It’s been a year since I last revised the floor plan. With construction almost complete, it’s time to see how it held up to reality.

Let’s start with the outside. This is what the site looked like a year ago.

You can see what our 3D model looked like in the Back on Track post; below is an image where I tried to match angle and date/time to last week’s reality.

The muddy mess in front of the garage has been replaced by a driveway.

With the fascia now painted black and a dark stain on the column, this is pretty close to the final look of the house (rain gutters and rain chains still to come).

Local building regulations require a minimum 2-ft-wide concrete strip around the whole house. (I think the idea is to keep water away from the foundation; that should be less of an issue with our generous roof overhangs.) In most places, we extended the width to 3 feet to make a convenient walkway, with bump-outs for BBQ and heat pump. It’s amazing how much of a difference that extra foot makes.

This blog post is coming from inside the house: we now have power and internet. No plumbing yet. So as I’ve been working from the office this week, the purple porta-potty outside is still crucial.

No heating either, but a small space heater is plenty to keep the house warm, even with snow and frosty nights outside.