Wide Open Spaces!

Things were quiet at the house this past weekend.... they wanted to give me the opportunity to get caught up from my lack of blogging for a few days.... Actually, as I mentioned our G.C. was sick with the flu late last week and on Friday his head framer was also sick, as was a lot of the crew, so they took the weekend off. Hope everyone gets well soon.

As the new beams were put in to brace and support the ceilings there were many "pony" walls (I think that is what they are called, or at least what I have heard Brian call them) up throughout the house, so while you could tell that the spaces were much more open, the views were still obstructed. Yesterday, they were finished putting in many of the support beams downstairs -- now we really have a wide open space in the downstairs of the house:

What is pretty cool is this picture is taken from the back of the hosue (in what will be the mudroom) and you can see all the way across the house and see that the front door is open - Love how open it will be:

Standing in the 'breakfast area' and looking into the dining room:

So one of my crazy ideas when they first took out the ceiling in the back of the house was that we had to figure out a way to make use of all the extra space up there.... I mean I know it is attic space, but still, I thought it would look really cool if we raised the ceiling in the master bedroom... or did something with the space... so I suggested it to the builder. He said he would talk to the framer, but that it made sense and shouldn't be that difficult. Our master bedroom is not a "huge" room and I felt like doing this would make it feel larger. We debated it, but ultimately decided that it was worth it... well, I decided it was worth it and Brian agreed... probably every night before we go to bed - Brian will look up at the ceiling and say "Was this really worth X?" and I will say - "Yes - I think it is" It is sort of hard to tell in these pictures... but here are some pics from the progress they made on it:

Think that's about all that was going on at the house yesterday... they are getting closer to finished with framing... and I am finally almost all caught up from my lack of blogging!