Wood on Walls!

So have I told any of you that I have a new BFF? His name is Eric, he is now officially helping to build the house! Which means wood is going up! Just in case you want to know what he looks like, here is a lovely picture his finance Kati provided for me. Since he is friends with Big Foot I'm sure he is good with wood!

Seriously - Eric is truly good with building. This is wood that has been put on the top of all the rastra block walls. Its called a sill plate. All the rest of the wood walls attach to this. It's along the top of all the walls.

So now when you pull up to the house it looks like this! It's really taking shape!

This is the side wall from the inside! It is a super tall wall. It also has a window in it.

That looks like this.

This is the other side of the house.

There is also a lower roof going on the front part of the house.

You can kinda see how the roof will go high at a slant then a lower roof with clearstory windows in it. I'll have better picture of it all in a couple weeks since the roof is going on, on the 16th! Right now that's all I got, but hopefully it will move quickly from here on out.... Except of course Eric is out of town for his wedding at the end of the month. I'm lending him back to Kati for that.

Kindling!

I arrived at the house and Curt had my work station all set up for me for the day. Remember all the beams we had cut into usable wood for the house. Well there were quite a bit of scraps. So I had to cut them up into kindling size.

Here is what the stack of wood looked like when I arrived.

Here is what my lovely work station looked like. Notice the nice touches such as streamers and the flowers. Curt is ever so thoughtful when it comes to trying to make work more fun.

I did get it all cut up moved across the yard and stacked in the wood shed. NOW I have never said I was a good wood stacker, especially when it's above my head! I just closed my eyes and threw it up. Curt came around and looked at my work and I believe his words were...Uh Oh. What ever! It's all done! And we ate our lunch. If you have ever wondered what our lunches consist of while working out there all day. Here is a pic!

Pippin is alway hopeful he will get a bite!

Foam Art

Ever wonder what happens if you don't need any more foam and you can't close the top? Foam Art! This is what we found the day after filling some holes.

The rest of the floor!

So this weekend we are laying the tubing for the rest of the floor. This requires more use of the orange tamping machine. However this time I got to run it! Which is why there are no lovely pictures of me working hard. It also required this laser level. NOT my best friend tonight. 

Curt would used the level to make sure the rocks were all at a uniform hight so the insulators would have an easier time laying the insulation. Which meant a lot of tamping and raking of rocks. He did seem to be a bit nit picky about this.

While I was doing that, Curt had to build a box for the fire place. Since it's needs a deeper concrete base then the rest of the floor. First he had to dig out all the rocks.

Then build the frame.

Place the frame in the hole and get it all even.

Apparently there was a warped piece of wood making the whole job a bit longer and frustrating than it should, requiring him to sit on the box to strap it down. This causing him to tell me his "buns were not up for that workout tonight". Which of course made me laugh and take a picture.

Portable Mill.

So the Wood Mizer arrived at our place on Wednesday. With a name like this I'm feeling pretty good about getting as much usable wood out of the beams that we can. :)

This is the portable mill. All very exciting. However pretty hard to blog about since I was not there. Curt took the few pictures I have. So I will let them speak for themselves today.

It even comes with the required DANGER notice where sometimes you have to wonder if they think all people are stupid.

And here are some of the finished product! Now all we need is the framers.

Wood Beams

So as you know from an earlier post, we have a large collection of recovered old fir wood beams. They are all going to be used for different purposes, but this first batch we are cutting up into 2x4's.

Curt has had this guy watching over them for the last few years. I'm not sure how much good it does, but he does seem to enjoy his job.

First I had to take my mom's metal detector and go over all of the beams and mark where there were nails. Curt then pulled them out. If the portable mill hits a nail, it's 30.00. So it's best to get rid of them now!

Then Curt had to come up with a great way to move them into the drive way. You can see the pully set up above the beams.

He tied a strap around the middle of the beam.

 Hooked it up to the pully.

 Pulled it up on to the cable.

And walked it across the driveway.

Depositing it into a new pile. This too quite a while I might add.

I found a much funner use for the cable. Zip line!!!

Finished Floor

The concrete guys came a couple days after the tubes were done and poured the first part of the floor.

After it had dried for a few days they come back and cut some lines in it so that hopefully (fingers crossed) the slab does not crack. So far so good! One week later, no cracks!

Next week, the 2nd part of the floor!!