living room drywall

starting the drywall. Next piece is a real test for us as it contains the first electrical outlet for this wall. It's good to start with something to look forward to! Ughhh.... Saturday we are cheating as we are going to install the toilet and sink instead so we can hook the water up right away. Plus it delays the inevitable and lets us put off those drywall cuts a little longer.

the first fire!

Wow! Our first fire! And just in time for the cold weather which is coming our way! We tested the fireplaces today (we've got a small closet full of the scrap lumber from the building project...very little waste, and aside from the plywood scraps - it can be burnt to keep us warm now!) and they work wonderfully well. It's so NICE to be near some wood heat again, it's got a warmth that can't be beat!

What else? The well is DRILLED! Good water pressure and not TOO far down, only 225 feet. The pipes get connected on Tuesday and then it will be time to set up the toilet and sink. :-) Tuesday the electricians come back to hook up the water heater, the 220 for the stove, and a couple of outlets for us to have lights with. We started doing some drywall work today, aside from the stove testing. Looks like we'll be moving into the house on Thanksgiving day! Considering we moved in here on Easter, it seems appropriate that we should move out on a holiday too. And what could we be more thankful for as far as the building process goes than actually moving in. Hard to believe! We really can't believe it!

Goodnight!

space age insulation

Well, the day we have waited for has arrived...no not that one, we still haven't moved in, but day one of the spray foam insulation was today! It's CRAZY! the product is called icynene, and we are so glad that we got it. It was a big investment for the beginning, but the overall value is incredible, it keeps houses WARM! the pictures we took are a bit on the blurry side as the spraying had just ended and with the windows covered it was sort of dim, but you can see how thoroughly filled the bays are, the house looks smaller inside to us with something inside the wall cavities besides wire and emptiness! The warmth is already apparent, and we will have some impressive solar gain on the passive solar side of the house (which I generally don't photograph as it shows three stories and makes it looks like a massive house!!). This is exciting news for us...it's been fascinating to watch. The sprayers come in a suit to protect their eyes, clothes and hair, etc. and use a spray gun to spray the foam in, it comes out of the sprayer as a liquid, but begins to expand at the rate of 100x in 8 seconds, and it's really funny to watch. Tomorrow I'll get a video of it, and when shawn has time, if anyone is really curious about it, please let us know and if the video turns out, we'll mail it to you on cd format!

Tomorrow the basement and main floor get sprayed, today they did the attic and the second floor.

The well is going in tomorrow, but so far, the drilling process has been such a comedy (???!!!) of errors, that I'll say no more about it. I'll just say that the trucks are huge, and have been on site since thursday now, and the drilling has not yet begun. Today it was because the water line froze up due to lack of antifreeze (don't ask me how you could forget that in a climate like Maine), and by the time it thawed , they realized that the diesel batteries for the truck were depressed by the cold weather and wouldn't start. So, they are charging tonight. If there's a well tomorrow, I'll post a hallulujah blog entry. :-)

Move in date, assuming the well is ever drilled, is planned for the day before Thanksgiving, and if that doesn't give us something to be incredibly thankful for...well, you get the picture!

Cold weather is upon us...snow showers later in the week, and evening temps have been in the twenties...we've been splitting wood like crazy, which is great fun (no, seriously!) and a nice break from construction. The electric and plumbing were inspected and approved by the local code enforcer. We've got about three cords split and stacked already and probably another cord or so to go, estimates say we'll probably only use two cords MAX with the super insulation in. We are really impressed with this stuff. Can't wait to try it out...this will be the first time we've ever lived in a well insulated house...wow, can't wait!

Ok, good night to all. Hope you are warm and happy out there, wherever you are reading from!

chimney and hearth...the woodstove arrives tomorrow! More pics then...

mudroom side, here you can see the windows we put in, plus all the roofing!

rear of the house...

GARLIC!

our first belfast garden bed!!! This feels like the right work to be doing, it won't be so bad to not be raising walls anymore, after all! :-)

close up of the chimney top out! We love it!!!

closed in!

wow! it's november 1st and we are closed in, roughly!!! All the windows are in, we finished up the six in the basement this morning, hung the front door, and even built some temporary stairs into the house so we can finally stop hoisting ourselves in or climbing ladders in. Tomorrow afternoon the woodstoves are to be delivered. The metal roofers were here in a flurry of amazing productivity yesterday. We have an easy roof to roof (we designed it that way since we thought we'd be doing it ourselves!) but these nine guys swooped in out of the morning mist, and worked seven hours straight and left in a flurry, leaving little trace but a few cigarette butts (which I went around and found, since i can't stand them and don't want them on the land!).

It's pretty hard to believe that we built nearly the whole thing! The windows were quite easy for us (the highest ones were done by the same people from Roy's crew who put our attic trusses on for us) after the first ones. We did the high side above the mudroom shed roof, and all the lower floors (with the exception of the french doors in the rear of the house).

We've also started cutting and splitting wood (feels great!) and we got some garlic planted, we'll see how it does, the soil isn't too hot and I didn't do much amending beyond some kelp meal and compost brought up from the garden here in cushing). just as we were finishing up some stacking of wood, some rain started. What a delight, for the first time since we started building, to hear!! No worries about it pooling in the living room or getting under the roof guard! I think it's been three months since I've really enjoyed the sound of rain, so it's nice to be able to relax about that rather large part of the natural scheme of things. You can't do much to change what the sky gives you for the day, so it's best to be closed in!

The insulation is scheduled for later next week, or around the 19th or so, and then we can be renters no longer! YAHOOOOOOOO!

I'll post a few more pics...

view from the road

here is the masonry chimney for the woodstove in the living room. The work will also include a four foot high stone wall surround and a stone tiled hearth as well. The stone is really incredible and comes from a local quarry, it's called Searsmont Stone (after the location). This is a neat batch of sandstone he pulled out, as it is gray blue and striated delicately - and beautifully! This has been exciting work to track the progress on, and we can't wait to see the stone top out (the parts of the chimney that aren't visible (eg upstairs and in the attic) are just cinder block, not too exciting, but also invisible! The top out (the chimney you'll see out of the roof) will also be done in the searsmont stone! We think it's going to look really neat!

roof-allujah!

Here is some of the latest work: The big roof was accomplished in three days by the roofing crew, the small roof we did in two days and still have one more day of work on trim on it! I guess they move a lot faster than us! :-) They did a great job, and this weekend are finishing the trim work (fascia boards) going to put up the typar covering for us over the attic part of the house.
Other work we've gotten done recently is to frame up most of the walls for the second floor (in preparation for the electrician, who we ARE going to have do the wiring for the house after all!) work on the shed roof, frame up interior walls for the basement to prepare for the insulation and the electrician (not in that order) and laying the attic decking. The odd structures you see on the roof are even odder looking now as more have been set up. That is the framing of the staging for the masons to put the chimney up through the roof. The masonry work so far is incredibly beautiful and we are really really pleased with our decision! We asked them to put in a stone mantelpiece and it came out tremendously. More work this week will include basement stairs, and getting ready for windows and doors (two of them need a bit of extra wood along the rough opening to accomodate a slightly smaller door and window than we originally cut for). What else? We are about to start the plumbing rough ins, and will probably start that this week. We have only another wall to build for the second floor (had to leave some space available for the masons to do their work upstairs). Then all the interior walls are done! Electricity has been hooked up - as far as the panel box goes and a single 110 outlet for us to work with. CMP amazed us by arriving a full two weeks worth of business days early and actually ENERGIZED the house yesterday! Amazing! Now the electrician really can do his work, AND we can start heating up soup and hot food for lunch on our trusty little hot plate! Yahoo!

It seems like forever since we've updated, and I'll search around and see if I can't find any other exciting photos to post! Bye!

THE AUTUMN LEAVES ARE ARRIVING IN MID COAST MAINE! It's pretty breathtaking sometimes, to see the fabulous colors light up! So far we haven't driven off the road with our eyes a goggle. Or is it a google...

I'll try that again

here's the view from the front of the house. It's a little less intimidating looking to us size wise. We are still getting used to how tall the house looks. It's been a bit of a shock for two people planning to build a fairly small house. But we are really pleased with how it looks! Hard to believe we've built almost the entire thing. We are crazy.

Those Walls Are Raised!

Wow! It is so nice to see these two walls standing! We got up before 5 am this morning to meet the guys helping us lift the walls by 6:30 and the walls were standing by 7:07 am. What an experience. I can't really explain in words how nauseating it was for the both of us on the first wall. The wall was SO heavy (though lifting it between the 5 of us, it was really very manageable) but worst of all was the sense of unknowing that came with lifting it and then balancing it into place. You can't see around the edges of the wall, and you can't see the other side of the wall to judge how close it is to the edge of the wall. You have to trust to your measurements (we built the wall along a chalk line, so that we always remained the right distance from the edge of the wall, and we toenailed the bottom plates of the wall into place so it would catch the wall before falling over the edge!) It can still, at times, be very difficult to trust to the work you've put in, and it's amazing how when you are under a very long, very heavy wall, that your confidence level can be low! :-) The second wall was much easier! The wall is exactly the same as the other wall, but Roy kept telling me that it was going to seem much lighter, and the funny thing is, that it DID! It was much easier to lift, and that is probably due to at least having a wee bit of familiarity with the process. My job, due to bad location in the lifting process, and least necessity in holding the unbraced wall, sigh!, was to hold the level and push the wall either in or out while the other guy (Ricky, who is Roy's son) nailed the main brace in place. It is really something challenging to be told "Push that wall out till it's level" when all of your intuition (which is mixed up at this point) is telling you, "Don't push that wall or it will fall over!" But the second time around on that was better too. Still and all, it took both of us about half an hour after the guys left to settle our stomachs! The youngest helper was Roy's nephew, Lyle, who appeared about 22 or maybe only in his teens. He was nice and found our anxiety about the wall raising pretty amusing. :-) He's probably been raising those giant stretches of walls since he was a kid, everyone but Shawn and I were completely nonchalant. I guess we would be too, if we'd done it as many times, though you never know! :-) Two more walls to raise for the exterior and then our framing job for the exterior is over. Then we just tackle the rest of it! :-) More news and updates later, as for now, it's off for a nap and then to enjoy the first two days off in a row we've had in two months, we are going to the MOFGA fair both days are are REALLY REALLY EXCITED! MMMMMM! Bye!

64 feet of walls on the floor

Hi there! We have both of the long walls (that would be the western facing and the eastern facing (roughly)) built and sheathed with plywood. Today we are going to finish the nailing on them, then tack on the ty-par wrap which will be the winter coat for the house till spring when we can reasonably start the clapboard. Tomorrow morning or afternoon, Roy and some other large people are coming to help us raise both walls, and the other two sets of walls we've decided to return to our old method of raising small walls to finish it up. It's hard to conveniently coordinate times when everyone can come over to help raise the walls, and it's a little disturbing to have such massive walls that it is strictly impossible for us to raise on our own. But the advantage to the way we've done it this time around, as Roy explained to us, is that the walls will be very straight and will make siding easier when we get to that point. It's actually faster to build the walls this way, we think, and squaring them up wasn't bad, either, in fact - we think it might have been a bit easier. But they are massive! The one wall had to be constructed over the opening for the stairs, and we're a bit confused as to how easy it will be to raise it with that big opening there, but I guess the advantage to being a builder is that you've pretty much seen it all before. So I guess we'll do alright and update again later.

We're starting to get all the work together for having the roof put on, both having the trusses set, and then having metal roofing put on. What a relief to be having that work done for us. It's really high up there, and without the right equipment (here, scaffolding etc) a job can take on pretty nightmarish qualities! We have had two masons come out to give us an estimate on doing a block and brick chimney and it seems that we are not too late to get the chimney in after all. (SIGH OF RELIEF). There's a lot to get done before snow fly, but it seems to be coming together reasonably well. We called an electrician who is quite nice and willing to run the conduit from the CMP pole (Central Maine Power) to the house, look over our electric plan and also set our electric panel for us. This is great news for us, as we can do the rest of the electric work ourselves, and have the important part checked ahead of time by a pro. The fellow is nice and offered consulting work to us at an hourly rate if it's something we should need later on. Last on the list is to have the plumbing roughed in - which we have a contact for as well. And then it's just many hours of work ahead.

Speaking of hours of work ahead, it's time to go.

the real stairway to heaven

It doesn't lead to anywhere but up yet, but the stairs are in. We finished them on...Saturday the 8th of September. It took a couple of days to get them sorted out. Roy came over on Thursday to help us properly take the measurements and showed us how to properly scribe the stairs, then we cut them out after he left. To make the stringers, you get your measurements for the rise and run, and essentially jiggle your division until you reach the right number of treads for the space you need to stretch the staircase. It's more difficult than it sounds for beginners like us, but part of the beauty of doing something with someone who not only knows their field well, but also knows it well enough to communicate the essence of it simply and effectively, is that you suddenly realize that it's not as difficult as it seems. Nor is it as easy! Anyway, we cut out the templates, and then took a bit of time to cut all the risers and treads and get them into place. The stairs you see here are temporary stairs. One of the few areas that code is strict in Belfast is with stair treads. No nosing can be sticking out. So our final step with the stairs before occupancy inspection will be to put a clamshell nosing on the edge of the stairs where you can see a gap between the riser and the tread.

In other news...we got rained out Sunday afternoon and yesterday, and today is rainy, too, but we're going to head to Belfast anyway. It's not raining most of the day and we have a lot to do. We are working to plywood the basement, cutting out the windows as we go. We put in an order for our windows to get a final on the cost (it's expensive, now to determine exactly what the damage will be). We also talked with Roy about having the roof done by his son's contracting company. It's really high up there, and we have decided to use trusses instead of stick building the roof. The heights are a bit much for Shawn, and I don't think that I can be exceptionally effective up there either, especially if my job is to hand up sheets of plywood or 16 foot pieces of metal roofing. :-) It's been a tremendous relief to us to decide and have that part done. Roy was telling us how they set up staging for roof work, by setting up scaffolding all the way around the area, which provides about 6 feet of working space for the builders, along with a back support, so the illusion of not being up in the air is created, while also providing safety and a good working space. A little easier for them than us. We will continue to finish off the second floor, though the walls we build for the second floor we're going to build in 32 foot sections on the long side, and then Roy and his son and a nephew are going to come by one afternoon and help us raise them. Roy suggested this would be helpful to do, since it will keep the wall perfectly straight and that will help with siding later on (we're having that done, too).

That's all the news from here. It felt very very strange to stay home yesterday. We worked something like 35 days straight. It left us at a loss! We both missed the work! But it would be untrue to say that it wasn't nice to sleep (UNTIL NINE!!!!!) in and have time to make bread and do some things that have fallen to the wayside this last month. Now we have lots of bread, plenty of rest under our belts, and more work to do ahead of us. Two weeks till the Common Ground Fair. Check out the details at www.mofga.com - we are really excited and taking three days off to attend each day of the fair!

Bye!

Goodbye Floor One

The rim joists are on, at last. That took a couple of days, along with some other things. Yesterday we laid/hung the joists for the other side of the stairwell, and put blocking in to all the joists, and then hoisted up all the rim joists, which we agreed was the most difficult part of the job so far. I really do think that there's a good deal of value in realizing by doing that you can do things you are uncomfortable or flat out afraid of, but it's still hard work, and while I'm glad to know that I can balance high on a ladder with my half (or third, sorry Shawn) of a two by twelve by sixteen, I'm still delighted to know that that work is behind us. The last most difficult thing will be the roof rafters, but at least I will be standing on solid ground at that point, and we are done with 2 by 12's. So the work was very challenging but is now complete, and I feel much more comfortable on a ladder. It takes a while to trust that it isn't going to fall through a wall. :-) Today's work is plywood work - we left the joists off of the mudroom so we can hoist plywood up through there and onto the joists. Then we'll make a path across the subfloor with that and walk our boards over. Tomorrow Roy is coming over to help us frame and construct the stairs for the first floor, and we'll also have his help to scribe and measure properly for the basement stairs. He is a great guy. He'll let us do most of the work, but give us all the tips and share his knowledge, which is immense and greatly appreciated. He also is going to show us how to safely raise walls on the second floor. There's a trick that's used commonly where you toenail the bottom plate of the wall into the subfloor as you are building (after snapping chalk lines). Then you raise the constructed wall into place, and the lifting process pulls all the toenailed nails out, but keeps the wall from tipping out of position (and hence down onto the ground below) while you are doing it. Added security. Nice.

We were considering yesterday that we are about 50% done with the work now. We've done the basement and first floor, and have the second floor and the roof to do. But we won't get any closer than that if I don't get off the computer and get up to work. Bye!

hi there, we got the kitchen and dining room joists done up top, they were 12 foot lengths, and very easy to handle. The joists above the living room are a 16 foot span, and that's an awfully large board. We carry them over from the pile, push them up in the open door of the dining room, and then slide them across the floor. Then we set one end of the board on the top of one wall, and hoist the other up onto the ladder at the other wall, and then set them into place. Surprisingly, it's very easy to toenail the joists into place, and the whole process went really smoothly, we got two thirds of the house done yesterday, no joist hangers! Shawn is re-joisting over that fact alone, as he is decidedly not a fan of hammering dozens of joist hangers in (each takes 12 nails and they all seem to have to be hammered in from a bizarre position where you tilt your body like a broken windmill and then crank your arms at a diagonal into the air and then hammer from that inconvenient position with your neck also tweaked in a funny way). We hope to finish up the joists today, there are only four more for the living room and then framing up the stairwell area (not building the stairs yet, Roy is going to share some of his expertise with us when it comes to stairs). The mudroom has to have separate joists laid, only 8 inch joists, as it's only for the one floor and there isn't a second floor to it. There will be a few joist hangers there, but they are a smaller size. That's about all. We hope to finish the joists and get the rim joists up as well, and then it will be time to start stairs and maybe hoist a few plywood sheets up the other way around. Which is by ladder. :-)

interior walls

see what you can make of this picture. Inside pictures were really difficult to take, you can't lean quite far enough out of the window to take them properly, and I am currently unable to levitate outside the house itself, so inside shots continue to be a challenge. I am getting more comfortable on a ladder, so perhaps we'll all be surprised some time soon. I still am not terribly fond of ladders, though. No issues with edges or high places if my feet are on the ground, but on a ladder I have to really restructure my thinking, which isn't always terribly successful. I think Shawn and I will have to fuse our strengths in that regard, as he does very well on ladders, but not so well looking down from heights or being at edges, and I am the opposite. :-)

I can't remember the last posting I made, but we have finished the exterior walls of the house. The interior feels like a good size, the basement makes the house feel humongous. Holy cow!! The second floor is on the way, and should be a nice one to do, as there isn't a mudroom attached. We also finished up the interior walls for the first floor, and put all the top plates on, inside and out. The top plates are really interesting in that they really do firm up the walls a great deal. We're looking pretty square, all the way around, which is a great relief and a testament to shawn's good measuring. :-) We're out about a quarter inch in one corner, but we seem to be able to keep it under control and are doing our best. :-)

What else? I'll upload some more pictures next. We are currently laying the joists for the second floor and will be glad to be done with 2x12x16 foot lumber, which is hard to run around with. It does leave strikingly colored bruises all over the place, so you can trace it's resting spots on your thigh muscles later on. :-)

We're off to do some work, thanks for reading.

I am always chiding myself (and Shawn) that we shouldn't make big lists of things to get done each day, because something always comes up and holds you back a bit. Not always, but often. Anyway, we got two walls done today! The third we'll do tomorrow (I don't think that's unreasonable!) and we should be able to start the interior load bearing walls too. It's been lovely weather, upper 70's and clear as all get out up in the big blue. But in the direct sunlight, it's HOT~~we are SO tanned. We are drinking A LOT of water all day, and that helps. Today we hammered together the headers and trimmers that support the windows and doors in the walls in the shade cast by one of the walls of the future living room. That felt really nice! :-)

We came home a bit early and had dinner at 8 instead of ten! Wow! We are really feeling amazed at the whole process we're going through here. So far, it's been really rewarding, it's sometimes crazy to stop and think that we are actually building a house. It's something we had considered as a distinct possibility when planning our move to Maine, but actually doing it is quite different. It's really an amazingly confidence building process, and has been really interesting besides. The minor engineering (well, maybe it's major, after all) that you learn, and the way that the functions of various placements of wood end up being able to both carry and displace weights and winds is really quite amazing, when you get down to considering how it works. Like the creation of fabric through weaving or creating whole pieces of warm clothing through repetitions of loops as in knitting, the building and putting together of a house is one of those pivotal skills learned by humans over the years. I'm trying to wax eloquent here, folks, and know that it's not coming out right, which I will confidently blame on sun exposure and excess hammering. And will trust that you will know what I mean.

Dr. Burkett's work on my shoulder this winter has paid off. Thanks to you, Don! I am hammering away with alacrity.

Cheers!