A Winching Wench gets Tanked!

HAHAHAHAH, just cracked myself up with that one. 

Some of you may know that we are using rain water for our house. The whole house. We have a well but the water is hard and to purchase a filter for well water over rain water is quite a bit more. Since we have so much rain in the Pacific Northwest as long as we put enough storage in, we will be fine. The only months we might run out is August and September and if we do we can have some delivered. Not a big deal. 

That makes this weekends project moving the water tanks to their final location. Behind the house. First they were delivered to the side yard. With a truck and crane. They each hold about 575 gallons of water. They are HUGE and heavy. You can see Curt peaking our over one of them and he is 6'4".

Then as the house was getting built we moved them over to the front. Again, a crane was involved. I'm up on the roof taking a picture of them.

So you would think that when we need to move them to the back of the house, the final resting place, again you would use a crane. Seems to make sense, wouldn't you think? 

But NO! Curt decides we can do it all our our own using a winch.

And a Wench, (that would be me wishing I was doing something like this instead), and any other fool hardy soul that happened to be at the house. Thank you Mike and Russell.

So began the slow process of moving each tank foot by foot, inch by inch, by pulling with the winch, and pushing. Changing up the ropes each time we had to. As you can see here we are pulling it over from the front to the side of the house. With of course Pippin's supervision.

Next we had to get it around the side of the house. This required all sorts of pipes and plywood and general pushing, shoving and grunting.

It also required me to move up to other trees behind the house with the winch.

Then we had to bet it around a REALLY TIGHT corner, which involved me winching it halfway up the side of the bank. 

Thus creating what we called the Bermuda Triangle, a spot which neither of us could get to to help get the tank in place. But again with a lot of pipes, plywood, some rain....... We finally got them all in place. It only took a day and a half. 

Next they will get hooked up together the filters put in and then covered with dirt and plants. You can see how the roof runs all the way to the back into a gutter system that pours directly into the tanks. 

Here is the roof before the tanks were in place.

And the exciting covered gutters! Ohhhh Awwww.

Ever wonder what the top of Curt's head looks like?

Painting!

Since the weather has turned a bit sunny this month painting has begun in earnest on the outside of the house. I really like the colors that Curt has picked out. It looks great with the shingles. However, I am not a detail painter. HATE IT! So Curt ends up doing that bit. (And he really doesn't want me doing it.)

You can see it takes some tricky maneuvering!

However it's starting to look great! You can see why I don't want to do the windows, the all open up outward and there is something like 3 different places to paint on them.

So my job is spackling all the cracks in the mortar around the edge of it to get it extra water proofed. Much more to my liking.

I did this around the whole house. In my new work overalls by the way. Curt hates them. I have to say, they are not flattering at all, but.....

There is no plumbers but on the job site!

After I got all the spackle on, then I had to paint the back wall with a plastic paint. For further waterproofing. Can you see a theme here? (We live in Washington)

I have one more coat of this and it should be done!

The electrician is finishing up tomorrow and gutters are going on. I should have another update soon!

Miscellaneous House Update!

So quite a bit is happening on the house, but not so much exciting stuff to take pictures of. So here is a post full of bits and bobs.

TEA! This is very important to have on really cold days working at the house. And since one day late last month, (April) we got snow....

 We had to figure out a way to have tea. This is our solution. Works great if you keep the cups off the cold concrete floor!

 Sooo, all those shingles that took me forever to paint are finally going up. It's looking really nice! I love the color, and Mike, is doing a great job. You can see how its starting to look.

 On any given day you can walk into the house and see this:

 This is the work table where everyone seems to look at plans and put things, like lunch, paint, electrical supplies. It changes daily, but the plans are pretty much always there. And they seemed to have stopped changing which is a good thing.

One day I was finishing up and Curt wanted me to clean up the floor. Who knew that an air compressor was so handy to use. Especially since I had to get all the wood dust from the cuts in the floor. It took quite awhile, and guess what? I need to do it again already.

And since no post is complete with out Pippin, this is what he looks like when he really gets into working. Or the creek.....

Shingles!

So this weekends torturous job you may ask? Staining this humungous pile of shingles. These will go on the outside of the house. And where did we get these lovely Alaskan Yellow Cedar Shingles? ON CRAIGS LIST! Yep, we have started calling it, the house that craig's list built. This is just a picture of a small part of them.

Curt would brush them off and then bring them into me.

Where he had set up a work station for me. What you can't see is the small portable heater, since it was FREEZING OUT!

He built a few racks to dry them on since it was also POURING with RAIN the whole day. (Sunday was sunny)

 Curt finally had to give me some help since it was taking way longer than expected. But then so is the house!

 Pippin also feels then need to help out....but with out opposable thumbs he just wanders around looking for cookies crumbs. (It is girl scout cookie time you know.)

And here is what they look like drying on the rack.

Seriously, I think this is going to take forever...........

All though you might have noticed in the pictures, the electrical wiring is also going in right now. But this is just about the most boring thing ever to take pictures of.

Next up should be the fire place. The blocks are supposed to arrive this week sometime. (Hopefully)

WINDOWS!!

Finally the windows are going in! We got Lindall wood framed windows. And they look great! I really wish I had some pictures of the guys putting these in. Most of them are HUGE and I know it took a lot of work.

Here are all the windows piled in the living room.

Living room windows are in now.....except one! We measured one wrong! We have to reorder and hopefully we can use that one in the carport/shop. You can see the hole there to the left of the big window.

Here is what they look like all in. There are still a couple more to order, you can see the white plastic over the window holes. but those will come soon.

Moore Roof

Just for fun, here is a pic of Eric and Kati's dog Bean, he helps out Eric building on our house. This was him scoping out the roof before the metal arrived.

I don't have a lot of pictures of the roof going on. I was at work while most of that was being done. Here is one of the guys putting on the trim of the roof.

And here is one of the metal almost done. It's been a wet job as you can see!