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!

Three more walls

Hi there! The mudroom is in the process of being enclosed. We have three exterior walls to do on the first floor and then we are done with all the exterior walls for floor one. Next up are to frame up the first floor interior walls which should be an easier process as there aren't any windows to frame, just some doors. Then we are on to laying the joists. Hopefully we can be doing this by the end of the week. We expect (barring catastrophe!) to finish the three exterior walls today, spend a couple of days on the interior walls and then be on with things. The hardest thing about yesterday's work was trying to work around the opening to the cellar below - the stairs aren't in yet. We are thinking of having Roy, the GC, come and lend us some of his experience in carpentry and show us how to do the stairs. It's complicated and a place where watching and learning is probably a much better option than reading and learning - although technically, that's probably always a better way to learn. We're really happy with the way things are coming along. It's a fascinating process, from conception to actual execution. There are a lot of steps in between. So far so good. It's beginning to really feel like a house, and this floor has been a lot of fun in that we've been able to picture clearly in our minds what all the rooms are! We've still got a LONG way to go though. The weather is to be marvelous this week, and we are incredibly thankful for that. The storms have been passing us by and it's to cool down to the lower 70's - our New England Correspondent Extraordinaire, Marillyn, advises us that we have about two months to go before snow fly. I think we'll get a move on up there right now. Ciao!

Three Walls to the Wind

We got three walls raised yesterday, which felt like a great accomplishment! We often set ourselves rather unrealistic goals, as in, let's get all the walls raised today, but we are really pleased! Everything seems to be coming along well. It was a little scary raising these three walls at first, as it's the high side of the house, but we thought about our bracing situation, and after one false start, we came up with a good method that makes the whole process comfortable. The goal is always to not tip the wall over the edge of the house and see it fall on the ground. Now that would be a hard wall to lift. :-) So far, we have much to be thankful for!! The first two walls will be the dining room walls, and the third is in the living room. We have one more wall on that side of the house to raise, and then we turn the corner and start the front, which has three sections, two windows, and the front door. We seem to be making pretty good time, and it was sheer bliss to be raising manageable walls (the difference in weight between the twelve foot wall sections and the eight foot wall sections cannot be underestimated, especially for two people whose combined body weight is about 250 lbs!!). These are the times that you wish for just a couple of more inches to your frame! But so far, the eight foot sections are working great, and that's what we're working with for the rest of the time, so we should be in good shape. Off to work. It's rainy-ish and windy-ish today, so we might just build the walls today and not raise them. We've also got the farmer's market and some laundry to see to. So, for now, adieu!

I don't know if you can see the moon in the picture, it was halfway up the sky behind the house. It's a waxing moon, and maybe by the time it's fully waxed, we'll have all the walls up on this floor! We are feeling so optimistic and pleased this evening! What you see in the background are our two largest walls in the entire house! One of them is the kitchen window (three small windows in a little bank) and then the other wall is the rear wall of the dining room, which will have a pair of french doors leading to what will someday be a porch out back. Those walls were SO heavy. They are each twelve feet, and have some REALLY heavy headers in them. We had help lifting both of them, without which we couldn't have gotten them up (all the other walls we are lifting are in manageable 8 foot sections, but these had to be raised as twelve footers due to the windows being un-splittable, if that makes sense). The delivery man who works for EBS in the mornings helped us with the first wall, what a great fellow! He made our morning, and it took 5 minutes (building them is the hard part, aside from the extraordinary weight!), then Derek gave us a hand with the dining room wall in the evening. If these guys hadn't been so helpful, we wouldn't have this great feeling of happiness inside (though we'd be pretty darned glad that the walls were built) and we wouldn't have this great picture to share with you! We also cut all the lumber we needed for the side wall and the front wall, and framed up the next piece of the dining wall so it will be ready to put plywood on and raise first thing tomorrow morning, unless we get rained out. Hopefully we won't. We've had three glorious days in a row, with tons of sunshine all day long and no threat of any storms, so maybe we'll squeak out another day. With all the lumber measured, cut, and stacked in proper piles, we are ready to piece everything together. The progress is feeling pretty good so far, and it was a real morale booster to have help today from a pair of great mainers. :-)
G'night, we're beat!

well, who knows?

Greetings! We are back to being able to upload pictures, which is a great relief. A blog without pictures is a dull thing indeed. A picture may paint a thousand words, but the words in my blog aren't as good as seeing the real thing, especially as I may be using jargon inappropriately at times! In any case, the pictures are back to uploading, for no apparent reason, so we assume it was a glitch in the blogger system which is now repaired, by wizards or muggles, we know not.

Here it is! The joists are done! All square, and lined up exactly 16" on center. We put in our bridging today - which are metal cross braces, essentially, that you nail in between the joists. The end result is further stability and a prevention of bouncing in the floors. They worked nicely. We have a few more to do on the other side of the house tomorrow and then we are done with them until we start the next floor. So, the house is quite quite square! This delighted us to no end, and made Shawn feel great for all of the measuring and re-measuring he did. We put two rows of plywood up to make sure all was well, and so far, so good. It's exciting to be working on the next floor! Our work for tomorrow involves completing the last row of bridging and then we hope to finish all the plywood. This week, we will be raising the walls of the first floor. Tomorrow marks our two week anniversary of working on the house, though we did take a couple of days off in there. This morning, the skies were dumping incredible quantities of water everywhere, and I heard the longest peal of thunder I've ever heard. It started as a groaning grumble, and then gradually worked up to a mighty cracking with such intense reverberation that it truly sounded as though the heavens were opening. Quite a disturbing thought. Two nights ago we had a crazy lightning storm with lots of thunder and then a lightning blast that travelled up our cable box (for the computer) and zapped the ethernet card in the computer. The computer we unplug at the first sound of lightning, but we realize what an error we made in neglecting to disconnect the cord connecting the cable box to the computer itself! Ah, wouldn't we all love to tap into the wisdom of hindsight ahead of time...In any case, the computer is on extended warranty, though I don't know when we'll go up to Bangor to get it worked on. We can also call the renter's insurance company and see what wisdom they have to offer. Though when you compare the wisdom of hindsight and the wisdom of the insurance company, it isn't hard to see what you'd be more inclined to go with. Anyway, it's obvious from this dialogue (or monologue, rather) that it's well past my bedtime these days! All I meant to say was that despite crazy wet weather this morning, by later in the day, as you can see, the sky was blue and lovely. Weather systems move so incredibly fast in this area, it's quite exciting to see what can happen. It was a blustery, cool day. Hints of autumn. Wow! Makes me want to hammer!