Wow, the last time I posted I told you about the floor. SO MUCH MORE HAS HAPPENED!!!!!! It actually looks like a house now! It's crazy! Ok, I'll try not to get too ahead of myself.
So.
We finished the subfloor and the next step was to have a good ol' fashioned wall raising party. That's right, ma and pa got in on the action, as well as ma- and pa-in-law. Melanie (my mom) and Lisa (Matt's mom) each got to hammer a nail into a wall frame (we would have let them hammer more, but as adorable as it was to watch them, it may have taken a while...) and we all got to lift frames into place. Here's the two matriarchs wielding their power over the doomed nails.

( Rick admires Lisa's two-handed technique.)

(Jim chuckles to himself.)

And here is the raising of the first wall. Huzzah! 

We used 2x4's for the framing and rippling biceps for the lifting.  The spacing between studs is 24 on center, which we chose instead of 16" mostly to cut down on wight. All of the window and door frames have hefty headers made of three pieces of wood sandwiched together to provide extra strength under the roof. 

Oh, did I mention it was Matt's birthday? Yep. He is enjoying this process so much that this is what he wanted to do to celebrate. Manual labor. 

You can tell he's pretty proud of his work.

Speaking of working hard, Dad and Rosie sure had a tough day of supervising.

At the end of the day most of the walls were framed and upright. 

Wow. It really was a sight to see. We could actually start to imagine what it was going to be like to live in! And whoa, is it tall! I didn't realize just how tall 13 feet is. That's a lot of vertical space, which feels so great when you're living tiny. 

Well, I guess I'll keep this post short, and try to come back real soon to keep you updated. 

Till then, Cheers!