Unless there has been an unscheduled non-work day that I'm not aware of, the builder working on our new house-in-progress closed the books today on Day 27 of construction. This is officially the half-way point of the schedule.

The crew appears to be pretty much on schedule. Some things appear to be a little bit ahead -- mostly on the interior, where the sheetrock has been mounted and the mud and tape and the sanding appear to be well on their way, if not completed. The scrap from the drywall has been removed, which means the rooms look more like rooms than they do construction waste bins. Not, mind you, that I've been inside the house to notice such things.

As you can see from this photo, the garage door has been installed. Other than that, one doesn't see much work being done on the exterior. Painting the exterior should have started, according to the schedule, the day after the siding was mounted, and before the shutters and garage door were installed. Likewise, the gutters should have been installed by now.

However, other houses at the same stage of construction as ours also appear to have been delayed. I suspect that the weather has been the culprit. This past week (the past two weeks, by and large) has (have) been mostly dry and warm, but the painting crews may be behind schedule because of two weeks of pretty much daily precipitation before that. Judging by the houses that are just ahead of ours on the master schedule (three of them are right next to each other, one block down), one of which received its first coat of its primary color today, I reckon that ours is maybe a week away from getting its first coat.

From what I've seen of other houses going up in this development, the painting and trim process of the exterior won't be wrapped up anywhere near as quickly as the other exterior work has been thus far. Interior work, on the other hand, will be picking up pace dramatically.

Watching the house go up is, in many ways, similar to watching Alex grow up. Alex is two and a half years old now, and every week (at least) there is some new behavior, some new physicality that presents itself. Some sign of progress, of growth. He's closer and closer to becoming an adult, which is freaky considering that he's still got a few years to go. Likewise, with each passing week (at least), the house has some new feature that makes it more and more like a complete house... although it still has a way to go, as well.

Of course, the house will hit maturity in 27 work days. The same can not be said of Alex... thank goodness. Then again, the same can not be said of me, either. :-)