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.