For the Pure Joy-st of It.

The joists are hung! As you can see in the photo to the left, the main floor joists have been attached to the "wide flange I beam" with standard joist hangers, to the 2x8 that's been fitted into the flange of the beam itself. The temporary wall will be coming down any day now.

As for progress on other items, the plumbers have arrived and started roughing in their work. As you can plainly see, Porter diligently inspects their work on a daily basis. I've been quite surprised how well Porter has

been doing with all the commotion of construction. He instantly make friends with all the contractors, (to those of you who know him, this should come as no surprise) and most of them tell stories of dogs either they own or from previous projects where the first time the dog hears

a nail gun, it runs and hides under the bed. Porter, on the other hand, will stand nearby and appear as though he is intently watching while any manner of labor is occurring. On more than one occasion I have had to shoo him out of the

basement to stay out of the way of the work itself, and to make sure he doesn't get hurt. Safety glasses for dogs are prohibitively expensive.

And finally, the downstairs work has protruded into the upstairs living space. The wall between the living room and the garage was opened-up to bring the washer and dryer inside. These will eventually make their way downstairs into the utility room, but for now, they rest dormant upstairs. The continual creep of the construction into what we thought would be our unobtruded living space cannot yet be described as a "problem" but it certainly has forced us to change our living situation more than I had hoped or expected. Sarah continues to take it in stride like a true champion, simply stating as long as it's all done on time (a month before her due date) she will be happy. We'll see how well this holds up when her parents visit next week and everyone will be sleeping in one bedroom...