windows.

Here you can see some of the back of the house. The far window is in our bedroom, and the near window is in the kitchen over the sink. There is a door on the side here that comes out through the kitchen, and a door in the back that's in the utility room.

Another side view.

And the front.

Moving Along - Windows

Here's the latest on the hacienda. We're moving right along. This week they should be finishing installing the windows, and it's time to go get the doors as well. Then I don't know what comes next, but it looks like it might be the roof! We're moving right along - please help us in praying that hurricane season will either avoid us altogether or at least hold off until we've got a solid exterior structure!

And the roofing begins....

You can see on the far left side of the house that the OSB is going up on the roof. Cody, U. Carlton and Mr. Register finished up the front and back of the left side last night, and are starting on the larger side tonight. Then we call for a nail pattern inspection before they put the roof felt on and can move forward. And if you look closely, you can see leaning up inside against the far left wall are our windows already delivered! The two larger squares you see on the front will be picture windows and the others are all single windows. We ordered the style that are colonial on top, and solid pane on the bottom. Our 'design consultant' (my aunt Elaine in Charlotte) said this would be a way to help our ranch style house look a little more 'low country' which is what I was really hoping for. I think the front porch will help too. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but the house will be 1,000 square feet and we designed it to add on to the right side in the future. All the windows you see will become doorways or hallways. We plan to have about another ten feet or so of the taller roof, and then step back down on the far right where we'll put the master suite. That is of course, if we can ever afford it. It'll be several years down the road, but it helps to plan ahead because we'll save on the cost by making it easy to do.

Trusses Are Up

Here's the truss crew (L to R): Buddy Register, Art Hursey and Richard Bryan. Grandpa was there helping too, and of course our contractor extraordinare, Uncle Carlton, was the photographer.

The trusses being delivered.

The finished product. It's really starting to look like a house!

The Shed - A Work in Progress

Here's a picture of our shed/pump house. I think I need to replace it with a better picture, but this is the color we're going to paint our house. Luckily we were building this, so we could experiment with paint color. I don't know how well you can tell here, but this a light green Behr paint called 'Mother Nature'. We don't have the trim boards up yet, but they're going to be an off-white color and we'll be painting the door a dark brownish red. This will be the color we'll use on shutters for the actual house, and probably the door too.

Update on the Trusses

We got some good news this week. It looks like the trusses will be ready tomorrow - sooner than expected! The plan is to set them all this Saturday - we're so excited to see things moving along. We'll be out there helping (okay, so I won't really be helping) Uncle Carlton and then we're heading off to the river for Cody's 30th birthday. It should be a nice time, but I must admit that I'm not looking forward to putting myself in a bathing suit! I don't look pregnant yet, just kinda pudgy. But I guess that's no different than usual!

We're going to be parents!

Well, in case you haven't heard the news, there's a little Banner on the way! You can't really see much on this picture, but it's the little blob on the left in the middle of the black circle. You can't tell here, but we could see the fastest little heartbeat! This will be the first Banner grandchild, and the first great grandchild on both sides. We're very excited. We went to the doctor last Friday, and they set our due date as March 4 - the day after my birthday! I have a friend at work whose daughter was born five days before her, which she said is great because it would have been torture for her little girl to have to sit through all her mom's birthday celebrations waiting on her own every year - so hopefully this little one will come a few days earlier than expected! And no - we don't think we're going to find out what it is. We both love surprises. But who knows if we'll be able to stand it or not when the time comes that we could find out. We've got a long way to go still. More news to come as the little one grows!

We have walls!

Uncle Carlton just sent me this picture of some work they did last night (he, Cody and Buddy Register). It's going to be a couple more weeks before the trusses are ready, so they're going ahead and putting the OSB up on the outside walls. They may start building the interior walls too. As you can see, the right side of the house is taller. We're going to have 9 foot ceilings in the living room and kitchen, and 8 foot ceilings on the left side, which is the bedrooms and bathrooms. There's more and more progress all the time!



Exterior framing

Pouring the Slab

Cody surveying the finished product.


Cody and Uncle Carlton (the 'Contractor') discussing very important things I'm sure.


This is our friend Scott - he's the one that did the slab for our shed and for the house. He helped save us some money. Thanks Scott!


Here is one of the trucks pouring the slab


And this is me and Grandpa 'supervising'. Tough work, but somebody's gotta do it!