We've hit the top!

The front of the project.

This week marks week 24 of construction (minus about 6 weeks of "down time" while I was away in Berlin), and we're 85% complete with the rough framing phase of the project. Angel and the crew topped out this week and began laying the roof joists in today. The building is a dizzying 40' about lowest adjacent grade, giving up 5' to spare for our zoning envelope. There's still a lot of work to be done and I've spent the week with some borrowed labor from the Heyday Partnership compacting the fill around the retaining walls in order to get ready for the scaffolding which will show up in a few weeks. The rear, "flip-flop" facade.

The site is beginning to look less like a big mess since we had it cleaned and are now filling in the trenches behind the retaining walls. The impressive thing though is how far set back the building is from the other houses. It's akin to a basket ball player standing in-between two sumo wrestlers. The wonderful thing about reaching this phase in the framing is that the building form is completely realized and everything looks as it should. We're fussing around with the plans a bit to facilitate some changes on the interior, but overall everything is coming out per the original design.