Building a house on spyhop

Tryin' to keep it up...

2010-10-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

As I keep repeating, I have a lot of finishing work to do. I confess, some exhaustion is showing itself in the form of scattered focus at this end stage. However, for the past about two weeks I've had the motivation and deadline of Jennifer's request to me: Can you please get the banister up by the before a visit by father, Sukie and some of the NW family come? Thus the time came for me to finalize the design and get realistic about the practical details for the metal and wood balustrades and banister that I had mostly finished designing. The part on the stairs is more complicated, given the angles and changing dimensions that they bring. First came the wooden elements, and then dowels that would later take the small metal pieces.Below you see it with the metal in place, and the handrail on top. Since I work alone now, I have to time things like this for Jennifer's return from work, or the weekend. I can do a lot alone, but things like getting this almost 17 foot long rail onto all those verticals is just not do-able with only two hands.We also needed and upper portion to separate the little "nook" at the top of the stairs from the stair opening. After getting all the angled pieces into place, this was a piece of cake! BTW, like the lower part of the stairway, the metal here is not stainless. It's intended to get a little rusty and "patina-ed," and the oak is black oak from that dying tree that we had cut and milled at the start of all this. It got done in the nick of time, and the house was a lovely place for a boisterous family meal: Since the summer heat and dry has gone its way, we've finally begun having the plants brought in. This is an aspect of the project we've sub-contracted...... No energy to learn a new discipline. So FINALLY, things are looking a little less bare outside: Meanwhile I have been harvesting from my garden, and from the woods. I took this picture for the blog a few weeks ago, when I found the first chanterelles in our woods. Little did I know what was yet to come! Here's a picture Sukie took of yesterday's haul!

Nomohomomoho

2010-09-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

That's right. No mo homo moho. Among the earliest posts on this blog was one of Clayton pulling the mobile home into its place with his bulldozer. I don't have pictures of him navigating the steep hill and the hairpin turn of our driveway -- but it was quite a sight. His skill and terrific attitude was much appreciated, so I called on him again when it came time to deliver the building blocks up our road, since the company's standard truckers had a no-can-do response to the driveway. Here's Clayton as he patiently and enthusiastically taught me to use this funky forklift, back then -- over two years ago: So imagine my surprise the time when Clayton came walking up the road beside his remote control robotic thing. It sure did take a lot of the stress out of the move down our driveway in that this machine practically tucks under the mobile, rather than adding another 18 or 20 feet of length to the (66 foot!) trailer. SHarp turn out of its spot, right off: Well, sharp if you're 66 feet long. Then down the road she went, Even the hairpin was relatively undramatic with the new gizmo, thought it took a few backs and forths. My mom was among the spectators. Barely having had time to get over her jet lag when the noise started. And then there were the horses (left of moho)And the cows joined Jennifer to take a look at the last turn onto the road:Most of the work I've been doing is tiny details. One that's photogenic, though is a a rolling door that is in the plan to close off a room that we call the library -- generally part of the living room -- to make it a private guest room. THere's a murphy bed still to come in there too. Between visits I managed to get the door up. It's big, so I had to construct in in place. I had already installed the track, which we got unfinished and I ground and sanded it to match our rustic metal theme. So, first the frame: Then simple cherry sheathing . I can't say that it's the most beautiful woodwork of the project, but it's acceptable and it does the trick. Here as seen from the living room when the guestroom is closed off. I've been trying to get back into a rhythm now. Started with getting the trim all painted and repainted since the rains may be back any day. I tooka few pictures last night, as the light waned. As usual, haven't even struck the ladders. Visits were fun.... I miss them.... now back to the grindstone for a while.

2010-08-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

As the scale of the work gets smaller, the time between posts seems to grow! Finishing up phase now. It’s going to take a while. First of all there are all the components that were not essential to life comfort but that are important to completion. Things like the doors, drawers, filler pieces and toe kicks on cabinets that are already in use. The banister and balustrades – which we’ve gotten quite used to being without, but which the building inspector is quite adamant about. Also, there are a lot of components in my design that rely on woodwork and cabinetry to form the partitions between rooms. For example the division between the hallway and study will be a shelving unit; a murphy bed will separate the library/guestroom from the bathroom, and a shoe storage piece closes the mudroom from the bathroom too. So lots to do. I had been working at a pretty crazed pace, hoping to get many many things complete by the time of various highly anticipated late summer visits. Workaholic's excuse... I know. My work is now almost entirely in the crammed basement shop. Seen here, a door in progress. More on that later. WHen I have not been in the shop, it's because I've been outside, overseeing my parts of the irrigation installation and landscaping work. We have hired an able landscaper for this, but in order to keep things within a budget that works for us, I've been supplying a bunch of the labor by hiring our own folks for digging trenches, installing sprinklers and hauling gravel around. The place was one big collection of mole hills and leg breakers for a while. Fortunately that's a distant memory now that we've filled back in. We await some fall rain to some grass and plants in, so as not to stress the heck out of our well. Otherwise, we have come as close to being moved in as the current lack of completed closets and cabinets allows. There is progress, but not completion in the kitchen: My shop time over the last several weeks has been spent finally completing most of the interior doors, which I have worked in snatches on custom making since before construction began. They are individually veneered by me and they come from two batches of walnut -- one that I bought from a woman who had felled a tree, an another log that we were given by the former owner of this land who had a dying tree. These were milled way back when by someone I hired and they sat outside to dry for over a year. Then I hauled them into the basement and started slicing them into 1/4" veneers to be glued onto a very stable core made form a material similar to particle board. In the pile below you see various of the veneered doorstiles with a pair of solid panels on top. The panels are solid wood, sliced in two so that each door has a pair of bookmatched panels. Above you see a few panels. I wish it were easier to photograph the finished product, which I'm pretty happy with. If you're not a photographer with a lot of skill, photographing woodwork is always a mess -- the finish reflects and the wood's beauty is usually reduced to a mottled mess... Be that as it may, here you see a pair of the doors, just installed. No doorstop molding yet or anything. Creating all the parts was the bulk of the work and I did not document it well/ It has taken many many woman-hours of notching, cutting, gluing, selecting, moving, stacking, sanding, you name it/ Once all that was done, the dry run of the assembly went something like this: Once the parts were all fitted to one another, I took them apart again and routed in a notch around the edge with a power router. So I reduced things to the bare frame again -- just stiles and top and bottom: A power router does most of the work, but leaves the corners rounded like this: So squaring the corners is by hand with a good sharp chisel: That just left a lot of sanding and finishing of the parts to do before a final glue up turned them into a real and hopefully durable door: That's it for now. I hope to take some more pictures of exterior imrpovements within days. RIght now I'm returning to my break from it all, which just yesterday looked like this: And at it's more hilarious:

Living in the big house.

2010-06-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

As you can see, moving up the hill from mobile home to house in the country is a lot different than the experience of moving out of NYC: WHen last I blogged we were very much hoping to get out of the mobile home, but a few things remained as absolute bottom line needs before move in. One was the fabrication and installation of all the drawers in the kitchen cabinets.... Another was the installation of some bathroom sinks, which required at least the skeleton of a vanity and the countertop. We selected "fireslate," the same material that school labs use. THe factory had a huge fire so the top was a month delayed. Oh well. Here's a shot form a week later, with the med. and linnen cabinet part added on -- though the doors and drawers aren't done yet. J and I are both quite fond of how the cabinet atop the counter turned out. And, I needed to get the backsplash tile intalled over the countertop in the kitchen. (I guess I never blogged about the countertop. We purchased an "off" of a material called Ecotop about a year or more ago. It sat outside for about half that time and then I hauled it inside. I did not realize when we purchased the material how overwhelmingly heavy it is to handle. It's a great thing -- made from bamboo and paper fibers and non-toxic resins. I thought I could fabricate our top in that the material can be cut and molded with woodworking tools. That's true, but when it came to cutting the sink hole and making a good joint, I got very nervous and decided to hire a lovely local craftsperson who put in a long day helping me get the result I wanted. It went well...) In any case, I hired a tiler to put up the lovely recycled glass backsplash tiles we selected. REally glad I did, as the results are very pleasing. The process, of course, is a mess: Speaking of mess. All the while our tried and true excavation team from Greensuns was trying to get the areas immediately outside the house ready for us, but the weather just did not help. As with all our major moves here, we did a lot of them with incredible mud and dirt right outside the doors....ugh. We've gotten there though, and now that the weather's better, we're working on preparing the ground for irrigation and planting. Having gotten the minimum prereqs taken care of, we moved the basics of kitchen , bedroom and clothing into the big house about two weeks ago. It weren't exactly pretty ! We held off another week on getting the more discretional spaces, like the living room and study moved up the hill on a day that was sunny this time. Here's the bedroom doorway, with the "sunset nook" doing it's afternoon job of streaming in some light. So, it's a mess, it's chaotic, and there's a lot missing still, but we're at home and loving it in here! It beats me how the strawberries go ripe this year, given that summer just didn't want to come, but they ARE here and boy do I love 'em! More soon....

Coming along

2010-05-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again -- Irises have popped up all over. I get to appreciate them once per day when I walk the dog. Otherwise I have been singleminded and long-houredly plugging away at getting things in order for a move in one of these weeks. I had a local fellow build the cabinet boxes .... of all things... And they arrived all in a jumble, as these thing go: Fortunately I know a thing or two about installing cabinets, so I headed into it enthusiastically. I also hired a wall paper hanger to put up the cool paper that you see on the side of the tall cabinet below: And in its main role (pun intended) which is to cover the panels that I've created to mimic a pocket door with our patio door: Here the boxes are pretty much in. And here the lights and appliances are starting to appear: A couple of weeks ago my neighbor and steel worker Jack Erkkila brought the balcony frame that he fabricated according to my design. He has a truck with a crane that gently dangled it where it needed to go. I wish I had more pictures but pushing it into its place was a job for all three of us present and that left no one to take pictures. The house sustained not one scratch or bump, and the pieces landed right on the bolts I had placed and lined up perfectly with everything it's supposed to touch... I was nervous as hell to begin with and just as proud in the end. The culvert pipe is filled with concrete this time -- no sheathing a post on this side. And Jack also fabricated the railing for the west balcony. All of the railings will get stainless steel wire inside, and obviously decking is yet to be put on the frame above. Most recently I tried to hire some help in getting the shelving in the closet built. It was as if I am not meant to have a closet, because all efforts at getting it done by others fell through -- some hilariously. Ultimately, I built it with a helper. THis is a pre- clean up end of day shot: Meanwhile Jim Green & his son -- same guy who put in the road and dug the foundation hole etc etc -- have been coming and laying rocks and terraces.... Making it feel like someday one will be able to relax here.... The walls look a lot nicer than they do on photos... Come see sometime! Stairway to the heavenly ridge: If the rain would ever stop we could get started with plants.... but first the soil needs to be worked, and right now it's mud. More very soon....

Too busy to blog

2010-04-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

Yoo Hoo, are you still out there? It’s been so long since I’ve blogged that all the little details that never seem to add up to picture-worthy progress now add up to changes I can show you. BTW, a second reason I have been limiting my computer time is ironic: in all this time doing physically challenging work I’ve had no major injury – knock on wood here. However about a month ago I needed to take about a week off from building to spend it on the computer finalizing the cabinet drawings. It pretty much disabled me! Now, whenever I use the computer for any serious amount of time I’m in pain for days... .awful... Anyhow, I’m going to try and adjust the chair and write here for a bit. First of all, the floor got finished about a month ago or so. I had a subcontractor do this, and am very pleased with the results. Also I had a glass company install the shower door and panel to my specs. Again, this worked out well. As a matter of fact I"ve installed the plumbing finishes since this picture.... should have taken a newer one. I've also hired some help in getting the door and baseboard trim up and that's looking good and adding to the finished look. Once the floor was dry it was OK to move in the stuff that we have been storing in the “pod” storage unit. Half of that was “shed” type tool equipment that I had to integrate into the unbelievably overstuffed basement shop, and the rest is furniture and boxes of books that we couldn’t fit into the mobile.... It was a chore. Not a photogenic one, but the procedure of pod pickup was worth some pics. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, this is the pod, as it was on moving morning: And this is the pod moving truck complete with the same driver who brought the thing 19 months agoThis funny frame has a little motor of its own that he uses to lower the wheeled legs and drive the frame over the pod When it's all in position, he lifts it up and drives back over the truck bed Lowers it onto the truck And after he has tucked the wheels back in, off he goes. Not the last scar on our landscape.... but one less eyesore for now! Just this past weekend we had another visit from our consulting cousins architects Lydia and Robert . They often say I should save a project for them.... so this time I had one to propose and I think it makes a fun photo essay. Background: I think that the 6 x 6 lumber posts that hold the corners of the two roof overhangs don’t look right and for a long time I have regretted that I didn’t use concrete filled culvert pipe posts.... Here's an old picture, but I think it captures pretty well the look that I'm not satisfied with -- spindly post. I started playing with the idea of sheathing the posts with the culvert pipe after all and with a lot of middle of the night figuring decided that it could be done. Well, this weekend we tried one. Robert started by removing some of the hardware, but not all. (Barley supervised closely) We had to put temporary support posts and jack the roof up a bit: Then it was time to remove the bolts holding the post into it's hardware. THen a some tap tap to tip the post out of it's supporting role: And then we tipped her out -- with a bit more fussing than is evident here -- allowing the bolt that anchors the post to the concrete to simply bend with us. In the meantime, Jennifer had used a heavy duty citrus solvent to remove the unsightly printing all over the side of the pipe -- it's clearly not made for cosmetic applications! And so began the trickier part of the job -- how to get this somewhat unwieldy and a little heavy steel condom over the spindly post. We didn't want to take the post further down becasue that would have meant destorying the anchor bolt at the bottom and having to figure out how to get a new one in place.I wish there were more pictures to show the various shifts of ladders and platforms etc, but suffice it say after this picture we moved to an all hands on dEck situation that made photo-taking impossible. THere wasn't a hand to spare and I'm damned glad to have had so many hands to figure this out the first time. As you can see, it all worked out, even some unanticipated by me difficulty getting the hardware into the post.... And there she is, on a very messy back porch. One down and one (visible in the background) left to go. THis bird (Is it a hawk?) recently visited and stayed long enough for me to get the camera. More soon..... THings are moving and shaking now. Like Jennifer wants us to be moving and it's got me shaking! =: -)

Through March 6th

2010-03-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

Crummy coupla weeks, made crummy by that we had to let our beloved cat Juneau die. (Above, last hours of quality time....) Sad sad sad. Who needs a house when you can't have your cat in it!

Well, having gotten this far, I've kept at it, albeit broken heartedly. Actually, I'm trying to hire some help now that I'm thoroughly exhausted. So although we (Jennifer, mostly on this) mixed and pigmented our own "paint" (lime wash really) for the plaster walls, we had a painter come and apply it. So it's been a pretty big mess for the past two weeks but the progress has been good:

Most recently I've been working on the side of the staircase, which is made up of metal alternating with pieces of Oregon red oak from a tree that was dying when we bought the land, so we had it milled. Oak isn't normally my favorite wood, and I'm not so sure about it on the sides of the stair... but coming as it does from 50 feet away, it was just too perfect not to use.

Here are things beginning to get into place.

And here are some shots of it as it got finished. The metal is NOT stainless, so it will change considerably over time, and I think when the banister and balustrades go in the whole thing will hold together better....

COmbing metal with wood like this is very demanding.... they are not the most compatible of materials.... One moves and the other is unforgiving... I designed it to mimic life itself. =; -(

The paint job is nearly finished. Above is the study, which still needs a cabinet to divide it from the hall, but that's for a WAY later time.

It was a nice sunny morning on Saturday so I took a few pictures post clearing of a lot of the floor -- in preparation for sanding to start next week.

Bedroom above, living room below

SIgning off with an image of Juneau in far better health quite a while ago:

Report on progress to through Feb 20

2010-02-19T08:04:00.000-08:00

Details, details details. I can barely remember where I've been for the past month, except that a lot of it has been on my knees. Primarily I have been working on the floor, and in part that accounts for my blogging silence in that it's really not all that picture-worthy. As always, though, there have been other tasks in-between. I'm in such a work work work induced brain fog that I can't really remember what they have been.

I thought I'd share a little illustration of the challenges of laying floor over radiant heat tubes. For the most part the two are perpendicular to each other, so it's straightforward how not to penetrate the water filled pipes. (Even that's not as easy as it sounds given the monotony of hitting the nailer and once I grazed a tube but THANK THE GODDESS did not puncture it.)

But where the tubes turn they are a little trickier to keep track of. For example this layout:

looks like this when you place the next board:

and given that you nail on an angle into the tongue of the board, you'd hit the tube in the "no zone."

Other on- goings include that Jennifer has taken on mixing colors for the lime-wash we will use on the plaster walls. (A watered down version of the same material that's in the plaster. It's the same as the whitewash you might have seen in greece or spain, except we are pigmenting it.) This has been a lot of color sampling and counting buckets of this and tablespoons of that. A painter will come and apply it all next week. Yes, we want to move in and I 'm happy to report that we're having some subcontractors come in to paint and finish floors and such so that I can get to work on cabinets soon so we can MOVE IN!

The other major project has been replacing the long ago thrown together temporary stair with the final one. There are metal elements to my design, so I've been on the computer and shuttling to my neighbor the metal worker. (Only the structure is finished -- there is a whole other side that gets more metal, but that's a little later) .

I had a nice day of volunteer help from friend Stephen -- long island fellow I bonded with over contruction -- to cut these stringers. THey really did turn out very well, and that's the basis of the whole thing.

Then all the noodling of getting the thick and wavy and imprecise wood to meet the very unforgiving metal:

The treads are slotted in a dovetail shape and the attaching wood slides in so that they are free to expand an contract without -- I hope-- cracking.

Here's how it turned out so far: With the lovely bonus that the components of the old stair were available to recut and form into a stair to the basement AT LAST. We have been climbing the teetery wooden step ladder that I used to build the saugerties house 20 years ago and it as gotten old just as we have!

Hasta pronto, espero anyway!

2010-01-11T13:09:00.000-08:00

Just looked at my last post. Things seem very different now. Clay seems a long time ago. The two weeks up to New Year’s weekend were taken up with tiling and more tiling. With the exception of some outdoor work, all tiling is now finished. The master bedroom shower was a big job, but I’m very happy with how it turned out. These pictures are pre-grout. In anticipation of an open house we had planned we got all the floor tiles grouted. This coming week, I hope to have Sebastian grout the two bathrooms while I continue to get the (local white oak) wood floor down. The bedroom is actually laid: but for various reasons I now need to "rack" the rest -- this means laying all the pieces as they will be on the floor -- cut to size etc-- and attaching them only after that's all done. Of course, I must resist temptation to study each piece.... though there are a few standout patterns that have earned special placement:

The timing of the party turned out to be excellent in that I was ready to tackle laying the wood floor, and doing so required a complete clean up and clear out of the space. It was a huge job – both getting the upstairs cleared and also getting all the moved tools and materials accommodated in the overflowing basement workshop. It also provided motivation to create a working bathroom:

'Nother thing is that having the tile grouted meant that the wood could get stacked in its place, as you can see here. We both enjoyed our little open house a great deal. Here are some pics from that starting with a host sampling the fare:

I'm switching to Bi...........................

2009-12-20T20:09:00.000-08:00

......................weekly posts. Just not enough that's photo worthy each week, right now.

Weeks of Dec 6 and 13 :

I’m very very nearly finished with the window work. As I was working on the penultimate one today it occurred to me that I might not really have made clear what’s involved in this that makes it all take so long*. The window trim that I keep referring to is actually both the window jamb extension and the trim. So, we begin with this:I build a fully independent unit, like this, back and front shown: Each part gets oiled and then after adding insulation to the space between the wall and window, and also wooden blocks that will allow me to attach the frame : Then it’s time to put the frame in and force it tight to the window. Then it gets screwed in with 4 screws that I will putty over later. Finally the bottom piece is nailed in, for the only two face nails in the whole thing Now the window is done and the wall can be plastered:*Well, it also takes time because I love wood and I find pieces that take a lot of effort to work into the project, either because they have defects that would normally make them be tossed aside, or because the wood is snarly and hard to work, or not quite big enough to make working it easy... For instance, this particular window incorporated a sill that has all those problems, but I just loved the grain:Other progress: Got the base for the shower pan in the master bathroom started and passed the inspection that requires it to hold water for 24 hours without any seeping out at any of the joints. The hardest part of that is where it meets the drain, but mine passed. Got Sebastian tiling the first floor bathroom. It took the two of us really as he lays the tiles but I do all the layout and cuts. The layout of subway tiles is far more complicated to plan that I would have expected. Well.... they are SUBWAY tiles. I shoulda known!Here’s an exciting development:Electrician did a bunch of work and we have many switches and outlets. In general, the space is starting to feel homey to us. It’s still miserably construction-ish, yet we prefer to be there on the weekends to being in our mobile. So much so that this weekend J did her work on the sawhorse construction paper table that seems to have found its place in the dining room-to-be.

Weeks of Nov 23 and 30th

2009-12-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

Things are proceeding here, but there just wasn’t too much photo worthy last week and you were all busy eating turkey and such, so I waited. Winter's here. We're having a cold snap right now, but we've got a toasty and dry workplace (if not so much the living space we're still in...) . Quite a contrast to the trials of last year at this time. Although we have been firing the Tulikivi, we haven't done anything with the warming oven -- but it's been getting warm! It’s the home stretch of getting the walls done. A little bit more of that – meaning me getting the trim finished up so that Sebastian can get the wall plastered – this coming week and we’ll be all done with walls! I have enjoyed the opportunity to woodwork, but I won’t be sorry to be done with window trim! And doors. Here’s the back door into the kitchen. The odd shape of the plaster – can you see those lines of wood? – is because we’re not putting two coats of plaster behind the cabinets. Only a finish coat where the wall will be exposed.

And here' s the bedroom, all finished.

View up the stairs (still the temporary ones. The finals are on the drawing board, and they get placed a top the flooring, when it has gone down.)

Almost all the interior floor tile is layed now too, and last week we grouted the laundry room to try that out. Came out pretty well...

Last week we also did a lot of prep work in hopes of getting to wall tiles in the two bathrooms this week. The red goop is a waterproofing film that goes behind the tiles where there's wood framing behind.

Here’s a shot of the flooring stacked in front of the living room windows. (The new pile.... the one that appeared in pictures months ago having gone back to its substandard manufacturer.... Oy) I’m eager to get to work on laying this floor, but it really needs at least one more week to acclimate before that work can start in earnest. It’s not like I don’t have some other things to do in the meantime!

Week of November 16

2009-11-22T21:09:00.000-08:00

I’ve been in workaholic non-stop mode for a few weeks now. The excuse for this is that we have 6 full size garbage barrels of lime plaster sitting outside the house and if they freeze they are ruined. The prospect of hauling them inside is onerous. They are extremely heavy. They can only be moved by scooping out a bucketful at a time, back and forth. So, I am trying to beat the freeze ( you never know when we might have one here) and get as much of it as we can onto the walls. As I’ve reported before, Sebastian can only plaster the walls where I’ve completed the window trim, so that’s what I’m working long hours on, with the usual distractions added in.

For example, this Saturday we had a nice and dry day, despite what was predicted. So Jennifer and I decided to tackle completing the chimney, so that we can begin to fire our now complete Tulikivi masonry heater. That job went fairly well. We had to add a few lengths of pipe to what was there coming through the roof

and put on a support bracket with legs that support the top of the chimney in case of high wind. It’s always quite stressful to be up on the slippery roof. I think, unless there’s some problem with something, I’m done going up there, and we actually removed the ladders and platforms and rope. So at the end of this post you’ll see a picture of the house without those things for the first time in a long long time.

Also this past week I had Sebastian lay the tiles for the downstairs bathroom. The tiles we have chosen need to be planned a bit – they don’t look so good just laid down randomly. So after having done such a nice job on the bathroom tile layout, this weekend Jennifer worked on the design for the mudroom floor so we can put those down this week.

And yes, earlier in the week Uwe completed the Tulikivi. Here’s what it looks like from the living room side. And here is the dining room side, with warming oven. I think we’re going to make a lot of use of this. The first few fires are to break in to heater – to allow the moisture from the mortaring to escape and to let the pieces adjust to high heat firing. So this weekend we did the first of those fires:

There isn’t enough of the cherry that I mentioned last week to do the trim whole house. By the way, here’s a little detail picture of that trim: So based on a sample window I did in the upstairs closet

we have decided to use the wood from one of the fallen down trees that we had milled last fall.

Remember back in September '08 I reported on Clifford who brought his portable sawmill and milled (among other trees) a blown down Chincopin? Back then he left me with these piles,and I had a heck of a day bringing them into the basement a few weeks ago when the rains returned. In any case, we have decided to use the chincopin for the upstairs trim: So this weekend I started milling wood for that. I'm not quite done on the first floor, but the bulk of the plaster is up, and it really is changing the feel of it all. The living room is now completely doneand we ended the week with the window seat wall in the dining room, which is a favorite of mine:

So, that's it for now from your tired and creaky homemaker!

Week of November 8

2009-11-15T21:17:00.001-08:00

What a difference a year makes. Last year at this time it was painful fingers all morning as the moisture and the chill of Willamette Valley winter set in. This year I’m in the toasty house most of the time. It’s comfy, thought I do have to say that I miss being IN the gorgeous outdoors since now I’m often holed up in my basement shop. This week it did the usual weather drama – rain and sun and rain and sun. (Notice the green fuzz coming up already. Whew.)

Of course the weather drama often means rainbows too and I tried to catch one for you, though they are fleeting and the most dramatic moment of this one passed before I could grab the camera:

Last week we started a few new things. First off Uwe Mirsch, came in for most of the week to work on building the Tulikivi masonry heater.

He had about a full day of unloading to do as the heater is made up of heavy soapstone pieces that he wheeled into the house in his wheelbarrow. Total weight, when it’s all done will be a bit under 5000 lbs. It is projected to heat the bulk of our house in winter with 48 lbs of wood per day.

Jennifer and I were pretty delighted the first evening as we got to see the particular stones that would form our heater. We had chosen “salmon” stones, which come from a particular part of the Tulikivi quarry. We felt we’d lucked out when we saw the wonderful patterns in the stones. In fact, we spent the first evening before Uwe got to work picking out pairs of stones that we wanted him to put together and feature prominently.

This is as far as he got last week:

There is a warming oven that opens to the dining area -- you can see the opening for it here:

It was fun, and it’s been nice having Jennifer move into a more active role now. In fact this weekend we mixed up some test batches of limewash (kind of like old fashioned whitewash that fuses with the surface of the plaster we’ve used) and she got to experimenting with pigments, creating test for various possible colors. We have put them up on the wall that will be the back of a closet. Also this weekend we worked on choosing the particular tiles that we’ll put around the Tulikivi and determining their layout.

Finally, during the week I got Sebastian going on tiling the laundry room and master bathroom floors. The idea was that he’d work on those while I tried to get out ahead of him with window trim so that the plastering can progress, but as whenever we start anything new, I ended up at his elbow a lot of the time. Jennifer says this is worth showing you.... I guess if you've ever had tiling done you know that until it's all cleaned and grouted it looks like ....

In a day and a half that he was not here, I did get the living room window trim manufactured and this weekend I finally got the east wall trim put up. This photo shows two windows with trim on, minus the bottoms while the far left window is still naked.

The wood, which is a yard cherry (a tree someone had felled and milled and I got lucky to find it – there’s not a lot of local cherry around here) is very beautiful, if you like a lot of figure. Which I do... go figure!

2009-11-08T21:48:00.000-08:00

My, time has flown. And so did I – off to Florida for a visit to Ilse and to meet up briefly with cousin Michi and his clan. Things were pretty hectic around here pre-departure. As I’ve mentioned before, cousin Lydia (with help from cousin Robert) agreed to help us arrive at a landscape plan so that the work on re- contouring the land around house could proceed before the rains. Of course, we are impatient, and in spring we’d like to be in a position to plant and not be sitting in the middle of a mud puddle. Even apart from that, though, the water line needed to be brought from the well to the house, and without knowing the ultimate level of the terrain, that was going to be nearly impossible. Fortunately, Lydia was able to work in the time frame we needed, and the excavator was able to schedule us in just in the nick of time.

The idea of the plan is to cut back the earth on the west side of the house so that we have some terraced gardens, rather than a hill crashing down to the house, and to establish terrace and gardens on the East side while still breaking down the huge mound that was created by the soil we removed from the hole that now has a house in it, and returning to the native grade in due course. Needless to say big machines were needed.

Lydia wanted to be here for at least some of the work – and boy did we want her to be– so scheduling all of us wasn’t the easiest thing – which explains why the work was being done just as I was preparing to depart for Florida. I was literally knee deep in red mud after dark on the eve of my 6am departure.... trying to finish plumbing the last of the yard hydrants so that the trench from the well to the house could be filled back in the following morning. It fell to Jennifer to oversee the last day of finishing work. I wasn’t thrilled that so much remained to be done after I left, but it was nice to hear her confirmation of how stressful it is to watch over our interests and desires as the men with the big machines do their thing!

That's Lydia watching the bulldozer on the east side just as the morning fog was burning off.

Not to sound like a broken record, but the finished contouring work TOO is something hard to depict in pictures as it all looks like mounds of red mud right now.... But at least to us , a plan is evident! Here you can see the aforementioned yard hydrant in the foreground, along with two others that run along the (underground) water line to the house.

Note the TINY green shoots above and in detail below. Another task that fell to Jennifer was to seed a cover crop of grass to limit the mud pie feel, and to nourish the spoil over the winter. We will turn it into the earth when planting time arrives. Here is that terracing on the west (uphill) side of the house:

And here you can see the preparation for the southern patio that we plan to live on, in summer.

Below you can see the space where someday a simple carport will stand. The siting of this space proved to be the biggest challenge given the need to be able to turn around and also to keep the access navigable! (We have a lot of slope around here, as you must have gathered by now.) This afternoon, after chipping one more pile of brush from the clearing of the carport space we planted about 80 daffodils under the big oak to the right, in anticipation spring on this terrace!

And here there will be small trees, bushes, paths...

But right now there is rain and clay and clay and rain, therefore that white spec in the picture above requires a nightly footbath before she can join us in the carpeted mobile home!

And speaking of clay, when I wrote my last post – the woodpecker post– I was trying to get window trim made up while Sebastian get the first coat of clay up on most of the block walls on the interior.

The addition of the cow dung was not just for a good blog post. The clay with the manure performed way better than the same mix of clay and sand without it. It's really quite beautiful, and we wish we could leave some of it exposed in the final.... but that doesn't seem to work with out other plans.

On good days, when the weather premitted, I moved Sebastian outdoors to see if we could get the outside of the house painted – or at least primed – before 1) the makeshift scaffolding had to be out of the way of the excavator’s machines and 2) the earth was going to be pushed against the house, making the painting at ground level a messy proposition.

Remember the scaffolding: Just looking at this picture reminds me of all the work getting ready for the days pictured above. All the scaffolding came down and was taken apart... all the stuff that has accumulated all around the site was moved about, recycled, stacked, trashed... whatever.... Oy I'm exhausted just remembering.

Mother nature did help and we were able to get the East facade painted just in the nick of time. The dark color that you see in the other pictures is actually the primer coat – which is lighter than the final will be. On the day I returned from Florida I drove home from the airport with the rented mortar mixer in tow one more time, and the next day – first day back after a break – was a back breaker as Sebastian and I mixed up 12 barrels of lime plaster for interior of block walls. No sooner did we have a driveway than I need to start cluttering it up with barrels of lime!

So, to remind you, the block walls look like this: There are very few blocks still visible in the house proper now. (The basement will be a whole other story) . With the addition of clay we went on to this: And as I get the window trim up, Sebastian is able to get the final coat of lime plaster up, we have this:

Here are some shots with some plaster up and some clay still visible:

So, that's where things are here at the Gulag. Another eventful week should be coming up, so more soon.

Week of October 4

2009-10-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

This past week contained what woulda been my father's 101st birthday.... wow. It flew by with me dealing with lots of little things while the sheetrock continued on its merry way to smooth thanks to the messy but excellent work of my sub, Kevin. I have been very lazy with the camera. I should have photographed the behemoth mortar mixer – actually more ear splitting than huge – which made another visit on Monday so that Sebastian and I could make the clay & sand mix for the walls. I also should have photographed a new presence on the site last week, Stephen Brander. We met some time ago when he was sent by the manufacturer of the faswall block system to see a house in progress. He showed up because he wanted to do some things and there he was, so some things he did do! He was kind of a savior at various points, and to boot it was fun for me to have a like minded, like humored friend on the job for a while. He’s a Long Islander.... we hit it off.

With Stephen's help, I got the heat system up and running last week for about three hours, and then poof... it had no power. It was mysterious, and I was sure I had messed it up, but in the end the designers of the system (who are in Maine) figured out that the main circuit board they had sent me seemed to be bad. Oy....

The only reason there’s a photo of this is that I needed one to document how the board was wired, in case I got confused rewiring the new one! They sent a new one and indeed, as of it’s connection, we have heat!

This is good because the sheetrocking process requires drying. In fact, I realized that claying the walls while Kevin was trying to get his mud to dry was putting us at cross purposes, so we’re holding off on more clay until he finishes this week. But before I had that realization, some clay made it up, and I did get you this one lame shot... It's really a great feel.... even if it's hard to convey in a look!

Finally this new excuse for a poor photo week: I headed to the house today to take a few more shots of the now smooth sheetrock spaces and as I left the trailer with the camera there was a bird -- a pileated woodpecker-- in a dogwood tree absolutely mocking and taunting. So much so that I had to approach, and ultimately used the last of my battery charge on these! See the way the old blossoms are red? The birds love to eat them.

Oh well, there’s always next week for more house pictures!

Two weeks. Lots to tell.

2009-10-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

Amazing how quickly the season has changed. There’s the nip in the air, but more than that, the light is so different than just a few weeks ago. Jennifer undertook to photograph our views through the dirty windows. Normally that’s not the best thing to show, but these give a feel that I wanted to share. Something about being in a structure looking out... contrasts with how it was last year at this time!

The week of Sept 21 was the week for finishing up all the in-wall systems. One big part of that was electrical. For that I had and electrician, thank goodness. Maybe you remember this from a long ago post: Those are the tubes of conduit that I ran over the kitchen/dining ceiling – which is exposed beams and cannot hold wiring like a normal ceiling. These were supposed to provide us with maximum flexibility to position fixtures in one of a number of places where we might ultimately want them. Well.... somehow we came up with a plan that didn’t quite match my ideas back then.

It was one of those 3am realizations – I’ve had quite a few of them over this project – that there was no way to get where we wanted to go.

I couldn’t believe that after all the care that has gone into the flawless ceiling, I’d have to have a big plate or patch in it. UNACCEPTABLE. A suggestion from the electrician, plus one sleepless night figuring it all out, then a few hours of uncomfortable over the head work, and the problem was under control, but ugly:

Awful right? No worries. First real carpenter I ever knew used to tell me all the time -- sign of a good carpenter isn't not making mistakes. It's how well you fix em.... Once we got the wires in, it’s back to this:

This fix worked out pretty well.

Apart from the electrical were a zillion other unphotogenic details. Insulating pipes, running thermostat wires, speaker wires, computer and phone lines, duct work... etc etc. I’ve hired a slow-at-his-day-job sheetrock taper to hang and tape the sheetrock on the ceilings and on the internal walls. (The block walls will be plastered – more on this later.) First the beastly heavy material had to be delivered. Oy: Watch the roof.... PLEASE!It’s a messy business and it also turns my beloved little work site into a noisy and chaotic mess.... In other words it’s like most construction sites are 100% of the time. Hard on me, though. Here is a series of pictures over the past week. As you can see, the spaces are getting defined.

The start of the work -- ceilings only, early in the week.

Jennifer contemplates living room avec "lid" as they call it. Today that room has its walls covered too. Below is the entry to the main bedroom.

And the main hall downstairs (still with the temporary stair.)

Upstairs stair landing.

With the exception of some small detail pieces, the drywall is up now. Next week is for taping and mudding. It will look a lot better when all those seams and screws and corners are cleaned up! For about the first half of the week last week I was running out ahead of the drywallers, realizing details that had not been fully prepared. There’s a lot to making sure you end up with the details that you need around doorways and transition spots. Once that was over I finally could get to having Sebastian back to dig and sift some of the clay so that we can use it for the first coat of plaster on the interior of the block walls. We took this clay from just beneath the topsoil at an area very near the driveway. Here it is soaking, after having been sifted: I have read quite a bit about the whole earthen plaster possibility. We ran some tests & I think we’ve figured out the mix of sand and fiber that our clay here requires to work as a first coat.

My reading also taught me that fresh cow dung is an excellent additive for clay plaster. The enzymes in it apparently cattle-ize ;-) the clay’s own adhesive and elastic properties. We want lots of those. At the end of our driveway there literally are 2000 acres dedicated to grazing cows, so I could see no reason not to try this. (I hope that when it’s all over we will smell no reason either....) So, this very morning, off I went (with my neighbor’s permission, of course) to collect fresh cow pies. You can read all you want, there are always more questions. For instance, the book says that you want “fresh” manure. Well... walking the field I thought I could identify the fresher drops. Then I came to wonder whether wetter was necessarily fresher.... or was I just in pursuit of one sick animal’s leavings? Later came the matter of heaving the bucket through the slats in the gate. Let’s just say, it was a messy proposition. I should have taken pictures, but alas I was alone . Jennifer out of town for sister’s wedding. I didn’t dare handle the camera . Here is a pic of the load I brought home: and of the process of mixing these all important enzymes into the clay slip:

Well..... we got a lot of s--- done this week, like I said!

Week of Sept 14th

2009-09-20T23:17:00.000-07:00

Fairly productive week. My confidence is never high when there's plumbing involved, but I moved into doing the parts of the plumbing -- namely the supply system-- that I will do on my own. The electrician also came at the end of the week, so that part of what will soon be hidden is coming along.

Not to sound like a broken record, but it doesn't lend itself to photos. Really little of what's going on now does, but here are a few pics of highlights. These guys are checking out the roof for the solar hot water unit that they would later bring up to the roof.

Better them than me is all I can say. I'd like as few additional trips up onto the now slick roof as possible, for the rest of my life!

The solar panel feeds a tank in the basement. It has only one electrical element, up top. If the solar is bringing the water fully to temperature, the element doesn't kick in. In the rare =;- 0 instance that skys are cloudy , the element does its work to bring the temp up. I like the name -- very kinky:

(It says "Solar Servant") . Installation of the tank (in the basement) and the pipes that go through the roof and down to the tank was all part of the contract with Solar Assist. How lovely to have them just get the whole thing done!

As scheduled, I got the radiant floor control panels all connected, and after a full weekend under test they are holding 70 PSI of air pressure steady without any loss, so I'd say we are leak free! Very exciting. Here's a picture of the panel and the mini boiler to the left. It's all we'll need to heat the water that will go through the floors. I didn't build that control board -- a company in Maine that designed my system built it and shipped it to me. I just had to bring all the red and orange pipes from the various loops in the floor into the panel and connect them in proper sequence. And that was enough.

With any luck, all the rest of the in-th-wall (& ceiling) work will be finished next week and I'll we awaiting the sheetrockers -- another part of the job that I am happy NOT to take care of myself.

Summer's over

2009-09-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

OK, I didn't finish catching up before the vacation break, so I'll try and get you up to date tonight. Systems, systems, systems. There you have it in a word. I'm blogging if you're interested, but it ain't pitcha-esk, if you folla .

Before the interior walls and ceilings can get closed in, there are lots of things that need to get threaded through the walls and ceilings.

Above are some heat tubes in the basement ceiling (to feed the first floor's system) and electrical wiring too.

Then there are light fixtures. They seem and look simple, but deciding where they go and spacing them in light of other immovable objects, like trusses and joists and such takes some head scratching. Soon the electrician will wire these up.

Even though the radiant heat tubes are in the floor they pass to the second floor through the first floor's ceiling, and the manifolds and thermostats and controls and such are all in the walls. So that system also needs to get finished before I can close the walls.

Getting those aluminum plates down and the tubes threaded into their channels was the pre-vacation goal, and we did finish it. In fact, I don't have too many pictures since time was short and we got protective covering down over those tubes right away (to prevent -- I hope -- any chance of a puncture before the finish floor goes down over them). THe plates look like this, if you can see through the chaos.

And when the tubes go in, it looks something like this.

The tubes are ornery to thread around, and it is critical not to kink them, so again there's more to it than one expects. (See the bathtub in the back, that's in now too, along with plumbing for the sink in there.)

At first they are a confusing mess.

But this past week I began to tame them into their neat manifolds.

Plumbing is really my least favorite thing to do, and I fake it really poorly compared to the rest of the trades, but I am muddling through the heat parts. The waste plumbing is another story. I had a real live licenced plumber put these pipes in.

Then there is ventilation. Because this house should end up being pretty tight -- meaning that it is highly insulated and also well sealed, so there should not be a lot of air infiltration -- we need to bring in fresh air through a small and simple system -- but it is a central one.

Here you see the exhaust unit that's now hanging in the basement:

And the trunk line that leads to various smaller ducts that go upstairs into the kitchen, bathrooms, etc.

There are smaller ducts that will get built into chases etc in the near future, such as this one in the guest bathroom:

Last but not at all least, the drainwater heat recovery unit arrived and has been installed. I'm very excited about this. It's going to be connected the master bathroom's shower and essentially it uses the heat from the water going down the shower drain to preheat the water that is coming into the shower valve, so that you use less of the (solar heated) hot water to get a hot shower. Here's a picture of the unit pre- installation. You see the copper pipe snaking all around? It makes contact with the copper of the drain pipe, and the thing is engineered so that the outflowing hot drain water films the wall of the drain pipe (rather than dropping down the middle) and thus heats the water tha is passing up through that snaking pipe. Pretty hot huh!

Below is a picture of the unit installed in it's present rats nest of a plumbing chase.

So, the coming week will be more plumbing, computer wires, phone wires, thermostat wires, and who knows what else. I'll let you know!

Catch up post, part 1

2009-08-22T21:32:00.000-07:00

It’s been a busy few weeks, keeping me off the wagon in terms of returning to regular Sunday posts.

Last weekend we had a visit from cousins Lydia and Robert. They are the same pair that helped us early in the project, cleaning up my design and helping tremendously with decisions about how to situate the house on the land.

Time has come to assess the site again, in order to establish some plan for how we will restore the contours of the land around the house . Although a lot of this is “landscaping,” there are connections to systems work that needs to be done fairly soon – like bringing a water line into the house from the well.

Again it was time to use the compass and transit/level to establish the levels of the surrounding terrain. And once again we're lucky to have Lydia and Robert helping us with this challenging but important part of the project!

As you’ve surely gathered from the pictures throughout, we have quite a bit of slope. Still, its always surprising HOW MUCH the drop is (that's the well under the plastic bag and inuslation)

The house pic will look like all the others, but if you can see them, there are gutters now, in anticipation of you know what in the fall!

There's been a lot going on inside and I haven't had the patience to take inside pictures, but I will try to do so tomorrow and then post . THen it's a shor work week and VACATION until labor day.

Back to the slog and the blog

2009-08-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe that I've missed over four weeks of posts, but so it is. There are a number of reasons -- not to say "excuses," as you'll read.

First, I guess the completion of the exterior and the need to move to a completely different part of the project brought on a kind of retrospective exhaustion, or even mild panic. It's kind of typical of me not to fear at the point that most intelligent people would be completely overwhelmed, and then to have a bout of paralysis about the enormity of what I've bitten off when the scariest part of it is behind me.

So it went for a bit, while I postponed taking time off until the date of a planned visit by my dear mother.

She can be seen here studying a proposed color sample for the stucco part of the house.

I took advantage of her visit to stop work and chill a little for about a week. Really that's the wrong term as the unusually hot weather arrived about then.

Of course, we did visit some local hot spots together -- like the scrap steel yard, where I unloaded about 250 lbs of metal waste and collected a whopping $13. More valuable was the clear conscience I got. I literally pick up broken screw, waste staple, strapping etc and salvage it from the trash so it can be recycled. This is how we've kept the landfill waste on this project to very near zero.

Before the break (about middle of July) my new helper became my ex-helper by injuring his knee quite badly -- on the stairs in his own home, I hasten to add. My first day unexpectedly alone was the day we received delivery of the wood flooring that is to cover most of our floor. Getting it off the truck and stacked properly for acclimation to humidity levels in our space was a big job.

Unfortunately, there are problems with the wood and it will all need to go back and be replaced.... a lot more labor. That's all I'll say about it here, but I'm sure you can imagine the agony, hassle and anxiety that went into arriving at this decision and getting the supplier on board. We can only hope that the replacement material will arrive here to standard.

Shortly after Ilse's visit came one from Jenks and Sukie (Jennifer's father and his companion). That was when the relentless heat was here, and the mobile home is a pretty hot tin can in such conditions, so we had our first sit down meal in the house -- complete with table cloth thrown over plywood on saw horses.

The visits provided me with a much needed excuse for a break and a chance to let percolate my thoughts about how to organize myself from here forward. In addition, though, I got recharged by all the thoughtful support the visitors offered. My mother wandered up the lumpy hill often -- sometimes all on her own -- and took her time getting the feel for the place. Obviously it gave me great pleasure when she proclaimed that her feel for and appreciation of the place grew with familarity. Sukie and Jenks -- who say they follow the blog faithfully-- also agreed with what I always say: pictures don't capture the magic of the spot or the whole of the spyhow project.

OK, on to business because I need to get to work this morning. It's not like NOTHING got done since I wrote last:

We (for as long as I had a helper) have been laying the pieces that will make up the highly efficient underfloor radiant sandwich: What you see here are the snaking channels that will have aluminum plates and tubing for hot water dropped in just befoer the final wood floor is nailed on top.

On the second floor I've gone to the trouble of adding a layer of cork underneath -- I think you can see it in these pics -- to dull the sound of upstairs footfalls in the downstairs space.

Framing is hard to photograph, but in addition to putting up the few wals that there are in the first floor plan, there were a considerable number of details that took some work and planning -- like the details around the concrete headers and over open doorways. Lots of things you take for granted once you're in a space, but they need to be figured and done here!

I also took what I hope will be one of my last trips up onto the scary and now slippery metal roof, to cut the hole for the tube thatwill light the master closet when the walls cut of f most of its access to window light.

I'm working now on window jambs and trim (interior) which I'm making from cherry wood that was once a tree in someone's yard... So far it's gorgeous.

As I keep saying, interior work is hard to portray... but I'll try to return to regular posts now that I see the light at the end of the (master closet light)tunnel:

Week of June 21

2009-06-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

This was a full 6 day workweek, so here's a fast post from a tired workerwoman. The highlight of today-- my day of rest -- was the installation of my solar clothes dryer.

The outside of the house is pretty much done now, minus gutters & paint & railings & the balcony frame that has still to be made and attached .

We're inside now, framing out the first floor and then getting to the radiant floor sandwich -- the heat delivery system.

("we" is yours truly and a new helper named Mike, as the detail of interior work required a sad farewell to Sebastian at the start of the week.)

The guy I hired to place the steel on the roof completed his work this weekend, and it has changed the look of the west side a lot.

The covered porch areas are now actually covered.

The steel roof is directly overhead in those areas. Maybe that's a mistake in terms of noise when it rains.... we'll see.

In any case, it gives quite a different feel when entering and exiting the main door and also the kitchen door. Even those on 4 legs notice, as you can see. =; -)

Belated report on the week of June 14

2009-06-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

Getting the house plastered was a major stress for me, so I fell into a weekend of rest and have not picked up the "pen" until tonight -- Tuesday night.

Becasue of the way that lime plaster dries, it was necessary to have at least two people competent with a trowel working at once. In addition I had a helper working with me on carpentry... so it was like being a manager all over again. You never get anything done very well yourself because of constant interruptions! FInding a number 2 troweler took a little doing, but we did finally find a fellow who was able to help Sebastian get a lot of material up in good time.

The upshot is that from the outside we no longer look like a block house!

The weather has been glorious. Now that some heat is showing up I really am glad to be moving inside to frame walls and put down floors and such.

But Barley and my evening walks are ever-so-blooming now. There are daisys all over our land this week:

And even in the woods there are random out breaks of flowers. Even the ferns in the woods are on steriods.

Final Stucco and First Beets! WO June 8

2009-06-14T23:34:00.000-07:00

I will be very relieved when the plastering of the exterior is done. The first coat is completely finished and we've mixed all the material for the finish coat (heavy work). I was glad to drive the monster mortar mixer back to the rental place.

We added some pigment to the finish coat -- just to make the final paint coat have less to cover.

So, the grey that you see is the final coat, and the white has only had one.

Today I harvested our first beets from the garden -- up to now we've been eating our own salad and greens -- a first for us. They might be more interesting to look at, or at least more novel! They are ciogga beets -- so no deep red. Really good. Can't beet living up here!

Week of June 1st and before.

2009-06-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

It looks like I skipped last week, but I actually had a blog post all done -- the tedious process of uploading about 6 photos on our satellite service was behind me -- when the whole thing disappeared into the ether ozone, so I went to bed!

Upshot of the lost post: Needed a scene change, as perhaps you might appreciate too, so I' staring with a few pics from our hike along the Rogue river.

It was just one night away, but still a good break.

There weren't too many photogenic changes in the house building during the missed week. A lot of energy and time went into moving myself out of the little shop that I had been renting. It was a combination of moving very heavy equipment and then collecting literally thousands of little things that always need to be reorganized each time you move... Each are in their own way exhausting to deal with, and it took a lot out of me. But, after a few days of rebuilding and reorganizing, I've got the basement set up as a nice shop now, in time to get to work on the interior of the house, soon, I hope. Here's a shot of my lovely saw arrangement all set up in the basement.

Next major event was the long awaited visit this thursday from a pair of women who trained us (Sebastian and me) so that we can get to work on the lime plaster (or lime stucco) finish on the outside of the house. It was a long and messy day that started with renting a tow behind mortar mixer. Pictures of it don't really capture the iritating deafening engine noise... it's a pest, but it does the trick.

Meanwhile the women of FLying Hammer got started and eventually Sebastian joined them with the trowels. I don't think troweling is a skill I'll be learning in time to want to look at my own handiwork, so I hauled heavy buckets of lime and moved scaffolding hither and yon.

Most remarkably, after a morning that included some drizzle but also very hot sun, we retired to the mobile home for a lunch break only to watch the sky break open with the most INTENSE storm. (Tornados in the vicinity we later learned. Great to be in the mobile staring at the concrete bunker through the window... Oy) We watched as the ground turned white with hail about nickel-sized. That was between buckets of water. We were pretty devastated at the thought of the morning's work washed away. 45 minutes later it was all over, but for the pock marks on the morning's work. Well... THey'll get covered next coat.

As if all that wasn't enough, this weekend was a working weekend as the moonlighting roofer that I hired to put up the metal for me was finally able to come.

WHile I am tremendously relieved to have things moving faster than I could move them myself, it is bittersweet for me to have someone else complete such a major portion of the house.... I'm getting pretty close to having done it all.... Still, it was a relief. In part it was so because there was was disappointment on my part with how wavy the roof material is turning out to be. I'm sure that if I had been doing the installation I would have thought the problem was with my work and taken 50 detours to try and re-arrange.... And that's all I'm saying about the "oil canning" in the roof.... I'm trying not to let it spoil the otherwise pleasant addition of roof.

There was ONe more momentous development this weekend:

The first in the project trip to the dump. If you know construction at all, you should be very impressed to learn that up 'to now we have done this project with the only garbage going out in our every-other-week domestic garbage barrel of 30 gallons. All the other materials have been recycled, and that which must be dumped has gone on a pile which we loaded into the truck on Saturday. This is quite an accomplishment and believe me it takes time to sort through everything and keep the land-fill contribution this low.

Ok. That's a very long blog to make up for some short and missed ones. I leave you with shot of how things are looking at the job :

And this one of how things are looking at the garden -- which has begun to feed us daily. THere's plenty left over, so come and see for yourselves sometime and we'll feed you fresh veggies!

Week of May 18th

2009-05-25T22:19:00.000-07:00

'Nother one of those weeks -- only some of it shows in pics.

Am getting the hip roof situation on the west side under control. The angles bust my head.

Meanwhile Sebastian worked on getting the basement cleaned up of the caked mud that had settled there throughout the months of unroofed work. It's now ready to take my woodworking equipment -- which I hope to move in this week.

As you can see, it will still double as a gym.

Week of May 11

2009-05-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

The wild Irises continue to pop up everywhere, making our little paradise particularly enchanting at this time of year.

Well -- I wanted to dive in, but the point was to see it this way:

This was a week of many different tasks, only some of which show up in pics. One nice one is the final piece of metal siding -- the window seat. It's the only ground floor part of the house that won't get Lime stucco.

I installed the kitchen door and also started framing the hip roofs that form little covered areas at the front and kitchen door. Real head buster because of all the angles and critical levels that have to be matched, but I think I'm figuring it out.

I jumped off a ladder onto this concrete slab-- averting a fall -- but landed stiff kneed. Lots of pain.... am hoping its a passing thing, but the intensity of it is a little worrisome. I also installed some temporary doors at the front and the basement door openings -- since I haven't built these yet. THese are from the local recycling center. Nice color clash, but they do the trick and the house can now actually be closed up entirely.

WIsh me healing luck!

Week of May 3 -- Mixed Bag

2009-05-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

Hard to remember today, in the glorious weekend weather we've had, but the start of the week was a truly miserable combination: pressure to get the high work done so that we could get the scaffolding taken down and returned combined with miserable driving rain. At the end of tuesday the scaffolding was indeed piled at the side of the driveway and Sebastian and I were sopped and mud covered....

Lots of little things this week. Highlights are

No more scaffolding on the east:

Basement windows and some window sills in:

LIme plaster for exterior work mixed:

Green shoots -- Belated post on week of April 27

2009-05-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

Here on the hill we truly ARE having green shoots. The eight fruit trees that we planted in February are all budding. And this past weekend we fenced and planted our vegetable garden.

Then there the wild irises that spring up all over our land. They were a delightful surprise the first year that we were visiting this place with high hopes of settling here.

Construction-wise.... I can barely remember. THe week was largely dedicated to doing anything that required the scaffolding, as I really didn't want to be renting it for another week. That meant finishing all the little trim details that are going to be hell to reach up there on a ladder in the future.

Here you can see some of what I mean -- the cedar boards that are filling in under the eave, or gable or soffit.... roofing terms confuse me.

Here's what we hope will be the last shot with this network covering our winking house facade...

Busy busy

2009-04-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

Just a few shots as it's late and I'm T-I-R-E-D.

West side metal is nearly done. HAve to install the door now, to keep going. South is all done, though there's no trim on the corners yet, so it looks a little rougher than it will soon.

Besides getting more siding on this week, we got the electricity run to the house. Although the inside is not wired yet, we did get temp lights in the basement and a few outlets so that we no longer need to run extension chords up from the mobile home for tools.... Small things make a big difference!

The first floor-- all except for the window seat bump out seen below will be plastered with a lime plaster-- so there will be a contrast in textures as well as colors.

Over and out from the gorgeous gulag.

Keepin' at it

2009-04-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

Surprise surprise, the metal siding work is going slower than I though it would. How unusual!

In part it's that there are lots of details at the eaves and gables that I need to finish before the siding can be cut. That's the case in the picture below, where we're working under the eave

(whilst the concrete truck is in the background -- more on that later.)

The metal material is pretty demanding to work with -- lots of little cuts and snags this week --and also little nicks where the sparks hit when you cut. It's pretty dramatic:

Although there's no one section that's complete, we are pleased with the color and with the nice lines of the deep corrugation that we chose. And the time spent sweating the details has so far paid off in that it's coming out pretty tidy. Once again I can only say that you'll have to come see for yourself, because neither the color nor the setails show to well in these tiny pics.

I had loyal Fred pour the concrete slabs at the front and kitchen doors this week, so that we can finally get those porch roofs on next.

Compared to the previous pours, this was simple and low tech.

And the results make quite a difference to what it feels like to approach the house. Above is one side and below is the other.

The dogwoods are starting to bloom.

My job is not to lose my head, as happened in this picture!

Busy week impersonating a GC

2009-04-12T21:22:00.000-07:00

Indeed this was a busy week.

On Monday the weather was finally glorious so it was time to remove the billowy tarp and glue down the EPDM (kinda like rubber) sheet that waterproofs the almost flat roof that forms the balcony/deck on the west side of the house.

In the picture below you can see the sheet folded over as the glue was drying:

Tuesday was a day of many subcontractors. Pulled from here to there by the questions and needs of those performing three separate operations, I was reminded of my days as a manager. I got nearly nothing done with my own two hands, but the electrical trench was dug, conduit run, inspection passed and then the trench refilled so that our driveway was once again passable. At the same time we got a hole for the underground gas tank, and the gravel for the concrete slabs at the main and back entry was placed. In the middle of it all I had a consultation with a possible lime plasterer. It was so hectic that I didn't take any pictures!

Next day was a little calmer, so I got a coupla pics of the gas tank being dropped into its spot.

Still later it was time for delivery of the metal roofing and siding material: another boom truck operation.

Meanwhile my job was to get the redwood decking down onto the balcony so that the rubber sheet is protected as we get started moving all the metal up and up.

The deck was a delightful job for me. Wood -- beautiful wood -- and materials and concepts that I know how to work with! I worked alone, and late, enjoying myself.

The weather kept us inside one day, but on friday it was finally time to start working with the corrugated siding.

As always, the beginning was slow because there's so much to figure out about a new material.

So the week ended with just a tantalizing bit of the nice green metal up.But as little as it is, I ended the work week feeling euphoric. For one thing, the material is exactly as I hoped it would be, in terms of the color and the way it looks. (Hard to capture right now, but the corrugations are deeper than the standard that you see around a lot, so it's a stronger line that you see... ) And beyond that, it's the very tiny start of the thing looking as I have for so long been picturing it in mind's eye. And that really is a lotta fun.

NOTE TO Mthran Dad & other commenters

2009-04-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

If I don't already know you, I can't respond to a comment. I don't get your info.

If you want to be in touch, leave me your e mail address. I've changed settings to hide posts, so only I will get your post. I'll gladly respond, but I need a way to find you!

Crawling the walls

2009-04-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

This past week we got some scaffolding delivered and then set up -- a job in itself. The first use for it is so that Sebastian could scratch coat (seal with a cement and sand mixture) the parts of the house that I hope we will be siding in metal in the coming weeks.

THen we'll use it to place that very metal, and when some of the other trim details are finished, it will go back to the scaffold rental place.

I've been working on finishing various windows while he's been up there.

The coming week will be a full one, with visits from electrician and excavator in preparation for bringing power to the house, as well as getting various work done so that slabs can be poured at the front and back door. We'll see what we have to show for it next week.

In the meantime, spring has sprung so that Barley and I can take our post workday walk in dappled sunshine now, rather than by moonlight. This is the ridge walk, just above the house:

2009-03-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

This was a very jam packed week.

It started with a big delivery of all the windows and a few of the doors for the project. As with each new phase, I was pretty anxious about the whole thing. Everything from how to handle the actual unloading and storing about 30 fragile units, to how to install them!

I wish I had taken a picture of the whole mess of 'em, but it didn't occur to me until this weekend, and the pile is greatly diminished by now.

The reason the pile is so much smaller is that there are quite a few windows installed by week's end:

Getting the space closed in really makes a tremendous difference to the feel of the whole thing. As you can probably see on the exterior shots, it all starts to look a lot more finished.

Unfortunately its very hard to give an impression of the inside of the space as its so chaotic with all the tools and storage and mess going on in there. Here's a shot that captures the chaos, if not the new feeling of having an interior space:

And here's an upstairs shot where you can at least see the windows; and another in the dining room to be:

I've gotten a real boost from this past week's changes. Finally something that makes it feel like I am progressing toward a house.... Also my confidence got a boost from how relatively well this work has gone, given that it's important, fussy, and completely new to me.

Another development this week is that we decided to purchase some redwood for the balcony decking. Yep, it's old growth, clear, 50 year old redwood. No, we didn't partake of felling a 50 year old (more likely 150 year old) redwood. The source of our deck wood: A 50 year old water tank at a mill that got taken down.

Once cleaned up, they are just incomprable for outdoor use, so we decided to blow out budget to get some. Bringing the wood home (about 48 miles) nearly involved blowing our tires and shocks as well:

Over and out for now.

Little of this little of that

2009-03-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

Last week I hoped to glue down the EPDM (like rubber) sheet that will waterproof the balcony on the west side, and allow me to complete the rest of the roof work. Although the temperature reached the ranges we needed for the glue to behave, the threat of showers just didn't allow the work to be done. Now, in hopes of keeping the plywoof surface dry, we have a nice billowy tent happening. I'm hoping the plywood stays dry enough that I can carpe diem when we get some sun and clear skies, though that is not presently in the forcast for the coming week.

On the bright side, we now have a relatively dry space and some indoor work to do. So this past week the second floor's interior walls begged to get framed up, and we complied: As predicted, it all looks chaotic and indiscernible in photos, but in reality it allows one to get more of a sense of how this is all going to be. In fact, we did a little wall moving -- just a little -- based on things feeling different than the damned designer led us to believe. ;-)

Also still savoring last week's accomplishments,

while feeling a little anxious about starting in on window installation. Window delivery is scheduled for Monday am..... In other words, looking forward to another week in the land of clueless. Have you ever been there?

I think they called this "dried in."

2009-03-16T18:50:00.001-07:00

The house is roofed. (However, the roof is not sheathed. This awaits my ability to finish the two porch roofs... soon, I hope.)

I am unbelievably relieved. There's plenty more to do, but these roofs involved a lot of highly visible work that I had no experience doing. Translation: clueless.

The last was the most unforgiving of all in that the interior all stays exposed. High anxiety, but I am quite pleased with the result. Here's a shot of the interior look.

And the exterior of this side is also highly visible since this is the patio side. So here's the cedar planking on the outside (becasue the interior material wouldn't hold up to the weather).

And when you're inside, looking out, itshould give a nice feel to see the beams continue on out to create the deep overhang on this -- the south side-- of the house:

As has been the case each time we've constructed one of these roof sandwiches, the beams and the first layer of sheathing go up pretty effiently, and then there's a few days of work just in finishing all the details around the permimeter of the roof, before the insulation and the final layer can go in/on. This week I had the good fortune of some extra help on those details. Our local friend (It's true, we actually know a few people here now) Kirk came and put in a coupla days helping, and it really did help keep things moving.

In the pic below you can see some of those fussy details around the perimeter. As well, this photo shows another factor brought on by the exposed beam look: the conduit for the wiring all needed to be put above and channelled into the insulation above the roof, since the usual cavity to hide such things is exposed, in this case. In this pic the conduit is exposed, insulation not yet on top of it.

So, that's last week. It's been raining, so we'll move indoors now. Future work may be harder to photograph! YAY to that.

Spring forward

2009-03-08T17:29:00.000-07:00

When the weather turns beautiful, I'll be inside at last, it seems!

Well, the weather forecast was terrible, day after day, but the actual weather gave us 4 decent days of work. The temps were not ideal, but we were finishing a ceiling, not fine furniture, after all.

So we muddled through and got the beams and the planks for the ceiling oiled up. Even had some sun, as seen here!

Next thing was to get the beams all shaped the way they need to be to meet their plate (seat, kind of)

Then also the other end needed to be carefully notched and drilled so that it will hang on a nifty concealed hangar that gets pinned in..... all in the interest of a nice looking exposed beam ceiling. Here are some pics of that end (that's the hanger lying on top. It slides into that groove and then three pins go through the wood and right into those 3 matching holes... we hoped:

And there aren't just three of these..... there are 11, so it took a bit of time, even after the experimentation with templates and jigs was over.

In this one case, the ions of prep worked out and the beams were fairly easy to put up. So we got them up on Friday, along with the first few boards. THis first shot shows the side that has that hidden hanger, doing its job.

And here's from the top.

With high hopes for a dry interior next week I sign off!

Working on the very last piece of roof....

2009-03-01T18:29:00.000-08:00

Let's see. This past week was filled with a lot that doesn't lend itself to pictures.

The roof over the kitchen and dining area is the last to go on. THis is because that area will sport exposed beams and exposed boards overhead. All the boards that will form the ceiling and also the beams need to sanded and oiled before they get installed overhead.

ABove is the pile of boards, below the pile of beams.

The main problem has been that the cold came back and the oiling process just isn't made to happen in the temps we're having. Instead of vegetable oil consistency I have sticky honey.

On Friday I called off the efforts to oil, hoping for better weather this coming week. Instead, I worked on my own putting a little mini-rooflet on the dining room window seat area (seen here from the side with Jennifer about to ascend).

THe forcast isnt' for anything better coming up, so I think we'll put some plastic over the windows and see if we can warm the space just enough to get the oil flowing. Then we'll probably have to work under the temp tarp that you see here, to get things up...

In the meantime we've been working on lots of choices and orders that need to be placed as you can see here -- Jennifer's conemplating metal siding colors for the upper portion of the house that will be corrugated.

And here's the closest thing to sunshine that we had on Saturday.... and I mean that in everyway that you might imagine I would =; -)

Fiddling on the......

2009-02-22T17:53:00.000-08:00

If I were a..... So, blogging's been slow, but I been working nonetheless. In fact, the weather was so glorious this week that Jennifer was inspired to take some pictures two mornings before she left for work. By that time the stress of hanging on the roof had gotten me punchy, I guess. Looking back on my last entry I see that I was pretty lazy and unclear about where we left off. So here's a shot that represents work we did in the prior week. By Tuesday of this week we had the first layer of plywood up (on the second half of the second floor roof) and were working on the endless details of the sides and bottom of the roof sandwich. We tarped it all up each night to keep things a little less slick in the am: Later in the week we were finally able to focus on the top layer of the sandwich: Besides a great view, the workspace boasted excellent cell phone coverage, even if it wasn't always convenient to pick up! By Friday the cap was looking complete:

and I was feeling VERY ready for some work on lower ground.

Too sloggy to blog!

2009-02-16T07:52:00.001-08:00

It's been a hard coupla weeks. A few days were too cold to work on the roof. One day there was an am snow coat that lasted only a few hours, but not conducive to roof climbing. When we do work it's hard on me. A lot of up and down and up and down again.... But it's coming along and I hope that with the improving weather I'll be in the mood to document some more. We planted eight fruit trees weekend before this one. It was Jennifer's birthday gulag! We didn't take photos because we were so covered in mud we didn't dare touch the camera. The light here in the winter comes and gos fast but it changes the layers of view by the moment. As I've said before, I'm not a photographer who can convey it, but I keep trying! And here's my favorite end of the day look at the ridge, with a piece of roof thrown in for you! Will try to be on schedule and more informative next weekend! Ciao

Back at it.

2009-02-02T21:44:00.000-08:00

Here's what the water fountain at the United Gates at Laguardia Airport looked like. You gotta love NYC! A better reason to love NYC: Ben warming up for his junior varsity game. He scored 10 points and landed 10 rebounds that day! Got back and got back at it. Second floor roof rafters. Heavy and hard on the lower back for an old lady who's been taking it easy, but as you can see, the weather complied. You can also see that Sebastian scratch coated (smoothed a cement coating on) parts of the upper walls, while I was away, so things kept moving a bit. Exhausting to one and all at the mobile home!

Gettin' away for a bit

2009-01-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

Quick entry as we're in prep mode to get outa town for a bit over a week. It's hard for me to leave when I'm in this push push push mode, but it's a good time for a much needed break.

The weather has continued to serve us well, with only a little nip in the mornings and temps in the 40s and often as high as low 50s in the day. This whole week we've had no rain, only the everpresent mist and fog that breaks for perhaps an hour of sunshine each afternoon.

The roof work is coming along. I'm only about two days ahead of the work right now, in terms of getting things figured out on the computer ahead of daytime needs. Oh Well.

These two pics show as much as is visible about this week's roof progress. THere's a lot of work in there that you can't see . The North "wing" now has its insulation sandwich and is covered in tar paper that's repelling the mist "as we speak" (which we don't, in the era of the blog, and sometimes that's hard because whoever you are, you hear a lot more from me than I do from you!).

Last thing on Friday we got the dreaded (by me) ridge beam up into the air. See it up there at the tippy top? If the weather permits when I return we can get moving on second floor's roof. It will be the hardest as it runs at twice the pitch of the north and south wings. On the other hand, the beams that go on the South wing -- in the foreground here -- will all remain exposed on the interior, so when we get there I'l l be saying that's the hardest.... and so it goes!

Have a good coupla weeks. Back in a flash!

2009-01-11T20:27:00.000-08:00

As planned, we poured the concrete into the last remaining walls -- the East and West gables-- last week. This was a pretty mellow pour, as they go. There was the issue of getting up high, but otherwise it was a small amount and relatively easy configuration. Thus I was able to take a photo when things were wrapping up. In this shot Sebastian is doing my job -- holding the hose. It's actually remarkably heavy and bruising... though not when it's only for an hour with little need to move around much.

It's hard to convey the feel and texture of the whole pour thing. It's stressful and messy. I have loved what working with these blocks has made possible for me, but I am very happy to be moving on, and for the moment, up. Happy enough to show my lighter side..... well maybe not literally.. while Jennifer was snapping some pictures during Saturday inspection:

There were some good workdays last week, in that it stayed warm. The mist fell, but the wet is not such a problem when your fingers aren't also getting very cold. So, we got a start on the roof rafters on the North side:

Let's be frank. Now I'm in entirely over my head =; -)

This next phase involves doing all new things that I have much less guidance on than the whole block business.... Just the books... So, I started on this side because I thought it the least obvious place to make my mistakes....

Do you see any yet?

Have I mentioned that it's endlessly beautiful here?

I think I have. Cousin Irene wrote and asked me to document the nature more. So much of it is about light and views that I'm just no good at capturing. Some of the photographers in the family need to come and work on that!

So I'll use poor photos and my words: One thing is that there is this light green moss that covers almost all the decidous trees. Thus the oaks look like this, when they are without leaves:

Yesterday afternoon the sky turned streaky pink at sunset -- with the moon rising just over the mountain. I tried to take some photos of that too, with very limited success:

Starting a new year -- getting to the point(s)

2009-01-04T15:47:00.000-08:00

Notwithstanding all my efforts to reach the peak last year, it took until the first of the new year to get to the points at the gable ends of the house.

(That's the moon at the top of this pic, not a smudge)

We had an open house (apt title, we thought, for our topless house) on Jan 1 and enjoyed visits from a number of our local friends. The weather and the endless mud and wet has been a bit demoralizing, so it was a great boost for us to get so much positive reinforcement. It rained the whole time.... thus no inclination to take pictures, but yesterday was nice weather so we snapped quite a few.

By that day we had poured concrete (term of art for this is "grout") into the second floor walls up to the point where the gables start. So, as you can see in this pic, the walls up to the level just above the windows are solid now -- thus I am able to stand on them as here: Upon reflection, my original plan of pouring the whole second floow at once seemed too risky -- too high to go and too difficult to pour the tall gables end walls full from the sloped tops.

It is really quite high. (14' 4" to be exact) It took stacking our scaffolding one atop the other to do the work at the end.

The climb may not seem so bad -- in fact it can even be fun-- but remember that every block you see in these pictures was carried up the stairs and then up onto a scaffold (or two) before it could be placed in its spot.

Doesn't she just cry out for some roof? I hope not to spend a lot of time admiring the view from the peak of the gable on the east, but it was worth documenting:

Ba humbug and all that.

2008-12-28T21:32:00.000-08:00

The good news: the rain washed the snow away. The bad news: x-mas week is a slooooow week for everything. Nevertheless, I had a few good workdays on my own, and we're getting to the level of being over the windows on the second floor.

THis coming week we'll pour concrete that far and all that will be left for blocks are the two gable ends of the second floor. At that point all my hard won expertise laying faswall blocks is useless and I'll move on to impersonating a carpenter and roofer!

Perhaps you've noticed the title picture of a spyhop? THose whales are passing the coast about 60 miles west of here right now, heading back south where we saw them last year. Sure wish we could meet them there! The coming week is supposed to be wet but not cold, so we'll see how we do.

No go, too much snow!

2008-12-21T20:45:00.000-08:00

This was a week of computer work as we were snowed in. Rare for these parts to get a quantity of snow quite like this, and for it to stick around, but it did. Snowbound we were. It's raining now, and almost all the white stuff is gone, so let's hope for some work this coming week, short and holiday pocked though it will be! Here are some scenes from spyhop in the snow:

Now that the freezing pipe issue is handled, the mobile is plenty comfy.

But the house is going to be a lot better in future storms. Need a roof though:

Lots of beautiful light in the storms. ENjoy whatever you're celebrating this coming week.

2008-12-14T21:41:00.000-08:00

The weeks are blurring together now. Until recently I would write these entries on Sunday evening with pretty complete recall of what we had accomplished in the week immediately prior. No longer. Now I need to consult last week's post myself, to recall when what happened.

Very memorable about this week is that I built a staircase for us to get up to the second floor. Of course, this followed putting plywood decking down up there. But the stair is much more memorable because of the incredible difference between having it, and working up and down a ladder all the time. Whew.

Once the subfloor was done and the stairs in we were able to get moving with the second floor walls. In short order we were up to the window bucks again -- these boxes that hold open the spaces where windows will go. Some were able to be removed from downstairs and others had to be cut and reassembled anew (from the lumber that was in the downstairs ones, of course), but we made quick work of gettin them in so that now the second floor is taking shape. To the left and below is the corner of the bedroom.

(Notice that the first floor window opening in this shot are now without the wood framing)

These pictures are from this weekend. As you can see, we had a little snow up here. Although snow was predicted for all of Eugene, in only fell in the higher elevations. We're at 900 ft, so we got some. THere was none in town, and barely any once you got down off our hill.

Earlier in the week Jennifer was inspired to photograph the sunrise -- which she watches from her stairmaster in the mornings:

The weather changes on a dime up here. We went outside to take some pictures and the snow started to fall so heavily that the photos were a mess:

After some chores we went inside for warming up and within minutes the sun came out and streamed through the trees on our western ridge. I don't know if any phtograph could capture what I love about watching the light stream through up there, and surelyI"m not enough of a phtographer to do it justice, but until you get a chance to come and see for yourselves, I ran out and made an effort.

Second floor begins

2008-12-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

Took this nice picture yesterday, as Jennifer came up through the newly framed second floor: As promised, back on schedule with the postings this week, and what's more things are moving along nicely on the job too!

We've had tremendous luck with the weather. The rainfall to date has been a little less than half of what it usually is by this time, and it's still been warming up pretty well most days. The mornings are hard on the fingers and toes, but so far we've gotten through it. The days are very short here now -- 44th parallel style. No light at 7am, and fully dark by 5. Only a few more weeks and the tide will turn with that, so I'm not complaining.

Keep meaning to share a few non-building observations about life on Spyhop. The wildlife is a real pleasure. Fred -- the fellow who poured our slab and who I hire to help handle the pouring of concrete is a great guide in this regard. He recently identified a huge bird that flew right over us as a Golden Eagle. It was a beautiful sight.

Then there's this: Looks like not much of anything, right?

Eagle eye fred pointed it out to me from far away -- it just looked like a dark patch on the base of the decidous tree farthest right in the scraggly bunch. But he was right on:

It's the bobcat's scratching post!

Turn around 180 degrees and here's what the bobcat sees:

Poor fella. It'll get better, I promise!

We got the floor trusses for the second floor in this week.

So, the top floor starts to get its definition,

and with the addition of a "top" the first floor rooms start to take shape too:

In fact, we looked things over on Saturday and in addition to taking some pics of ourselves creeping around on the trusses, Jennifer came up with a new window configuration for the bedroom that we'll be running with.

I've lamented how messy concrete can be -- and it sure is -- but the house is feeling very solid, and the material lends itself to some suprises here and there that I quite enjoy. To wit the footing for a post that will hold the roof overhang in the entryway:

=; -) Have a good week!

Blog Schmog

2008-12-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

T'was time for a few days off, so off to the coast we went for T'kg'g with one of J's family's clan. It was mind altering to not work on this for a few days, for me.

So, the week I am reporting on was a short week -- 3 days. We got ready for another mini-pour that we did this monday. Even my most dedicated followers would find the detail of this discovery overwhelming, so I'll leave it at this: Following the last pour I found a problem that worried me a lot, but turned out to be very small and easily solved. However, it warned me of a a more disastrous version of itself that was yet to come. Little problem got solved, and big problem got averted with the mini pour we had monday. It all had to do with these tricky and previosuly mentioned lintels:

Pours are too demanding and messy to allow for picture taking. But before things got going, I photographed the set up. DOesn't really convey it...

Still out of the habit of a full days work, today was a half day because of dentists and such.

Second floor trusses were delivered in the pm, though:

So if all goes well there should be some progress to show at the end of this week, when my discipline about work and blogging shall have returned!

2008-11-24T18:27:00.000-08:00

Jennifer tries out the balcony, surfaced for the first time. She's looking the wrong way, but as of now, the balcony still has a view to the East!

Day late on this post -- busy weekend. Apart from socializing with folks from J's office, we got to see Joan Baez on Friday night. Really enjoyed that.

Well, the pour was successful, although very difficult. THings didn't get started until almost 2. The scheduled noon start time was objectionable to me as it was, given that it's dark here by before 5 right now. Thanks to a firend named Eddie who brought me all kinds of things that I didn't think I needed, we do have a job site light , see (hanging as if crucified):

but it's far from ideal to work that way. Things are pretty sloppy working with concrete.... and they got even sloppier when we had a few "blowouts." That's when the concrete breaks through and creates a truly awful mess... It shouldn't happen. I don't think it will happen again to me... because I could see exactly why it happened once it did, and because it was so traumatic that I'll take any precaution I can possibly imagine next time.

If all's well that ends well, then it's well. It ended at 8:30 PM -- a terribly long day when you're hauling and muscling the weight of concrete. Furthermore, there's a big difference between clean up right after a pour and clean up the next morning, when the grey goop is dry and tough... but live and learn, we cleaned all day Tuesday.

Thanks to Sebastian, who thinks a lot better than I do in blow out mode, the scars where the blow outs were repaired are really minimal and all within what the plaster on our future walls will smooth over...

After about 1 1/2 days of clean up we moved on to putting up rafters and then decking thatform the roof over the mudroom and study and the subfloor of the balcony to the west. That's what Jennifer is tanding on above, and what you see here:

Also working on completing the sloped sides and then just moving up with the walls until the second floor trusses arrive. It's getting higher and harder to work on a single height scaffolding.

THis is a short week and next week will start with a small extra pour . Then if we have trusses, it will be time for some carpentry again, so we can build up from the second floor platform. That's it for now from your weary homemaker. Looking forward to a long weekend OFF!

Prepaing for Pour # 2

2008-11-16T19:40:00.001-08:00

This was a pretty good week for progress, despite that Mon-Weds was truly miserable, weather wise.    I was lucky to have two days of help from a friend from out here named Kirk. He braved the horrid weather. He's lived here a long time -- has all the gear. I should have taken some pictures while he was here, but the
relentless wet meant that  thought did not come to me at the time.

Despite some setbacks (read goof ups on my part... oh well) we are ready to pour tomorrow (Monday)It did take a workday Sunday to get there,  but we're ready.  It will be a lot harder than the last time.    Don't love working on the weekend, but it was a gorgeous misty morning:

And it turned sunny and even hot later:

The challenge this past week was really building the "lintels" and filling them in with blocks and about a ton of rebar.  They are the things that act kind of like bridges over opening on the first floor, and hold the second floor walls above them.

Here is a picture of the one that crosses the kitchen/dining area:

And here it is from the other side, where you can see the "ledger" attached.  It will hold the second floor trusses. All those 2x4s are temporary support -- there won't be walls in most of those places (which is why the lintels are a big deal).

It gets dark so early now. Problem for a night owl like me. Sometimes I've walked the dog in the near darkness. Absolutely beautiful here. We have quite a few owls that get into conversing from one great fir to another in the gloaming hours and later. Paradise.

Think of us and send good luck to us Monday pm for a tricky pour.

2008-11-09T18:54:00.000-08:00

Well, the good news is that your toiling constructors seem to have regained their health. The not so good news is that the notorious Willamette Valley rains have come our way and it's a pain in the tush to work all wet. These photos were actually taken on a say that it rained little... but you get the idea none the less.

Soggy now, will be a sweet dining room window seat one day:

But, we got a lot done and are hoping to get our progress "set in concrete" with a pour later this week. In preparation for that, we did a lot of straightneing of walls this past week -- tweaking them into a position that they will hopefully stay in, when the weight of the concrete gets moving through them. See the "kickers" in these two pics:

The major piece left to do before we can pour is to construct the forms for several "lintels" which are essentially concrete beams that will be cast in place so that the walls of the upper floor can go above even where we have large openings below, such as between the living room and dining room. Here's as far as we got by close of day Friday, on the first one:

The pictures I took this week are terribly chaotic looking. THere's a lot going on in there now, and the wet and shiney just makes it harder to see in pictures, but there is a real feel of enclosure happening, though roof and dry are still a long way away.

That doesn't stop it from feeling like home to a few people and creatures here on the ridge top we call Spyhop:

Progressing with challenges!

2008-11-02T15:48:00.001-08:00

Well, if it ain't one thing it's another, so we had another hard week because of illness this past week. I was only on half speed for the first half of the week-- fighting the microbe that drugs have now freed me from -- whew.   And for the second half Sebastian relapsed to his bug state with fever and sore throat.  Then I had to get a case of the same, So, sniffle sniffle and sneeze,  barely a four day work week.  Ugh.

Early in the week we finally got backfilled. I was lazy with the camera that day, so the pics are of the results, but not of the process.
"Backfilling" means the moat that has been all around the the house got filled back in with the dirt that had been removed, so that the basement is now really a basement. Of course, given our tremendous slope, it does protrude on northeast side:

but still, we can now move ourselves and materials in and out the door openings withoutcrossing the moat on a bridge.
More importantly, we've reached a new level of being able to feel how the house will interact with its surroundings. Jennifer has yet to see it -- she's on the road home from Ohio right now, but I'm pretty happy with how it has changed things.

Here's what will be the sliding door to our outdoor terrace for eating and having company:

Speaking of change, the weather had changed now, and we are WET. In honor of this, now that the earth moving got done,  we also added "hog fuel" all around the site.  It's really just largely ground wood chips, blown all around the work site. So far it seems like its going to be life changing , in terms of clods of mud on the boots, and ultimately into the house. You can see it in this pic --  it's a big improvement .

We did go up some, despite all the poor health. The filling in over the windows is painstaking.
Here you see the diing room window seat and the living room windows beyond.

And look carefully at what's starting to peek out above the mobile:

Pretty awful, huh! Looking at this, you'd never guess houw beautiful it is here. The big leaf maples are dropping their really big leaves and walks with the dog are especially fun:

See you next week!

Getting the feel for floor 1

2008-10-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

Last week was a tough week. So much so that I did not update the blog on the weekend because I was so exhausted and ill.  FOrtunately,  I've  now gotten a diagnosis and drugs for the microbe that's been ailing me. Then on Thursday Sebastian fell ill  (with a flu like thing -- unrelated) so we didn't do construction work at all on Friday.  I caught up on computer things needed to keep moving up and S. took a needed rest day.
Still, we got a fair amount done. Many of the frames that hold the openings for the windows werel in by the end of the week.

Between that and getting the walls up higher,  it became more possible to really imagine enclosure.

More soon. J's in Ohio for the week, gettin out the vote and I'm up way to late for a worker who has to be on site early in the am. A fuller report at the end of this week. Rains due in this weekend... Oy!

Inching up

2008-10-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

The weather was mostly perfect for building this week, and we began inching up into the first floor walls.... at last.

This entry is a short one of mostly pics because I'm feeling a bit under the weather and eager to be early to bed this evening.

Here you can see those three courses that we got up. THough it's only 24" in height, it finally defines the first floor perimeter and gives a sense of a HOUSE at last.

One thing that held us back this week was getting the conduit for wiring the outlets into the walls. It's more of a hassle than I expected.... so what else is new. Here are two pics, one of the electrical box fit into the wall,

and the other of what it looks like from the top

-- the "smurf tube" all hooked up so that wires can later be fed into the boxes -- making their way through the concrete after it's poured.

Then there were the window bucks -- essentially wooden boxes that hold open the spaces where windows will later be installed. You can see them here. (East wall of living room) THere are more to come.

Here's an overall shot:

Be well, and let us hear from you....

Up, still out, and turning to fall.

2008-10-11T17:56:00.000-07:00

The middle of this week was 10-08-08. The day my father would have turned 100. Not something I think he really wanted to experience, but I missed him especially that day.

Early this week was still wet, but later it turned into a beautiful week to work. Cool and pleasant.    There were a lot of loose ends to tie up before we finally could get to laying the first floor subfloor. So we spent the early part of the week doing things like the seismic hold-downs required here in this part of the world. When the time finally came, it felt great to move up to the first floor.

Physically it was hard work -- especially the beginning when there were not yet sheets of ply down so all the work was done from being perched on the joists. I did the first four sheets (the ones behind me in this pictture) alone while Sebastian muscled the hold-downs on.  It was tough work but doing it, especially alone, was very satisfying.

This weekend I have a lot less skin on my knees than usual!  In fact,  I'm pretty sore.  The tractor proved invaluable again, this time in bring piles of plywood up to the platform.
You can see that here, to the left. Week ended with the first floor decking on, the nail gun returned to rental section with no stray nails in flesh, a new outpost for our block cutting tools complete with tent-- as seen here:

We even got a few of the door frames in place. Next week I will start making all the window bucks so that we can place where they go as we reach them in the block laying.... and we will get moving up with first floor walls.....
Here is Jennifer this afternoon, contemplating how small her door to the patio will becompared to present open space:
Hope for more dry than wet in the great Pac. NW, so that next week's postings are truly NEW looking.

Week 7 -- Rain, rain go away....

2008-10-05T21:25:00.000-07:00

Yep, the rains came for real this past week. Like rains are here. Rarely heavy, but always possible. Lots of mist. Only now and then do your clothes actually get very wet, but everything outside is pretty much wet from the constant misting.   It is really time for us to get up out of the ground.... that's what I took from it.

We're nearly there, but not quite yet. There is the matter of getting the outside of the basement walls prepared for backfilling. We would like to get the earth that we took out back into the big trench around the basement walls before a lot of rain washes it away. Of course, all waterproofing of the outside of the basement walls has to be done before that, so we finished applying a brush applied waterproofing,  and are nearly finished installing a "dimple shield."  That's basically a sheet of plastic with lots of bumps pushed up,  and a layer of fabric on top that keeps the soil from filling in the voids between the bumps.   The idea is that the water that makes its way up to the wall of the basement (which we have presumably waterproofed... but this seems worth double protection) will trickle down through the pimply dimples, and then into a gravel covered drain pipe at the bottom of the trench.   You can see the part that we've finished pretty well on this picture.
Suffice it to say it looks and sounds easier than it turned out to be. Especially nasty was installing the layer that goes 4 feet off the ground,  but we are nearly done. It is my great hope to be done tomorrow (Monday) and then to get to work on one last set of seismic reinforcements before we can install the plywood decking on top of the now finished floor frame. I've even rented a pneumatic nail gun - despite my great love of hand driving two thousand nails ,  and my bad memories of one of my Innova workers who always seemed to aim the nail gun at parts of himself.

The addition of the floor joists has the basement feeling more like a basement now:
In fact, we'll probably move Jennifer's stairmaster into here this week, and give it a little tent all its own.

I really hope my next post shows some movement UP to the first floor walls.... but only time will tell, eh....

Best to y'all... send an e mail now and then. And by the way. If any of you can tell me how to control these line breaks that jump into words.... HELP they are driving me nuts. THanks for your patience in reading it that way.

Week 6 -- Trying to move up

2008-09-28T20:32:00.000-07:00

As contemplated at the end of last week, the better part of this week I worked alone while Sebastian helped the sawyer make a lot of lumber and some cabinet wood too from various trees that we have either felled or been given by neighbors to use. That process is pretty
interesting. It starts with a log being squared up like this on the machine:

And then boards get cut.    I'm having no luck loading a video of that process, but ultimately we end up with quite a few piles like this:
It's tremendously satisfying to put to use these trees that we cut to clear. They were not considered "merchantable" by timber standards here becasue they aer too small,   but there's plenty of wood that we will be able to put to good use when the time comes to build my shop and maybe also a carport that's in the plan.

For my part, I continued on the floor framing.

Midweek we got delivery of three big tall steel posts that sit on the basement floor and extend all the way (over 16 feet) to the bottom of the second floor wall.  I was able to use the tractor to get
the posts tilted into the house hole,  but from there it was a pretty muscular and
a bit harrowing job.  Fortunately the sawyer -- Clifford - was willing to lend a hand as we neede all three of us to pull it off.
We managed, and now the building is finally making SOME moves upward.


The weather forcast for the next few days is HOT again... which is better than rain, but can
be hard on us here... nevertheless, I have "high" hopes of making a lot of progress on the
floor, so that we can soon get the earth moved back against the building and start moving
the walls up another layer....   WIsh me luck!

Week 5

2008-09-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

As predicted, we spent the week with Sebastian "scratch coating"
(smearing with a cement and sand mix) the outside and I worked on getting some
framework for the first floor up.
He was sick a bunch of the week and I was suffering the intense
heat -- gone now... so things were slow.

The walls look a lot more like a basement now, at least from the outside.
Meanwhile we also had some other
work going on -- I hired a local woodsperson to fell a dying walnut that a neighbor gave me
as a gift, and tomorrow he'll cut a half dead oak we have here and then mill those
and also a lot of smaller fir that we cut for the house.

The point is to have the Fir to use to build my shop eventually,  and the oak and
walnut will start to dry so that hopefully they can be cabinetry or maybe even
flooring in the house someday.  We'll see.... depends on how it looks once milled.
Clementine proved invaluable, once again.

We are waiting for a couple of steel posts that I hope will be delivered this coming week, to really be able to complete the skeleton of the floor.

Also, there are a few more layers to the waterproofing the outside basement walls... but I hope  that by sometime next week we might be able to resume laying blocks
and get ourselves working up toward the top of the first floor walls.

Even with a little piece of the floor in, and some plywood thrown on top, you begin to get a different feel when the orientation of the house starts to be as it will be -- from the top
and the other side, rather than from what will be the basement door, in the end.
Here Jennifer "enters" through the front door spot
for only the
second time ever.  And here she explores what will someday be
her study.

All in all, not the most productive week ever... but things are moving and turning out pretty well, so I'm trying to be nice to myself about the pace.

Belated Lookback on Week 4

2008-09-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

The weekend got away from me, for an update.

Last week was a big week for changes, although they are mostly not too interesting to show in pictures. We "grouted," as it is called, meaning we poured
concrete into the first 8' of walls.

The structure looks a lot like it did at the end of last week,

but the feel is completely different. Solid as a rock now, you might say.
The process was smooth. No major mishaps and things went pretty well how I had
organized them. (Except for an underestimation of the amount of concrete to order,
but they gladly sent another truck up with more.)

Now we need to make quick work of waterproofing the outside, which sebastian is doing nearly snglehandedly. I am framing the floor
and when all that's done we'll install drainage and backfill so that we can get moving up another layer from the first floor to the first floor roof!

That's the short post for now. Gotto keep moving!

Week 3 -- Briefly this time!

2008-09-08T00:08:00.000-07:00

Things are moving, including the sun -- light later, dark earlier -- so much to do.

We did get a bunch done this week. I hope that we will be able to fill the forms with concrete on Tuesday or no later than Weds. so that we can get started with steps to finally get above ground!

Today (Sunday) I worked some on the layout of rim joists for the first floor. It looked like this:
Hot in the blazing sun for a few good hours each day. THen, in the evening, comes the greatest time to get some things done and enjoy the breeze and the view and the shade. I really can't complain about the work environment when it looks like this:

That's it for now from your tired homemaker!

How about an e mail now and then, y'all?

Looking Back on Week 2

2008-08-31T11:01:00.000-07:00

Just like "back east" (as is said here) the climate seems to know the meaning of Labor Day weekend. It's been immensely cooler and even a bit moist. This morning
Jennifer took
this from her stairmaster:

Not nearly as tired this weekend – even though the physical work was just as hard and there was less opportunity for sleep given our desire to see various of the Dem. Conv. speeches!

As the week ended I still felt a little down about the rate of progress, even as I know that the nature of construction ALWAYS is that things take way longer than you expect them to.
But looking through the pictures and remembering where things were at the end of week 1 is reminding me that a whole lot got done this week. It’s just that a big part of the work accomplished this week was NOT done by us. Rather the basement slab was poured.

Several times during the course of this week Sebastian and I had to move out of the way of Fred – concrete subcontractor– and his workers so that they could finish up placing
the gravel, the vapor barrier, and then the concrete slab.

One good thing about these activities is that they served to entertain our guests – Jennifer’s sister Lydia and her three sons – who understandably found the flinging of sand, gravel & concrete a lot more interesting than the placement of block after block would have been.
Here Willie, Spencer & Teddy concentrate on gravel placement & initial slab smoothing:

In honor of the visit, and the end of summer (Oy, please not yet) Jennifer took the week off. She started out by borrowing our neighbor’s “flail” – a tractor attachment – so that she could clear various of our paths of blackberrys, brambles, nettles and poison oak and render them pleasantly passable again. In fact, she cleared a blackberry picking walk that she and the boys took, harvesting enough of our weed fruit for Lydia to make a fabulous crisp. I think that only about ½ of what was picked actually made it back to the house:

On Wednesday, because the basement slab was being poured, Sebastian & I worked on placing gutters and a silly little shelter over the doorway of the mobile home, instead of working on the house at all. (The spots of rain we’ve gotten here and there demonstrated that without these we were going to be VERY muddy in the mobile because the roof run off pretty much entered the door and windows directly.)

Here’s what that’s looking like today. It’s not that we didn’t get blocks laid. We did.
Monday and Tuesday were more about getting the hang of it. Thursday and Friday things moved a little more quickly.

And blocks isn't all of what's goin' on, either. Sebastian has been good at bending rebar and getting it into place. Most of that is horizontal, and visible in this picture if you look closely.
Probably harder to make out on the web are the vertical cages at the inside corners
which make threading the corner blocks a bit of a chore. THey will support a lot of weight when we get up into the
higher reaches of the house.

OK. That's it for me at the end of week 2! In case anybody is actually reading this, and is intersted in the goal of this experience at the gulag, on FLickr I posted some pics of a model that I built a while ago. The topographical setting is yet to be added, but the building model is there. I think you can go there by clicking this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/61764597@N00/2792962069/

Remember to send an e mail now and then, cuz I miss yous.

Looking back on week 1

2008-08-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

TIRED. Taking a break SUnday:
First week of actually building was as first weeks are. Bog bog bog. Slow at first is always how it is, and I knew it, but felt disappointed each evening none-the-less.

The helper I’ve found – Sebastian – seems perfect for the job, and was a great help in taking over the task of laying the all important first course of blocks. This turned out to be outside of Fred’s – the concrete subcontractor– skills, so it was unclear whether I needed to find a mason to do this. Instead, Sebastian and I tackled it Mon -Weds.

Tuesday we had delivery of “Clementine.” By Thursday she was lifting and moving whole pallets of blocks and one ton of rebar, in one fell lift. The blue thing on the back is a pretty heavy duty chipper – as we have
some pretty heavy duty brush piles.

I have been wanting Fred to get the slab poured (last thing that he will need to do for me for a while) and each day there seems to be something else in the way.

For example, delivery of the gravel that fills in under the slab– which was kind of interesting.
No more dump trucks and shovels. Now the thing is conveyor belt sprays the gravel all over. Real labor saver. Some woman must have thought of it!

Check it out:

Then we hit a pretty major overlook on my part – the underslab plumbing needed to be placed, tested and inspected. I have been thinking of a plumber as something I won’t need for a while, but lo and behold there’s the small matter of the house’s drain pipes that run down into the basement floor and out. OOOOps. Fortunately all the rest of the plans are in place, in terms of where the pipes will come down, so after hectic run to town for supplies etc we managed to get the pipes laid into the gravel at the proper inclines.

You glue them all up and cap them off, with one ten foot pipe sticking up. This gets filled with water and then you watch to see whether you have any leaks. If no leaks – building inspector comes.

That’s what we hope happens Monday, so that after some more sub-slab details, the basement slab can finally be poured, perhaps Tuesday.

Maybe tonight I'll post some photos of house model, to show what the ultimate plan is. Right now, I need to take the lead from my non-human companions:

Some ask: What are we looking at?

2008-08-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

>On Thursday we had the first of a three day heat wave that I hope is breaking as I write.   It was the first day I needed to move blocks and by my calculation I garden hauled almost 3000 lbs of them, with the help of my trusty garden cart. Can't wait for arrival of our tractor!    It was HOT AND DUSTY.

Here's a little clarification using pictures from the last coupla days progress.
Hoping this will make the pictures you've already seen more understandable:

The "foundation" of our house (this is pretty standard) is an outline of the house poured in concrete called "footings." These are thicker heavier channels of concrete that lay under the basement slab (floor) . THey are so that the heavy perimeter walls are sufficiently supported. THis is the case in many houses you've seen, just that you generally are looking at it after the concrete slab was poured on. Here you are seeing these "footings."

THe squares inside are the same kind of thing, but they are to support some steel columns that will come down to support upper construction (to allow some wide openings on the first floor). Next week the interstices that you see in this picture will be filled with more gravel and then a 3 -4 " slab of concrete will be poured over top, so that most of the concrete you see here will be underneath, and invisible.

We are building the house using "insulating concrete forms."   The ones we are using are manufactured very near here and are made from wood chips rather than styrofoam, like many. THey are a little heavier, and sturdier.   If you're really interested, check out: http://www.faswall.com/product.html They fit together pretty precisely,  with a pattern that requires attention to the orientation of the blocks -- up and down, front to back, etc.  THey have cut outs that create a web of concrete when they are filled -- with a horizontal as well as vertical elements.   THey create a tight building with breathable walls...

The (oversimplified) idea basically is that you stack them up to the exact shape and size that you want, and then fill the cavities inside with rebar and concrete. Floors hang inside,  roof on top and internal walls all framed conventionally,  within this envelope.   The inside and outside of the blocks can be plastered or stucco'd or you can attach any of the conventional finishes....    Soon I'll share some pics of a model and maybe plans,  if you're interested.   In the meantime,  above is a pic of a load of blocks.

Fred-- my concrete guy-- is laying the all important first course of blocks for me,   because it has to be mortared and laid to near perfection so that subsequent courses fall into place square and plumb without a lot of shimming and adjustment. It's been a little slow getting a rhythm. I need him to finish up and am having some of the standard frustrations one has with busy construction folks.... Oh well, soon it'll be just me.

First,  all the corners had to be prepared,  placed and cemented into place.  (Placement of just the corners such that they will be square, level, and in the right place is a little tricky,  but I think we got pretty close.    That stage looks like this.

THen the blocks in between get put into place. That looks more like this (Sorry.... not a very good image but stick with me.)

On Friday I stacked a second course just to assess whether the work was sufficiently exact, and what I got was this:

In actuality the procedure for stacking the courses is different - with the all important corners requiring attention first- so this was just an experiment,  but it gives you a pretty good sense of what is to come.

Tomorrow (Monday the 18th of August) I have a helper coming. If things work out, I'll hope to have him here through as much of the construction as possible.  Keep your fingers crossed for me, and keep some e mails or comments coming. Don't have to be about building, just say hi, will ya! xxB

Tuesday Aug 12: Footings poured

2008-08-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday the footings for our building were poured, at last.

Footings are part of the foundation. THey are the concrete pads that will accept the walls of the building. Once they are all set, a slab gets poured above and inbetween -- which will be the floor of the basement.   Before the concrete arrived, things looked like a web of lumber with rebar placed inside, as required to reinforce the building.

Here are a couple of shots of what the thing has been looking like,  before this final phase.

Because our rd/driveway is so steep in places, the cement trucks could not be loaded very high, because the cement can simply pour out the back of that spinning cylinder that you've seen on the highway.   Thus it took three trucks.

THey are big and heavy and little scarey
when they pull in here, but all was well under control.

Fred, the guy I've hired to handle the concrete -- including to help me when it comes time to do "the pour" of the walls (more later) is really a terrific person to have found.   Apart from that he's great at what we hired him to do, he seems to know absolutely everything about the flora and fauna around here.

ANyhow, at the end of the day yesterday things looked more like this:

Next week I'll be on my own here -- with the helper that I arranged for yesterday, so we'll see how we can move this baby up after that!
If none of you come and visit, guess who'll be the only one enjoying our makeshift terrace:

Will keep you posted, so check in and be heard from.

Up to today

2008-08-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

OK. This post follows the one from a few days ago, and should bring this up to today, so that future posts can be short and sweet. If you want a chronology, read the post prior to this, then this, and you've got what's here, in terms of history!

Shortly after we were FINALLY able to close on the land (having won permission to build a house on it) we decided to put in a vegetable garden -- despite not yet having running water -- as a kind of exercise in making our claim. An effort it was....

But it served the desired purpose....
Later, when the dryness of our summers here set in, we had to do some creative thinking about how to get up here with enough water to keep everybody alive... if not happy.
The driveway up to here at this point was just in its initial stages of being cleared, so getting that little contraption up the rd filled with water
was more of an issue than you might think.

Just to give you sense, here's a "then" of the dogwood that ends our driveway:

This is a slightly more recent view of the same area :

I won't bore you with all the details of getting the driveway and electricity and water and septic field in. Suffice it to say there's a fair amount of work in getting all those systems set up.   Once we did get settled here, the next priority was keeping the house building moving. So, we got to work on digging the foundation hole right where we want it:
Again, it's all a lot more work than a few photos make it look like... In any case, this too is accomplished now:

  And you can stand inside what will be our basement in the future.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.  I did want to tell about the first week or two of living here in our mobile.  They were downright funny.  In preparation for the hard work to come, and despite having sworn years ago that I would never move myself again,  (but that was in the days of moving from one 5th floor walkup to another...) J and I moved ourselves with a big truck and our own two hands.  It was two weekends of pretty much hell,  but we got through it in good humor and spirits.   What followed were some of the most interesting trashy weeks of my life,  with our stuff scattered about the place,  and bulldozers and tree chomping machines showing up early in themorning to work on the site.  I particularly like this photo,  which happened at about 6:30 one morning.  J on her stairmaster,  outside the mobile home,  interrupted by our need to decide which trees the excavator should take down....  Moving trash still not taken away to the dump.... what a sight:
Notice some of the marvelous cabinetry strewn about -- it's stuff I removed from the mobile.... lovely!

Within about another week we had rented a "pod" which will serve as storage and tool shed for some time, and I have put up a little patio of paving stones, so that we can enjoy our temporary spot. Here's a shot of that in progress (see the start of a little terrace in front of mobile home!):
So the next step, and final one that I will document on this post, was the arrival of the building blocks that I will use for the house's entire shell. Getting them up the road was a job for the same driver that brought the mobile home, and when they arrived and were perched there on the side of the foundation hole, it was a bit of a stomach chruner for me:   In fact, next thing it was my job to get them off this truck (2 loads 30 pallets each) and stacked up as I need them around the site,  using a "rough terrain forklift" that we rented and I learned to operate,   lets just say, on the job:
Again, it seems simple enough, but given that there is not one spit of level ground on this site that we love so much, it's actually a challenge that requires use of all the nifty things that a machine like this can do. And some concentration, too:   I am always happy when learning a new skill    and this was no exception.
As of today, (Monday the 11th of August) we await an inspection needed before we can pour the footings, hopefully tomorrow.   Shortly after that my work will change to that of laborer -- and I'll be laying those blocks and seeing whether I can beat the rains, at least to a first floor.

In February, before it was clear we would ever own this spot, we moved some "furniture"up and had a ceremonial first seated meal:

Today, we've made a funky temporary home that most of you would find comfortable and entertaining, if not charming:   We have a guestroom with double bed and half bath of its own. We've had two visits already!
So get over here and check it out. We love visits. If you can't come in person, come to this site and share your moral support!

More - but much shorter-- soon! xxxB

Getting started.

2008-08-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

OK friends. We have been promising a blog and managing only minimal picture posts on our Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/61764597@N00/sets/72157605008928950/

This will not repeat all of those early images, and I'm really not sure if I'll be able to keep both things up, but I am trying, after many false starts, to "blog" the construction of the house on the land we call Spyhop. A first false start on this blog was on another site that I found very difficult to navigate. http://bdohrn.blog.noodle5.com/about/

At that link there is a silly little piece, written mostly when we returned from Mexico to get the news that we had finally succeeded in getting permission to build on this land. Check it out if you want to read a little about the whale watch trip to Mexico. Idea was to artfully link to why we gave this land the name "Spyhop," but it didn't happen to come together because like everyone today, I have a limited attention span, I guess.

In any case, I'm going to use some words and a lot of pictures and hope that it will be interesting enough so that some of you will look and give us some moral support through what is about to be a very demanding project....

Like I said, there are more earlier pics on Flickr.

After over a year of hiking up ( about 400 ft of vertical climb from the start of our driveway) – a good workout) to our preferred building spot, almost immediately after we were able to close on the land we started working on clearing a driveway and getting a better sense of the building site, in high hopes of being able to build this summer.

We had a visit from Susan Allee, and some perfect whether to go with it!
As many of you know, I had been working on a set of plans for a house on this site, hoping all along that it would amount to more than an exercise, but protesting that it would have been a great learning experience, if indeed it DID become only an exercise. So once the land came through, it was time to get an engineer into those plans, so that they could be submitted for a building permit. Permit application day was pretty exciting.

We also enlist ed help from Lydia Marshall & Robert Drucker -- primo architects and cousins of Jennifer's, to evaluate our plans, and particularly how to place the house on our site.

In the meantime, while all that was going on, we were also "house shopping" for something we could live in on the land. Originally we were thinking we'd build something that would eventually serve as my shop, but in the short term might work as a kind of studio apt for us. But as things developed it became clear that while we had good vision for where the house should go, our confidence on how another building should be sited fell apart . I n addition, it just seemed like too much to have to build a prelim. building before getting started on the house.... so it came to be that we purchased a 1975 "Homette." I kid you not!

Getting it up the driveway and ultimately to our spot on the hill was adventurous, to say the least. But we made it.

So, there's more to show and tell, including the tale of learning to operate the forklift, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow. This is the start. From here, it'll be short and pictureful, and I'm hoping some of you will write back now and again. Maybe you can do this through the blog, but you know, there's the old fashioned e mail thing too =; -)

For now I'll leave you with the view from the window in this funky mobile home study!