1st floor walls are going up

They're making good progress on the first floor walls, although not quite enough to give the framers credit for another 10 feet yet (maybe tomorrow, if they finish all the first floor exterior walls). I did get requests for electrical and gas service in today. Had a slight problem with routing the gas line. The village didn't want me to route it to the north, because it would be too close to a tree (a tree with a 3-inch trunk). To the south lies a big pile of topsoil. But the gas company was very cooperative. They'll go around the dirt pile.

On Friday, the electrician came in and installed the meter box outside, and panels in the basement:

I had hoped he would also get to roughing in the workshop, but not yet. They started erecting walls on Friday, and made a bunch more progress today. Here's a picture of the crew raising a wall. It looks almost effortless, doesn't it?

He's not even straining to get that wall into place. Maybe this is why:

Here's a picture of the east wall of the family room, just about ready to raise. They do as much as they can before raising the wall, finishing the framing, sheathing, house wrap, and even the soffits and roof when they can. This wall is just waiting for the roof of the box window bay in the family room:

We had a pretty good sunset tonight. So I rushed back to the car to grab the camera and catch it digitally (I almost said "on film"). So here's the view of the sunset through our dining room window:

I guess I missed the fabulous sunset. But we do have a great view of the lumber pile. Here's the west wall of the house. That's the dining room on the right, the foyer and stairs in the middle, and the laundry room at the left:

And here we have Cindy, Megan, and Zeke waving from the front door. Ok, so I missed the wave, too:

Tomorrow, the framers should finish the exterior walls on the first floor, and start on the interior walls. The concrete guys should be there to pour the porch slab. But they need the south wall of the garage raised first. The framers built it today, but couldn't put it up right away because the concrete guys poured the garage walls a bit out of square. About 2 inches out of square. The Spancrete guys mentioned that it looked like the foundation was a bit out of square, but it didn't cause them any problems. They didn't catch it when the measured. So we'll resolve that problem in the morning. This is the first real error that I've had to deal with. Hopefully we don't delay the roof trusses with that error.