Back at it.

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

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! 

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)

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.

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!

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. 

 

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

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

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!