The Skyline Canadian

The facebook

2011-09-19T12:25:00.000-07:00

Current updates can be seen on my Facebook. Send me an email and I will add those curious for house updates.

I keep meaning to update here, too, but clearly that just may not happen.

Thanks!

Christopher

The Island Countertop

2010-03-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

This stone wall is on the ridge between our house and the brook. It is a very pretty spot.

Another shot from outside - Karen was out taking pictures one day.

This is the butcher block slab for the island. We will end up with two sections for the island countertop. They are too short and too wide for our application, so we will trim them to length and width with the circular saw. As carefully as possible.

The bare island. No sink, no faucet, no countertops.

Measure twice, cut once. We measured twice, then clamped the level in place as a fence against which to run the circular saw. I'm pretty smooth with the circular saw by now, but the fence is even better. Yes, I made Karen hold the extra bit until I came back with the camera. :) There are some dark spots on this slab - because we are cutting it upside down, and the bottom of the butcher block is not as polished as the top. It surprised us when we opened the first box, but then we saw the big stamped letters that say "Down". We cut it upside down to minimize any tear-out of the wood as we cut.

The first section cut to length and width. The length on this first slab doesn't matter too much - we just needed to trim the rounded end off so it will have a square edge to butt against the other slab. The width of these tops is 39" or so, but we only need 34". The extra 5" will be trimmed again, and will be used as a backsplash on the non-island countertops. We tried a few methods for an accurate template for the sink cutout, and cardboard was one of them. The sink cutout proved to be the most difficult part of this, but we knew that going in.

Both slabs cut to length and width. But no sink access. Hmm, we'll have to fix that.

The sink cutout is done. The camera exaggerates the differences between the slabs, and the tops are not installed here, just set in place.

A close-up of the sink cutout. We cut a few templates out of cardboard until we had the fit that we wanted, and then we traced that edge onto the slab. If it came out great, then great! If it came out bad, then we planned on sanding for awhile. If it came out terrible, well, we would have looked for a top-mount sink that fit the hole. Fortunately it came out pretty well. Some finish sanding, and we were good to go.

Another spot of the cutout.

Last shot of the cutout. The faucet is not reinstalled yet, but that will be simple - it's just a 1 1/2" hole drilled straight through the top. The top will be caulked to the sink, screwed in place, and then coated with Waterlox. It's expensive, but seems to be the best finish we can find for this application. We don't want to risk water damage, so we will treat the wood well before we even reinstall the faucet. No sense risking the temptation.

So how do you do dishes with no kitchen sink? That actually turned out pretty cool. I washed, and Karen rinsed and dried. There is always a way to make things work. :)

The Non-island Countertops

2010-03-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

These are the french doors that used to be for Andy and Mindy's bedroom. We seem to change the name for this room every other day or so, but in any case, the doors are painted and installed, and look pretty sharp. Karen painted all of the doors in the house the same color, and with the matching color and matching doorknobs, really ties things together nicely.

This is another picture of the spot under the stairs in the basement. Karen did this, too. She said it was her first time cutting angles, and that she is now one with the table saw.

This is the area above the basement stairs and below the loft stairs. Dad installed the quarter round trim here. Covering up the rough edges feels good. The lines on the wall are spots that weren't taped or sanded very well before the paint went on - that's on the list to redo. But the list is long, so don't look for that anytime soon.

Karen took a few pictures of the snow from the last week of February. Piled high and heavy - the whole week was wet snow that didn't compress at all. It was just solid moisture. Chris used the tractor for awhile to clear some of the snow away from the house. It seemed to fall closer to the house this year than last year, though we aren't sure why. The house sure hasn't moved.

More snow.

Ahh, home sweet home.

Amid all the snow, summer tires for the Miata showed up. Soon... :)

Karen painted the surround for the hearth a charcoal grey that blends with the rest of the hearth. Looks sharp, though it spends a lot of time covered in wood chips and dust.

We bought some butcher block countertops for the area next to the stove. The original plan for the countertops was to pour our own concrete tops, but the combination of time, energy, and reality intervened. The butcher block feels and looks wonderful after being so accustomed to painted plywood.

South of the stove. There is room for expansion in the back, and a backsplash will cover the gap.

Chris' man cave. With all the screws I used, this should stay really solid... Ha ha. No, Dad, I didn't just screw it in place through the plywood. I used brackets that will allow the countertop to move with changes in humidity.

Both sides of the stove installed. You can see a big difference in the face frames - the one on the right has a coat of oil on it, the one on the left does not.

The Driveway

2010-03-10T12:56:00.000-08:00

We had a relatively easy winter here in the Northeast. Some of the mid-Atlantic states had record storms and huge snowfall totals, but not us. We were spared from many of the largest storms... until the last week of February. The last week of February we had just over 30" of snow and 2" of rain, which is about double the entire rest of our winter season. The snow just kept coming, and eventually I ran out of places to put it. The driveway kept getting more and more narrow, and the snow piled on the house reached the kitchen windows.

This video is from Sat, Feb. 27, and begins about 100 yards South of our driveway.

The Doors

2010-02-25T13:32:00.000-08:00

We have been busy on a few fronts over the last few weeks. One of those fronts involved the doors downstairs - as untreated pine, they soaked up more than a few fingerprints over the last year or so since they were installed. They have been sanded fresh, re-primed, and painted. Also, door knobs have been installed on most of the doors. This door is looking into the downstairs bathroom, which has been repainted a reddish-brown. I forget the name of the color, but the name is the usual paint company hyperbole.
Karen sanded the french doors downstairs, and then primed and painted them with Mom. She found a good solution to the inevitable dust from sanding. Now there is a lot less mess to clean up afterwards. We like over-built and over-engineered, so a 3" shopvac hose on a 5" orbital sander? Sure, why not?!
This is one of the staging areas for the kitchen cabinet doors. These pieces are cut to length, width, and thickness, are sanded, and are stacked by size waiting for the router table.
This is the other end of the shop. Dad was cutting some quarter round trim, so the miter gauge on the tablesaw and the chopsaw are set up for that. The router table is set up to go, just pushed to the back of the bench for now.
Karen finished up the area under the stairs this week. We aren't quite sure what to do with this space yet. I'm sure something good will come to us.

2010-02-03T14:59:00.000-08:00

Just a few pictures tonight. This one is old news, but was a little hard to see in the earlier picture. These are the stairs to the basement with most of the trim in place. The last piece is angled to fit flush with the ceiling - that was done with the jointer set at an angle.
This is the door for a cupboard in the mudroom half bath. I thought it would be good practice before I started on the cherry for the kitchen cupboards. This bathroom door is made from pine that was left over from the interior sheathing boards. In how many ways can one material be used? More than I ever thought! This entire door is made from 3/4" material - even the floating panel. The frame is 2" wide. The long sides are called stiles, and the short sides are the rails (rails being horizontal). The frame was cut using the router with a specialized rail and stile bit that allows the two pieces to mate properly at the corners. The interior panel is roughly 7" x 17", and is a full 3/4" thick, except for the edge, where it was trimmed down to 1/4" thick to fit into the groove in the rail and stile frame.
This is looking at the end of a stile, and is probably better at explaining how these work than any of my blathering. It's a fun process - cut the wood to length, rout the ends of the rails, switch bits, rout the side of the rails, rout the sides of the stiles, and assemble. It's good stuff.

The Face Frames Again

2010-01-20T13:49:00.001-08:00

Karen and I were away in Utah for awhile since our last update, but we still have a few new pictures. All of the face frames are built, and all but one are installed. That last one will have to wait another week or so, just until we have the drawer slides in place.
Yes, we took pictures without cleaning up dinner first. :)
Karen is writing down shipping info for some stuff that Mindy sold on ebay, and Christopher is walking around taking pictures.
We also built a frame for the hearth. This is re-purposed flooring that has been ripped, jointed, and fed along the router table. Our friend Dave helped with the hearth bit, too. When we grout the seam between the wood and the slate, we will also finish the grout in the mudroom. Might as well get dirty just once, right?

The Face Frames

2010-01-06T13:24:00.001-08:00

A lot has changed in the house during the past month or so. Andy and Mindy decided to move to Arizona, and the boys' old room has been re-purposed into a shop. As a shop, it isn't ideal, but it is better than working outside or in the dining room with all the dust.

This is the south wall of the boys' old room. The SW corner has been insulated and finished, and the wood that is stacked here is being dried for use as ceilings and trim work in a few places. This room was the first to have a new ceiling installed. Roger and Robb came over to help cut and screw the ceiling in place, and we had a good work day. The view changes slightly with the new surface, and for the better. Instead of having the light from the window and fixtures caught between the floor joists, the light now reflects off the ceiling and lights the room better. The two light fixtures and the smoke detector are flush mounted.
This is the original ceiling. Apparently I didn't take an after picture, but you can see the new ceiling in one of the photos below. We originally thought of painting the ceiling white, but sealing the natural wood like we have upstairs is also an option.
The new ceiling is visible here, along with a whole new mess. Trim will be installed where the ceiling meets the wall, and that 1/2" gap will disappear. The table saw, jointer, and Dad's planer are here now, along with a workbench and various other tools. Mom and Dad came out to the house for the weekend to help get started on the cherry for the kitchen. They make a good team, and though they look pretty serious in this shot, they had a good time helping plane and joint the boards for the face frames, doors, and drawers for the kitchen.
This is the joint of choice for the face frames. Pocket screws are awesome, and they have become a favorite solution of mine for joining boards around the house. The trick is to start with square stock, of course. If you do, the end result is a square, solid joint that is invisible once installed.
Add up a few more joints, and you have a face frame. While Karen and Mom sanded and poly'd the carcasses upstairs and Dad jointed rough cherry, Chris measured and cut the stock for the face frames. He spent a lot of time running up and down the stairs looking for his tape measure.
More face frames... the single frame on the dining floor was too large and awkward to take up the stairs, so it was assembled in the dining room. The pocket holes were drilled downstairs, and since there is no dust or mess made during the assembly portion, it worked out fine.
Dave came over to help a few times, too. He helped install the cabinets above the fridge, the solid sheet of ply on the east side of the fridge, and he drilled the pocket holes in all of the face frame stiles. The section below will have two large drawers on the left, and four graduated drawers on the right. We will build a rolling cart with a butcher block top for the middle section.
We did a lot of this - holding the face frames in place to see how they look. It reminded me of working on models as a kid, because the first thing I did was pull out the body and hold it above the wheels to see how it would look when I was done. The piece below wasn't quite done - it needs two rails installed where there are shelf divisions. The cherry ply on the end of the island has received one coat of oil/urethane mix. In the background of this picture you can see under the stairs - we put a ceiling here to finish off the area. Well, almost finish. It needs some quarter round to be really complete. The quarter round is downstairs, and we'll get to it later.
This was a very awkward piece to face. Nothing is quite as square as we'd like, so that makes everything that much harder to true up and finish properly. I guess that's the end result when you try to build a furniture-grade product with a circular saw and in semi-darkness. Lesson learned, and next time we'll do better.
Installing this face frame was a two-person job, at least until the first few pocket screws were in place. We screwed the face frames on from the inside of the cabinet, so there are no mounting points visible from the faces.
The installed face frame. The insides of the cabinets have two coats of polyurethane, and cleaned up nicely. We will continue to install the face frames until they are all up, and then comes the work of assembling the cabinet doors and drawers. The drawer slides and the door hinges will be next after that. Lots of fun work coming up!

The Thanksgiving Day Project

2009-11-26T15:16:00.000-08:00

Three piles of leaves, all piled up pretty. There didn't seem to be any sense in raking the lawn more than once, so we just let it all fall before we started. These leaves are in a compost pile now. Most of them. Some of them I just raked into the woods. :)
Andy and Mindy and the boys are in Utah for Thanksgiving, but all of the other West siblings and their parents are in Chester. The project for the day was to fill the woodshed - and it's all done. It was a good job for the day - everybody helped, everybody who wanted to got to drive the tractor, and we have almost 2 cords of wood tucked away in our shed. We also extended the front of the shed by two feet for more protection from the elements. Bring on the snow!

The work crew, with the full woodshed behind us. It is a good feeling to have the winter's heat all set aside and prepared.

So... I don't know why Chris looks so ridiculous, but here was our table for Thanksgiving. We borrowed two long tables from some friends, added a sheet of melamine to the middle, and ended up with a table nearly 8' square. It left lots of room for a great centerpiece, and plenty of food to make the rounds as well. A lovely meal, and we certainly have a lot to be thankful for. I mean... for which to be thankful.

We will not be together for Christmas this year, so... in the spirit of family togetherness, we held a vote, put on some Christmas tunes, cut a tree, and we all opened one present from each other. It made for a wonderful day and a good memory. And we all promised not to feel bummed if our presents feel small this year on the real Christmas day.

The Woodshed

2009-11-18T14:44:00.000-08:00

Why lift with your knees when you can lift with hydraulics? We are getting ready for winter here, so most of the progress this week was focused on either cleaning the house to prepare for holiday company, or cleaning up the yard to prepare for snow and cold. The woodshed was moved away from the house - to put it on a better foundation, to better expose it to light, and to simplify the area around the house.
This kindling pile will probably last us all winter. We split this from left overs and scraps of ship lap exterior boards and tongue and groove interior boards.
The woodshed in its final location. At least for a few years. It gets plenty of sunlight, but that's moot, really. By the time the wood gets to this shed, it will have already dried properly in the sun and wind for a year or two.

The Stone Walls

2009-11-12T10:08:00.001-08:00

We have done some stone work outside recently - this wall is on the West side of the house, right outside the kitchen windows. It is about three feet from the house, and will become a planting bed of some kind.
Last spring we made a mental checklist of things that would make the next winter easier. A woodshed was at the top of the list. Digging under an ice and snow covered tarp for wood every weekend was not always pleasant, and the wood wasn't always as dry as it could have been. This shed will hold about a year's supply of wood; just under two cords. It is built from leftover 2x8s and sheathing boards from the house, and placed on top of a 4'x13' pallet that came with the roofing. When we move it into its final position, I will have a few more pictures.

This is another wall that has seen some progress. We scraped away a lot of soil to get to this point, and the grades will carry water away from the house. The far end of the wall will circle around a patio - possibly stone of some kind, possibly just a nice circle of lawn. The close end of the wall needs to have a drainage line plumbed under it before we finish the wall and the grading.

We were not the first people to use our piece of the planet. An old, debris-covered stone wall was uncovered this week up near the driveway entrance. I wonder who built it, and how long ago? We added a few rocks to this wall, and it adds a welcoming touch to the entrance.

The Pantry Shelves

2009-11-04T14:32:00.000-08:00

I have rededicated myself to the blog, and will actively post weekly again. Sorry about the lapse. :)

We worked on the garden over the last few weeks. There are eight trailer loads of packed leaves on the garden, along with 50 lbs. of pelletized urea. We tilled it under on Saturday, 10/31. Every year the soil will get better, and we look forward to aiding that natural process.
The tilled garden, seen from near the house. Only the kale remains.

We built shelves for the utility/storage/pantry downstairs. Most of them are flat, but one 36" section is built to facilitate the efficient rotation of cans. For the rotating can section, we used 3/4" plywood for the sides, 1/2" plywood for the shelves themselves, aluminum drywall trim as the shelf stopper, and ripped 2x4s at an angle for the back end. All four shelves are built the same, but the top slanting shelf is adjustable, so it will accomodate anything from a 2 5/8" soup can to a 4 3/8" fruit can. We used a router to cut the shelf supports in the sides, and 1/2" metal screws to attatch the drywall trim.

This is a very pretty time of year in New England. This is oak and honeysuckle in a windowbox.

The Faces

2009-08-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

Over the course of our build, we have noticed many knots in the wood that, once in awhile, really appear to be looking at us. Not all of these knots ended up in the house, and not all of them are still visible now. But below are a few of the "faces" that are in our house. Maybe you will find them when you come to visit. :)

This is the Chinese dragon.
This is the devil-man. He seems to be friendly enough, though I wouldn't try to double-cross him.

This is the flying Grover, complete with goggles and cape.

This is the ghoul.

This is the ostrich. Apparently he has a woodchip in his left eye, and that has been giving him some trouble.

We made a birdhouse a few weeks ago to cover the top of the septic vent pipe. This house is a bit more appealing than green and white PVC. It also has a familiar shape to it. We used left-over scraps from the interior walls to build it, and some small pieces of leftover roofing to close up the top. It is a scale model of the house - 1' = 1/2". We dressed up the post below it, also, but not in time for this snapshot.

The garden has really come alive! The corn is 8' tall now, and even though not every stalk will produce an ear, it sure is pretty. We will have lots of stalks for decoration this fall.

Some work has been done on the stone wall in front of the house. The curve out toward the East is done, and we have scraped enough dirt away to begin the second wall and patio. We used a garden hose to lay out the curve for the second wall, and now there are stakes in place where we will tie a leveling string. The patio will be on the SE corner (on the right of this picture), and will be about 15' in diameter. Mostly round, possibly elliptical.

Mindy planned a 'girl's night out' at our place last week. We set up a movie screen between two trees, borrowed the projector from church, and with some speakers and a lovely Harman Kardon receiver from craigslist, we were all set.

Apparently watching Princess Bride under the stars and bundled up in quilts makes for quite a good time. I am sure we will do this again. And maybe the boys will be invited next time.

The Finished Main Floor

2009-07-16T12:29:00.001-07:00

We spent 48 man-hours sanding the main floor and the treads on both stairways. Dust was everywhere! In every room, every crack, on every piece of furniture... everywhere.
Chris' head after using the belt sander for a few minutes.

Karen working on the stairs to the basement. We still have a few ballisters to put into place... we keep forgetting about those.

Once the floors had been totally vacuumed and wiped clean, we used rags to apply the 50/50 mix of raw dark tung oil and mineral spirits. Mason jars worked pretty well as the impromptu container of choice, but they did get slippery.

More oil application, though at this angle it is harder to see the change in color.

After sanding, before the polyurethane.

While Chris was at Scout Camp last week, Karen and Jenn Baird polyurethaned the floor. Karen put on one coat every night for four consecutive nights, and Jenn was there for a couple nights, too. Lots of protection, and it really changes the way the house feels.

The dinning room after the two coats of oil was applied.

The dining room again, but after the poly. The first coat of poly was applied with brushes, and the consecutive coats were applied with 9" short nap rollers.

The view from the kitchen, looking through the dining room and into the living room.

Same view, but after the poly. Are we seeing a pattern here?

A random picture of the living room before we put all the furniture back in place. It was very empty and quiet while Andy, Mindy and the boys were on vacation!

Sunday morning sunlight coming in the East windows in the living room. Sometime around 7 am.

Chris and Karen's empty bedroom, with 7 am sunlight streaming through to the floor.

Tuckered out and just taking a moment respite before we clean all the furniture and put it back into place.

The living room from the stairway to the loft. With a few things back in place, it really feels like a finished home. It's as if people should be living here!

The Chain Gang

2009-07-01T13:53:00.001-07:00

Lots of pictures this week. Time goes by all too quickly, and a lot has transpired since the last post. We have had an unusual number of cool, wet days here in New England this June. The silver lining is that we haven't had to worry about watering the garden for awhile. The lawn gets a little long in between the dry days, so we have been able to rake up some clippings for next year's garden. I suppose if you really want to stretch the concept, that's a blessing, too.
Benson has had a good time learning to use the lawnmower. He would prefer a model with powered wheels, but this is what we have for now. It's light enough that he can start it, run it, and haul it up most of the slopes all on his own.

This is what Benson would rather be doing instead of mowing! We have been scraping away some material from the front of the house as we prepare for a stone wall and some flower beds. The rear blade is great for snow, but it doesn't push down into hardpacked sand and dirt very well without some additional weight. Andy and Chris are providing ballast in this picture. Some things you just can't ask your wives to do. :)

Andy and Chris were both translated a few weeks ago. Feet first, apparently. They came back when they remembered that the house wasn't finished yet.

Happiness is a pile of rocks on a Saturday afternoon.

Working on the chain gang. It took some cajoling to get all three boys to agree to pose for this one, and in the end I think only Eli really pulled off a somewhat convincing scowl. Chris can hardly do anything without a smile, so he's not one to quibble.

A different view of the garden than usual. This also shows a new turn-around spot that we built at the edge of the lawn. We have only used it a few times, but when the parking spots in the back are full, this will be handy.

This stone is now part of the retaining wall at the edge of the garden. The hole is one of the bore holes from the blasting for the foundation. We still have detonation cord all around the house, and we keep digging up more as we build the stone wall in front.

Piles of material. Straw/grass clippings on the left, semi-composted grass and moss in the middle, and branches/brush on the right. Eventually these will be mixed and composted, and will all be spread around the garden area.

The first layer of stones is just visible here in front of the house.

Progress on the wall. We used a water level and a long string between stakes to keep things level from the house.

Further along on the wall.

Chris and Benson put up some towel hooks in Chris and Karen's bathroom.

Mindy scraped away some more dirt from the front of the house. Within about 8' of the house, it's all sand that was backfilled after the foundation was poured. Any farther away than that and we get into untouched dirt. The dirt has roots and rocks (I know, in western Mass, can you believe it?), so we have had to make multiple passes with the tractor blade to keep pulling away material. The rototiller has been handy here, too. The tines really churn up the hard packed dirt, and then we can pull it away with the tractor.

Benson used the bucket to backfill the stone wall with dirt for the planting bed.

With Andy, Mindy and the boys out to UT for three weeks on vacation, Chris and Karen are busy on the inside. While they are gone, we will sand, oil, and seal the floors on the main floor. First step? Move all the furniture somewhere else. We don't have all that much, but it sure seemed to fill up the loft.

Sanding party! Some friends came over to help us work on the floor, so we put all the willing hands to work. The railing and stairs to the downstairs are sanded, and by the end of the night, all of the walls and ballisters were taped in preparation for the tung oil.

Karen sanded the floor in our bedroom, and moved into the living room. The floors were fully sanded before we moved in, but have built up a burnished feel as we have lived here for a few months. We want to take off that hard protection so the tung oil soaks into the wood evenly and thoroughly.

Janice worked some of the kitchen area. Her dad did most of the work here, but you only get to see his shoes here.

The sanders. From left to right: Karen, Chris, Cori, Jenny, Janice, Emma, Dave, Brian, Jenn, and Carol. Whew! Never a dull moment when you're friends of the Wests.

Chris and Brian formed a transition piece to fit between the kitchen floor and the mudroom tile. A router might have worked well to curve the wood properly. Or perhaps the tablesaw. Maybe a plane and some elbow grease. In the end, though, the tool of choice was a belt sander and 36 grit paper. This will be oiled and sealed to match the floor. Meanwhile, the fridge was being struck by lightning.

One more shot of the garden. We have eaten some swiss chard and some peas so far this year. From the hillside, we have had 9 raspberries. More peas will be ready soon, and we look forward to finding ways to eat everything we have grown.

The Mudroom Wall

2009-06-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

I couldn't think of a cohesive title for the last week of progress, so the mudroom wall won out.

This is Chris and Karen's room with a view.
Our church sponsored a father and son campout a week ago. Chris took the boys on Friday night and set up camp while Andy drove straight in from VT, where he had been working all week.

Benson took this artsy shot of the corn. The house is in the background, and manure in the foreground.

We brought two loads of manure home with the trailer to help out the garden. Chris and Dave spread some of it around, but they were appear to be talking it instead of shoveling it here. A couple of regular state workers.

Saturday was a beautiful day to work outside, and we moved some more material from the front of the house. We are still working on the plans for the stone wall that will end up here. Any way you cut it, we love the work and can't imagine spending our free time any other way.

The garden a few days ago. Everything is growing well except the rhubarb, which is still in shock. Chris wanted a place to sit down, so he brought the bench down and plopped it by the squash. You see, he doesn't just stand and lean on his shovel. Sometimes he sits and lets the shovel lean on him. Very fair.

Chris and Karen finished the mudroom wall up to the ceiling this week. It had been 3.5 boards shy of the ceiling for a long time now. Those last few boards are difficult to reach, and there just never seemed to be a good reason to finish. With company coming soon, Karen and Mindy are really pushing to polish a few areas of the house. You know, the last 10% of a project that just keeps getting pushed back? Yeah, that's the stuff they want done, and this was one of those spots. The darker shade was finished with a coat of polyacrylic ages ago, and the rest of the wall is as yet untreated.

The garden, as seen from the loft.

The upstairs bedroom, as empty as you'll ever see it. This will be a guest room when company comes in June and July. Until then, it will be a music and a craft room.

We have more pictures of the outside of the house, but with company coming soon, we are holding back a bit for the 'ooooohhhh' and 'aaaaahhhh' effect when they get here. :) So if you're local, you're welcome to come on by. If you're distant, I'm afraid you'll just have to wait a few weeks. :)

The Garden

2009-05-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, Russell, the blog is finally up! The excavators finished the stone wall for the garden area and along the side of the house. Most of the very large stones have been used up, but you can see a pile of small-ish rocks on the uphill side of this shot. These left-overs are all move-able by us, except for one enormous boulder that even the excavator had trouble with. We aren't sure what to do with that one yet. Maybe we will support it, dig out the ground underneath it, and then drop it into a hole. No doubt we have about 6 inches of dirt under it before we hit bedrock. :) We had the soil tested, and Andy is laying some lyme down to cut down on the natural acidity.
Here you can see the lawn coming in a bit thicker, as well as the stone wall that has been added to the SE corner of the house.

More lyme. One of these stones, about where Ethan is standing, has a visible bore hole from when the blasting guys drilled into the bedrock to plant the explosives. Pretty cool stuff.

We raked in the lyme, and then got busy planting. Mindy mapped out the rows on a nice grid of graph paper, so we had very detailed plans to follow. It is great to have such a flat space to plant on.

Same garden, but a few days later. Can you spot the very sad looking rhubarb?

A closer picture of our very sad-looking rhubarb. It has since been joined by several of its brethren, so now we have an entire row of leafy sadness.

Our Stihl saw ran beautifully, until one day it didn't. The cylinder and piston are now scored beyond use. We will either swap out the 290 cylinder/piston assembly for the 390 pieces, or sell it as is. Not sure yet. In any case, we need a reliable saw, and we chose a Husqvarna 346xp this time. Same power, much less weight, and it is built to a higher standard than our Stihl 290 was. We liked them both, but the new tool is in a different class. Old and busted, meet the new hotness.

Andy and Chris enjoyed a great road-trip with Dad in the summer of 1986 when they travelled over the mountains from Charlemont, MA to Troy, NY to pick up a brand new TroyBilt Horse Rototiller. The tiller lives in Chester, now, and while the tool itself is built like a tank, the original Tecumseh engine decided it had had enough. So... Old and busted, meet the new hotness. Now we're ready to tackle some work.

Andy and Chris spent a frustrating hour last week torn between two tasks... the fun of an engine swap on the tiller, and the dreary option of hanging window boxes. Yes, the window boxes look great, and we do love to make our wives happy, but come on! The cold frames are partially disassembled in this shot, and are entirely cleared away by the time of this post. We have scraped away a lot of the extra sand and gravel from the front of the house and are preparing for some dirt so we can seed and plant the area in front of the house. No, we don't park there anymore.

Here you can see the remaining window boxes fully hung. The two satellite windows are empty for now - those planters were put in the kitchen windows instead, where they would be more enjoyed from inside the house.

Karen and Chris went for a hike with some friends on Memorial Day. We set out to hike Alander Mountain, and ended up somewhere else entirely. The weather was perfect, the company was fun, and the view turned out pretty decent, too. This picture is looking West into NY, from a non-summit along the trail between Alander and Frissell mountains in Mt. Washington State Park, SW Massachusetts.

The Stone Wall

2009-05-13T13:54:00.001-07:00

We woke up to a fallen tree on Mother's Day. Fortunately, it didn't hit anything of value. The rocks don't look new anymore, so we may need to replace some of them so they all look factory fresh. The tree came within three feet of a Miata and Benson's bike, and about five feet from Andy's WRX. Too close! Andy and Mindy heard the tree fall during the night, but Andy figured "Meh, it didn't hit the house. I'll look at it in the morning."
You can see why it fell from this picture that Karen took. There were a few contributing factors, actually. We cut down a lot of the trees that used to surround and protect it, so the maple was exposed to more wind than it had been used to. Also, it had grown in a tough spot on top of a ridge of rock, and very close to an even higher ridge. The roots had about a foot of spread toward the West, and everything else was in a North/South/East direction. When the wind came from the West, the uneven roots acted like a hinge, and the 120 year old tree just flopped right over. There is a massive cherry tree in the foreground that we may take down proactively for the same reason. We have heard that cherry roots extend with more depth and strength than maple roots do, so we haven't totally made up our minds. It would be a shame to take it down.

One more view of the fallen tree. An unusual activity for us on a Sunday morning!

We chose a spot for the chicken coop this week, and Andy has dug away some earth and placed some footings in the ground. 18" of packed gravel, and then the cinderblock should provide adequate support for the coop. It will be 8'x12', with transom windows, an entry for people, and an entry for the birds. We will have them in a run at first, but once they are accustomed to returning to the coop every night, we hope to let them run free range. Piper should keep any potential predators away, and as long as she doesn't develop a taste for nuggets and wings, we hope to keep a happy flock.

Eli is wearing his "I love chicks" shirt, which seems appropriate.

The cavalry has arrived! The stones and boulders that we can't move with our tractor are just a warm-up to big machines like this.

Lots of work has gone into gathering all the rocks, and with them all displayed around the yard, it is easy to pick from the group and make a decent-looking wall. I know it's New England, and we shouldn't be surprised.... but we have so much stone!

A little further along.

I hope Eli has learned not to take the keys this time...

More of the wall in place, and one load of topsoil delivered. No rocks in the topsoil. :) We are going to be spoiled.

Quite a few more stones, and more of the flatness in place. The wall is about 120' long at this point, and the widest section of flat earth is about 25'-30'. Plenty of space for a good garden. We may add another terrace in the future.

It's so flat! We really like the defined edge that the wall provides to the driveway, and most of us are looking forward to the snakes that we expect to find sunning themselves on or in the wall.

Our cold frames have served their purpose well, and the plants have really taken off. It's nice to see so much green in there. Many of the plants are starting to push against the glass, so next year we will make these frames taller. We still think it's a bit early to put some of the plants in the ground. It won't be long, though.

The Cold Frames

2009-05-06T13:50:00.000-07:00

Benson drove the tractor for awhile this week, helping us clear the last few logs and piles of firewood from the future garden spot. We also took a few trees down.
Freshly cut wood. Isn't it pretty?

I hope you didn't have anything too grand in mind because of the post title. We had some extra straw lying around, and along with a left-over 2x10 and some roadside windows, we have ourselves some functioning cold frames. Not too pretty, but it's not like they're right in front of the house or anything. Well, where were supposed to put them? That's the south side! All told, Mindy planted 825 dixie cups with vegetables and flowers. It just got to be too many to keep moving in and out of the house.

The hillside as of Saturday afternoon. We are very excited to see the changes take place here. We will have flatness!

Ethan turned 7 this week! And he received a plant from somebody that seems to have made him pretty happy about things. :) Sorry about the red-eye. I'll see about fixing that.

The Return of the Brush Pile

2009-04-29T14:58:00.001-07:00

We straightened up the backyard this week. FirstDay says they provide roughly 5% extra lumber to take care of miscuts or damaged wood. The unused 2x6 flooring is stacked under the sawhorses, and the unused 1x8 tongue and groove sheathing is stacked on top. We have very little exterior shiplap remaining, and we used all of the supplied dimensional lumber; the 2x4s, 2x6s, etc. Some of the sheathing boards were left out all winter, and those are stacked on pallets to the left of the clean wood. They are beautifully weathered, and we will use them all. Some of them will become sides to the trailer.
Eli.

Andy and Eli cleaned up an extra set of wheels from Andy's old Forester to put up on craigslist. They are just taking up space, and de-junking is always a therapeutic feeling.

Chris offered to pay 1 penny for every nail the boys found outside. He has paid out over 50 cents so far, and even Piper seems interested to get in on the action.

The brush pile was gone for a few days, but now it is back. There are a few more trees cut down since last week, and the hillside seems more flat every time we look at it. We have big plans for this area. Big plans, I tell you.

Andy stacked some more wood this week. Less on the ground, and more on the pallets. We have since expanded our pallet row, and will have even more wood stacked here to dry in the sun.

Yes, he likes blueberrries. :)

The Three New Pictures

2009-04-22T13:50:00.001-07:00

Not so much picture-taking went on this week, but here you go...

Mindy transplanted the starts into some larger containers. The rolling workbench came in really handy for this job. The sunflowers on the right are supposed to grow up to 12 feet tall!
This picture is from a couple weeks ago. I wanted to show the progress between then and now. The large pile of trunks is here, the firewood stacked/tossed behind them, the large brush pile, etc.

I took this picture this morning (4/22) before I left for work. The stack of millable wood has all been moved, the brush pile is 95% burned, and all of the useful firewood has been moved. Lots of movement. Next up is to rebuild the stone wall at the edge of the house site, move the gravel, and pull a few more logs down from the upper hillside.

This is where a lot of the firewood has ended up. The wood here will dry for a year or two, and we will start using it in the winter of 2010.

The Logs

2009-04-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

Andy and Chris' sister came up from NYC with her children this week, and boys had a good time watching a movie on the wall. It made for a fun break before we put them all to work.
It's hard to share a tractor with so many boys! The boys swapped happily between driving and riding in the bucket. They tried to lift the chain, but it may be another year or two before they can actually carry it.

Hunter's turn to drive. He and Nathan are country boys at heart, but they live in the Bronx for now. Where they run around barefoot and climb the trees in the yard. :)

Hunter is driving, Chris is walking shotgun, and Andy doesn't know Karen is taking pictures. Edit: Karen didn't take this picture... I think Robin did.

By the end of the day, we had burned a lot of brush and moved a lot of logs. The excavation company will be back during the first week of May, so we need to have the rest of the area cleaned out before they arrive. Lots to do on the next few weekends.

The plants have popped up, and they eagerly follow the light as best they can.

The sunflowers really took off over the last few days. All the plants have been moved next to the windowsills now, and it won't be long before we'll need to move them to larger pots.

This pictures shows three things - First, you can see the progress Karen has made in sanding off the whitewash on the East wall of our bathroom. She decided she preferred the natural wood, so it's all coming off. Second, the door has been hung on the track, and now slides freely from side to side. We like dual-purpose engineering, so Karen wants to put a mirror on the door itself. Maybe on boty sides. When she has those picked out, we will route the door to provide a recessed area for the mirror to be mounted and still slide into the wall. Third, Karen and Chris put up some curtains - but we keep them wide open all the time, because we're so used to falling asleep to the moonlight!

Andy and Mindy put up curtains this week also, and they have started to move into their rooom. It's good to be home.

The boys' bathroom received another coat or two of paint. It's a very cool room.

The Downstairs

2009-04-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

Most of the snow is gone now, though we do still have a few patches left here and there. But we had flakes in the air this morning, and we lit a fire a few days this week. These are the miserable weeks of spring - when the calendar says it's time, but the weather disagrees.

We built a platform on the East edge of the house site on which to dry some firewood. As it is, this will hold 2-3 cords of wood. We will add a few more pallets to the right and will have a good sized area to dry the next few years' of wood. This spot is naturally flat, and will get plenty of sunlight. Now who wants to stack all of it?
Mindy started some growing things in the kitchen - some flowers and some vegetables. We're working to get the garden space ready, but it's a good thing it isn't planting time here yet.

The bottom of the stairs used to be clean, but only because we shoved all this extra wood into Andy and Mindy's closet. Andy cleaned out the closet, so the hallway is messy again. Maybe we should actually build something with this, instead of moving it around every week?

One of the walls in the craft room is installed - this used to be open framing until the sheathing boards were put up. The sheathing really looks good downstairs. The FirstDay 'basements' are very different than the traditional New England cellar.

The boys' bathroom downstairs has been mudded, sanded, and primed, and just needs some tape and some paint. And a toilet, a faucet, a doorknob, cabinets...

Another view of the boys' bathroom. The white primer really cleans up the space.

Holy blue, batman! Mindy started on the first coat of blue this week. It is a very bright, vibrant blue, and will look great in the boys' room when it's done.

The dining room is a woodshop this week. We needed to move the cherry wood, the tablesaw, and a workbench to clear out Andy and Mindy's room downstairs, and this room was a good catch-all. The boys plan to use drop cloths to contain the dust in the dining room when we build things here, but the girls disagree. They would rather not disrupt the main floor. We'll see how it goes. Maybe if they had book club every night for a few weeks we could make good progress and they wouldn't see the mess.

Ethan will occasionally avoid the camera, and occasionally play to it. He was watching Andy mark the route lines for the french doors. The bedroom is mostly clean at this point, and the walls, clearly, have been primed and painted. It's great to have this space livable!

Mindy painted the bathroom one night this week. It's a different color than the bedroom, but they look very good together.

Yes, we are very Eastery in our house. Perhaps we should repaint for every holiday?

Another painting view...

We began to install the railing to the downstairs. Nearly all the materials are down or up at this point, and having the open area to move things off the stairs is no longer as helpful as it once was. For the downstairs post at the end of the rail, we sistered three 2x4s and ran them from the floor to the ceiling. We know that the boys will come flying down the hallway, grab the last post, and whip around it to jump up the stairs. It seemed prudent to build proactively and plan a solid post to handle the stress of three boys.

The french doors to Andy and Mindy's bedroom, as seen from the hallway. They will be painted soon, and we will add some trim around the doorframe. But they sure add a touch of class to what has been a workshop for so long.

The french doors from inside the bedroom. There will be curtains hung on the inside, and we will fit a trim piece to overlap the gap between them on the inside. And we will probably mop the floor, too.

The Logs

2009-04-01T15:15:00.000-07:00

We spent most of Saturday getting together with family in New Hampshire. Live free or die! So we lived free, but we didn't make very much progress on the house. We did have a great visit with family up at the beach in Seabrook, though.

The living room changed a little this week - the pew has moved, and some photos have been added to the "shelf" above the windows.
Yes, it's warm! Eli isn't too sure about the motorcycle. We burned a lot of construction scrap and brush in the background, and the pile has shrunk considerably. It grew and grew over the last year, and then everything froze solid over the winter, and eventually it was just a giant monstrosity of mess. We are glad to see it mostly gone.

Benson helped with the steel wool and another coat of oil and urethane on the window sills. We have three coats on now, and there is a pleasant but not overbearing sheen on the wood now. It looks and feels well protected, so we expect to leave it at three coats.

With the warmer weather, the pull of the outdoors has been constant. Our garden spot needs to be cleared and prepared, so we spent some effort cleaning up the space to the right of the driveway. This is a before picture, so nothing has been moved yet. Except for Andy's car, which is parked in the woods past the stone wall.

This is an after picture. We used the tractor to move some logs off the pile - some have been moved across the driveway, and some have been moved up the alley behind the house. Without a mill, they will need to wait for a bit. The chainsaw will be used to cut down some of the larger logs into manageable lengths. The oak logs 18" around and 12' long are just too heavy to move with our tractor. It has saved our backs a lot of work, but it only weighs 2,000 lbs itself, and some of these logs weigh far more than that. The parking lot in front of the house this morning.

The Kitchen Range Hood

2009-03-25T13:50:00.001-07:00

Yes, we still have snow here. Snow and mud. You know, they say New England has four seasons - Humidity, Leaves, Snow, and Mud. A lot of this snow has melted off over the last few days since this picture was taken, but some of it will stick around until May. The last snow to melt last year was in May, and it was the stretch of ground just North of the stone wall in the house site. It gets no sun now, and very little even in late spring.
Well, the girls were gone to book club one night, and the boys had the dining room to themselves again. This room has become quite the multi-purpose room. It is totally opposite of our current garage space - this room is flat, dry, warm, and well-lit.

So we put the trailer together in the dining room. Doesn't everybody? You know, when we put this together last week, we had a really good reason for a trailer. We needed one. Like, STAT. But now? I can barely remember what the hurry was all about... But one day we'll haul stuff. While we pay strict attention to the weight limit. Until then, you can add this to the list of things the girls roll their eyes at with endearment.

The boys enjoyed wrenching, also. Benson did, at least. I'm not quite sure what Elis is up to.

Piper joined the family this week. Mindy had been looking for awhile, and she would show us lots of dogs of varying breeds. As usual, it takes four people a long time to reach consensus, but we're all really happy with our choice. She is an Airedale Terrier, about 9 months old. We have been pleasantly surprised at how mellow she is - we were a bit worried about her level of puppyness. She runs and plays with the boys, and likes to sleep next to Chris and Karen's bed.

Karen and the boys took a walk to the brook yesterday.

One of Karen's photos from yesterday. Most of the brook is quite flat on our property. It makes it fun for the kayak, but the fast-flowing whitewater at the edge of our land is pretty neat, too.We installed the ductwork for the kitchen range hood this week. The duct from the hood is 8", and goes directly out through the wall. We used an 8" 90 degree elbow, then an 8" - 6" reducer, and the outside vent is 6".

We measured, traced, and cut from the inside first. First the drywall, then the sheathing boards, then through the 4" of insulation. Once the ducting was dry fit into place, we marked and drilled a small hole at the center. The outside wall was cut with the jigsaw at about 6 1/2". Just enough to fit the duct. We used limited-expansion spray foam to seal the airspace left around the ductwork, caulked around the outside vent, then nailed and foil-taped everything into place.

Piper was well-tuckered out after running around with the boys most of the afternoon. She is accustomed to apartment life, where she was walked once a day.

The ducting is finished at this point, and we moved onto the backsplash for the stove. Now that the wall is painted, it seems time to make things official.

Backsplash in place, and the duct cover for the hood re-installed. We still need to buy a telescopic duct cover extension for the range hood, because this one was built for a flat ceiling and doesn't extend all the way up to the pitched ceiling.

The Kitchen Color

2009-03-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

Yep. I'm a week or so late. We have had sun, though! And warmth! At least relative warmth. A few days cleared 50, and even one day hit 62 or so. Beautiful pre-spring weather for our neck of the woods.

We brought some more sheathing boards inside to dry for awhile. Once they have released a bit of moisture, we will use them up on some walls in the basement and some windowsills in the main levels. Note the wide open windows. :)
Andy has done a lot of work downstairs in the master bathroom. Drywall and more drywall, with some custom framing for a shower bench thrown in for good measure.

There is a tub to Andy's right and a shower to his left. The hardiebacker board he is putting in now is much more sturdy than even moisture-resistant drywall. This entire area will be tiled somehow - not quite sure on patterns, textures or materials quite yet.

The door to the utility room is hung now, though with the gaps all around it, the door doesn't actually hide much. The gaps in the wall will be filled in with sheathing or drywall at some point, but living areas are the focus for now.

The wall in Chris and Karen's bedroom is nearly ready for paint. A few more minutes of sanding, and everything will be all set. Then it's a simple matter of balancing precariously on a ladder perched on top of a table. Simple. Really.

The framing for the bench in Andy and Mindy's shower. I don't have a more current picture, but this entire area has been walled in at this point.

Karen likes to multi-task. Also, she is The Karen. Kind of like The Donald, but without the billions of dollars. The kitchen wall is one shade darker than the dining room wall, but the difference is more subtle than we expected.

It's not easy being green. After all the colors we went through before we made our choice, we find it very interesting that we ended up with green - a house in the brown and green woods, and we paint it brown and green. Not really camoflauge, but it's a nice way to feel connected.

Chris and Karen's bathroom is painted also. Green! More of an olive green, however, and a very different color than the kitchen and dining rooms.

Does anybody else have a tape shelf?

Drywall work in Andy and Mindy's bathroom. You'd think a 4x8 sheet would go up pretty quickly, but there is always so much fiddling to do.

Putting some hardiebacker on the bench. The supply lines and drain in the foreground will be for the sink.

The view from the bathroom into the rest of Andy and Mindy's bedroom.

We finally got around to some work on the generator. A bearing had worn out sometime last fall, and while it is still under warranty, we just had the company send us the part so we could replace it ourselves. When you don't have a shop yet, a dining room table can make a pretty decent impromptu work area.

The Southeast corner of Andy and Mindy's bedroom is framed in now, and some small bits of drywall have been added between the floor joists to bring the surface right to the ceiling.

The cherry plywood that we used for the kitchen windowsills has a beautiful grain. We used a tung oil and urethane mix to seal it. This finish is non-toxic once dry, and is just as hard as polyurethane. Plus, it's pretty. When we're done with the kitchen, all the wood will look like this.

The Kitchen Door Frame

2009-03-05T14:05:00.000-08:00

Mindy had a good time making this wall look great. This might be the first view of the finished chandelier in the dining room. The glass from the first light was broken, and this replacement piece took a long time to arrive. We all grew accustomed to three bare bulbs, but this new "finished" look is growing on us, too.
Chris and Andy finished the drywall in the kitchen and installed some of the cherry framing around the door and window. Andy spackled it in the afternoon, and we should have paint up there pretty soon. There is just one more piece to do in the kitchen now - the spot where the range hood will vent through the wall. We need to buy the vent kit and put that in before we add the drywall.

A different angle, showing the afternoon light and the window frames. The window sill is 9 1/2", and will grow by 3/4" when the trim is added to the perimeter. Plenty deep for some pretty plants or whatever somebody decides is appropriate for window sills.

New shirts for the boys on Sunday morning.

Next year's warmth.

This picture was on the camera when I pulled the latest pictures off of it, but I'm not sure who to credit for it. In any case, I think it's a great view of the ridge next to the house. The house is about 100' to the left of this angle, and the BBQ area is directly behind the photographer. The fog and snow really make it feel like spring, but we've had another foot of snow since this picture is taken, and we're beginning to think that snow may stick around for a long time yet.

The Next Color

2009-02-23T14:08:00.000-08:00

Here is a brighter photo of the teal that only lasted a few days on the wall. It just wasn't right for the house. Don't worry, though. We broke the news gently. "No, renoir, it's not us. It's you."
Mindy felt creative before the wall was fully primered over. Again. Actually, this next coat of primer was the third coat of primer on this wall, and the final color became the third final color.

More graffiti on the walls, though some of the brush strokes here are still visible in the final coat of paint. Braille, you might say.

Primering in the loft. Priming doesn't sound as fun.

Yes, at first blush, this green may look kind of pukey. The green plays, though. Oh, it plays well. We like it in the sun, we like it under the lights, we like it against the wood, and we like it against the black furniture.

Working our way higher.

This view shows how the color goes with the wood of the house. Derby is in the corner of the loft here - Chris' dad made this for the boys about 30 years ago. he has taken some hard knocks over the years, but is still part of the family.

Pretty much the same shot, but I couldn't choose between the two so I just threw them both up on the blog.

So there you have it... from toothpast to renoir to the final color - which is called "Appalachian Trail", by the way. The name has provenance, so it makes the color even more appealing to us.

The First Wall Color

2009-02-21T06:58:00.001-08:00

Yes, that's right... the first wall color. It has changed twice since these pictures were taken, but in the interest of preserving history, all colors will appear here. Just not all today.

Speaking of today, this post is an unusual Saturday edition, and comes to you from the Bronx, where the Wests are visiting Chris and Andy's sister Robin for the baptism of her oldest son. So no work will be done today. Unfortunately, that will put us about a week behind schedule. Wait... what am I saying? We don't have a schedule anymore! All our time estimates were too far off, so we stopped measuring time.

So here is the wall to the loft, as seen from the living room. Mindy went a little crazy with paint swatches, and this was the view for a few days while we ruminated a bit. Some of them came down en masse, since yellows and dark colors just didn't match well with the wood of the floors and walls. Some of the blues stayed up for quite awhile, however, and eventually lulled us into letting our guard down and making a purchase.
As promised, here is the view of the craft room windowsill a week after we installed it. I don't think it looks too bad, actually, given all the cleaning we did this week.

We cleared out most of Andy and Mindy's bedroom so a different kind of work can continue there. The tools and workbenches have all been moved into the craft room, where they have been organized and stacked neatly. Well, neatish.

This corner was full of wood scraps for a long time. It has all been repurposed; some wood is mingling with the construction debris outside and will be burned in the springtime as part of our contribution to global warming, some of the wood has been placed upstairs for kindling, and some has been kept to use for kitchen cabinet work.

A clean workspace. The cherry for the kitchen cabinets is stickered on the right, and since it is on the workbench with casters, it is easy to swivel and move as we need to rearrange the space.

A view of Andy and Mindy's bathroom. This area has been full of drywall, sheathing, 2x4s, and insulation for a long time. We feel like we have discovered a whole new room in the house.

This was the centerpiece for one of our recent color discussions. We did our best to gather the kitchen colors together so we could see what our swatches would look like next to finished products. Our countertops will be poured concrete, and we like a slate color for those. The appliances and shelving are stainless steel, and the cabinets themselves will be cherry, just like the cherry of Mindy's jewelry box.

The workshop again, but after we moved the cherry and repositioned the tablesaw for actual use. With all the light streaming in that window, it is very easy to forget that you're in a basement.

One more view of the same room. Andy is in the background trimming drywall for some spots in the guest bathroom. Mindy gave him very specific instruction on how that room was to be completed.

Primer, at last!

The end of the primer. Karen and Mindy treat the house like a dorm room sometimes, coming up with silly pictures and curling up with the laptop to watch chic flicks late into the night. Happy wife, happy life.

We framed in some areas in the kitchen to prepare for drywall. The girls would like to paint this wall soon, also, but we aren't quite ready yet.

Eli was happy to stir our gourmet meal while the rest of us worked. Well, most of us, at least. Chris was taking pictures.

The first coat of the first color. The name of the color was renoir, and on a small swatch it looked great. But something happened to the color when it was on the wall, and it made little sounds while it was up there. "ha ha! I am ugly!"

The first choice for these two walls was two-tone; one color for the wall going to the basement, and another color from the living room up to the loft. Unbelievably, as much as we didn't like the darker teal that extended up to the loft, the toothpaste color that somehow came home and made it onto the wall was even worse. It lasted almost two hours before we shivered in horror and painted over it.

Now imagine thousands of tiny seahorses...

Nice and toasty. The thermometer on the chimney pipe has been very handy, and we like watching it climb.

The dining room at the end of the evening - all renoir, but better than toothpaste.

The view from the living room. I know, it's a little bit dark, but you can kind of see the color. The wall under the loft space in the dining room is really the same color. The light bulb there is a slightly different temperature - 5000k versus 6500k, I believe, and that contributes to a slightly different look to the color.

As I mentioned, this color has all been painted over. I will post again on Monday evening, so it will be a short wait until the next color is shown. It will probably stay up for awhile. Weeks, maybe. We'll see. :)

The Basement Window Frames

2009-02-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

Most of the work this Saturday was in the basement. We have been pulled in a lot of directions lately, and by the time we reached home every night we just sat still for a bit. But Saturday was productive, and we enjoyed seeing the progress. Maybe the warm weather had something to do with it.

In any case, Andy is applying some caulk around the window frame, sealing the pieces of foam together to keep the air sealed away from the concrete. Air holds moisture and allows condensation to form on cold surfaces. Since we have insulated the interior wall of the basement, we need to keep it protected from that air and inevitable moisture.

This is the craft room window, and through it you can see the mess under the vestibule. Fuel cans, the generators, Andy's motorcycle, 3 sets of summer tires, and various other 'garagy' things are stacked and stored there, yearning to be used.
The craft room wall. This didn't change too much by the end of the day, but the small poured in place window was framed in and the rest of the insulation was put in place.

This is the window frame we built. We used left over pieces of 2x6 flooring to make the frame. The tongues and grooves were ripped off (on the table saw, not with pliers), we screwed the frames together, and used the pocket jig to drill the mounting holes that screw our frame into the existing window frame. It is solid, and we can finish the wall with sheathing now. The window sill is 9" deep as measured from the outer lip to the glass. You can also see the dryer vent installed next to the beam on the left. That was new this week, and nobody misses the way the pipe used to stick out of the window.

Same type of window frame, but in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. Yes, the light looks like it's about to fall. It is quite secure, though. When we finish that up this next week, it will be remounted and held in place behind the sheathing boards. We'll probably turn the circuit off when we rewire the connections.

The sill in the craft room egress window is put in place here. Note the solitary screwdriver. As this is a 5' x 19" horizontal surface, do not expect it to stay empty. In fact, I'll take another picture next Saturday, without meddling, and we'll see how many things ended up there in the course of a week.

Andy and Mindy's bedroom is a mess. We are so close to clearing it out. Really we are!

The last sill for the egress window in Andy and Mindy's room is installed.

Why I oughtta!

The Whitewash

2009-02-03T13:20:00.001-08:00

Chris and Karen's bathroom saw some changes this week. Karen has been wanting to whitewash (or pickle, depending on what you want to google) the wood surfaces in the bathroom for awhile now. It turned out to be a pretty simple process: reduce standard white bathroom paint by 25% with water, apply with a brush, let sit for 1 minute, then wipe off the excess with a clean rag. Karen painted, and Chris followed close behind with a towel.
Karen took a break, and actually seemed to be pretty comfortable.
Mindy picked up a mirror a week or two ago that has found a home in our bathroom until hers is finished. Unfortunately, Karen is getting used to it, and seems to want one of her own now. Thanks, Mindy. :) Also, Benson wanted to help with the painting, and the quickest way to get into a safe outfit was to remove everything but boxers and put on an apron. Not your normal handy man outfit, but it worked, and he was happy to help.
We tried several different shades of white, and ended up putting another coat on this section here. Too little paint and it just looks chalky, and too much paint and you can't see the grain and the knots very well. As in most things, somewhere in the middle works out just fine.
Benson trimmed some insulation for the craft room wall. He wears his ear muffs just like his Dad and his Uncle do - wrapped around his temples until he needs them. If you set them down, they're like the missing sock in the dryer. They just vanish for a month or two.
Same piece of insulation a few minutes later. We are trimming some pieces for around the window, and will be ready to put up some sheathing boards soon.
While Benson and Chris worked downstairs, Andy patched some drywall in the kitchen by extending the plane up to the roof pitch. This makes the wall look much more finished, and adds some height to the kitchen also. Once we goup it up with joint compound, this will really be a nice wall.
Karen being Karen. :)
Happy Birthday, Eli!

The Benson

2009-01-27T07:29:00.000-08:00

This is our resident sled-master, Benson. The video was too big for the time I had at the library yesterday, but I definitely think Benson deserves his own post for this one. He did great!

We practiced once with a log, but apparently he's really good with a sled, and he had no trouble at all tracking a perfect line.

The Color Swatches

2009-01-26T14:17:00.000-08:00

We tried a new color on the wall during a recent committee meeting, but I don't think we're really sold on the red, either. It was a very happy red, though, so maybe it will come back into favor before we choose. Karen is trying to pout, but I don't think she totally pulled it off.
We tried the same red in Chris and Karen's bathroom, but quickly ruled it out. As you can see, we are trying on some blues and greens there now. Blue just seems like such a natural bathroom color. The natural wood in the bathroom will be whitewashed/pickled soon, so the final color will be paired with a white, not the tan of the pine. If you look closely, you can see the exhaust fan in the opposite wall. It doesn't blend in yet, but it will when we're done. With so much wood in a bathroom, Chris wanted a beefy fan. This one pulls 150 cfm, and does a good job of exhausting moisture.

Chris and Karen's bedroom with more color choices on the wall. Karen is thinking a brownish-reddish-brickish-spicy color would look pleasant here. On the high wall here, she wants to hang a quilt. That will absorb some sound, and should look really good - of course, it will also eliminate the option of Christopher's lofty bivouac.

What to do when it's 15 degrees below zero? Go camping! Chris and some scouts went camping during the record cold we had a week or two ago. Eli fit nicely in the stock pot, but he didn't want to sleep outside with his crazy uncle.

Why won't the chimney pull the smoke out of the stove? Oooohhh, it's plugged. Hmmm... this was the first time we cleaned it on Saturday. Yes, the first time. We have 22' of chimney pipe, and apparently our fires are burning too cool and allowing creosote to form, which drops to the bottom of the pipe and onto a shelf above the firebox. The cool fires are caused a few ways - burning too slowly by limiting the air, burning green wood, or burning wet wood. We thought that the sap in softwoods caused creosote, but apparently that isn't the case. Green hardwood will cause more creosote than seasoned softwood. We originally burned a mix of both soft and hard woods, but have lately switched to straight hardwood since it burns so much hotter. And that is why pine gets such a bad rep. Pine doesn't make more creosote, it just burns at a temperature that allows it to form. Lesson learned.

The second time we cleaned the stove. A pretty nasty pile of creosote dropped out of the pipe after we smacked the pipe a few times. Andy climbed up on the roof and dropped a cherry log down the chimney to dislodge anything the vibrations missed, but by then we had the pipe about 95% cleaned out. Use a brush on your chimney pipes if you like, but we like smackin' 'em. Yes, we will buy a real chimney sweep brush to do this properly in the future. We also picked up a magnetic chimney thermometer from Lehman's. That will allow us to monitor pipe temps so we can keep the fire burning above the temp at which creosote forms.

Cleaned out and cranking on Saturday evening. It's great to have heat like this, though we recognize that it isn't free. There is a lot of time spent in cutting, splitting, stacking, moving, burning wood, and maintaining the stove takes its time also. Worth it? We think so, but it's not a panacea.

Eli is kind of photogenic, and it's hard not to take pictures of him all the time. He and Benson were out sledding with Uncle Chris one afternoon when this was taken.

The Paint Swatches

2009-01-12T13:30:00.001-08:00

For those of you who enjoy life in states outside the northeast, here are a few recent pictures from Western Mass.

Every December for as long as they can remember, Andy and Chris' family converge at Auntie's house near Leominster for Thanksgiving and Christmas parties. Apparently there was a storm during the day of this year's Christmas get-together, but we all decided to make the 2-hr drive regardless. We had a great drive - everything is all hushed and muffled with that much snow on the ground. The road conditions were pretty poor, but that made things all the more adventurous.
This is what the car looked like when we arrived. The Swedes sure do build a good car for weather like this.

Karen busied herself on Saturday sanding and applying some poly acrylic to the railing to the loft. She likes to pose, too. You can see one of the color choices in the background there, but don't expect to see it again. It lost steam fairly quickly in the committee, and at final tally, only managed a 25% approval rating.

Here is the paint swatch in the kitchen. Unfortunately... or fortunately, I suppose... this color fared even worse, and ended up with no votes at all. Some described it as too sugary, too sherbety, and one committee member even said the color made her feel like she needed to brush her teeth. Hmmm... not good feedback for Behr. We'll keep looking, but both of these walls will end up some shade of green or another.

We finally finished the last two feet of wall in Chris and Karen's room. And yes, we practiced workplace safety at all times. The ladder is on a chair which is on the dining room table, and that rests squarely on the floor. With the rafters in place, we trimmed the sheathing boards to fit around them. For the space between the rafters, we cut boards to size and used the pocket jig to provide mounting holes into the rafters. Pocket holes are basically a fancy way to toe-nail. Toe-nailing here would never meet the WAF.

A bit more paint on the wall, and a bit of sunshine on the floor.

Like I said... she likes the camera. Though just between you and me, I suspect she kind of has a thing for the cameraman, too. Just sayin'. She was applying the poly acrylic at this point, and seemed pretty pleased with her progress.

Ever wonder what the snow looks like when it falls off a tin roof? Mindy probably won't park her car here anymore. Andy shoveled it out on Sunday morning, and we have moved things around so we don't need to be in the line of fire.

The 6" of snow we had on Saturday night made a pretty sight on Sunday morning. Church was postponed until 3 in the afternoon to give people a chance to 'dig out', and we had a good time getting the snow all straightened away.

A few weeks ago, we had a faulty connection in the tractor somewhere, so we shoveled the driveway by hand. Yes, all 800' of it. We are thrilled to have the tractor doing its part now, and were very happy with how much easier it is than shoveling. I know, hard to believe.

Between the bucket on the front and the blade in the back, our little tractor is a very useful tool. With some practice over the next few months, this process will get more efficient, but even so, it's fun to move snow!

The Drywall Progress

2009-01-05T13:55:00.000-08:00

Mud. Lots o' mud. That's how things are going now, with progress being made in the kitchen, two bathrooms, a bedroom, and a hallway. With more progress being thought about in another bedroom and another bathroom. Yes, it seems like it will never end.

This is the South wall in the loft. There is a 3-bent bedroom on the other side of the wall where Andy and Mindy are living for now. This wall continues from the peak to the basement, so there is a considerable amount of surface area here.
We installed two medicine cabinets in Chris and Karen's bathroom. They are surface mounted, but will eventually be replaced with flush mounted built in cabinets. The wall they are on is 4.5" deep, so the permanent cabinets should be big enough for all sorts of things.

At 10:30 am, the sunlight matches directly with the orientation of the house, and the light from the window parallels the grooves on the floor. Plus, it's pretty. :)

This is Andy and Mindy's bedroom at the moment. What, doesn't everybody keep tablesaws in their bedroom? We spent some time working here on Friday and Saturday, and have made a bit of progress with the last of the insulation and a bit of drywall. The South wall also has 16' of window sill installed, along with drywall below the sill. Consensus hasn't yet been reached about the wall above the sill. The possibilities include bookshelves, sheetrock, bare wood, and several combinations of each.

We anchored the final pieces of insulation to the foundation with 4" tapcon screws through some 2x4s that we ripped in thirds. With the rigid foam stuck tight against the concrete, the air spaces that would cause moisture accumulation are eliminated.

The boys' bathroom under the stairs has seen some attention, and with some sanding and another skim coat or two will be ready for painting.

The same bathroom, but on the vanity side of things.

This is the view from within Andy and Mindy's room. As you can see, there is lots of light coming through the egress windows on the South wall. The craft room in the background is much darker because it is so closed off, but every room with southern exposure is very bright. The doorjams are secured, and the double french doors are primed, but not yet installed. We will put those up after all the woodworking tools are cleared out of the room.

Another view of the South wall, showing the window sill and the sheetrock below it. There are some 2x4s stacked on the sill that are as twisty as can be. We made the mistake of leaving them flat on the concrete floor for too long, and they have all twisted beyond the point of being usable.

The snowshoes all hung on the wall... thanks, Mom and Dad!

The Vestibule Supports

2009-01-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

So... this post is pretty weak sauce, but it's better than missing the whole week, right?

Mindy gets credit for most of the pictures this week, since Chris left his camera somewhere over the holidays. Mindy likes to take pictures of her boys. :)

While the sleds were buried under the snow a week or so ago, Mindy and the boys improvised and found a place to slide on their own. Incidentally, you can see the supports we put up to strengthen the vestibule roof.
Another view of the slide. Also visible here is the back side of the woodpile. We are pretty curious about the heating needs for the house, and we figure we have between 1 and 2 cords of wood stacked back here. We seem to light a fire in the later afternoon/early evening most days, and that keeps the house plenty warm. We open a window when we clear 80 degrees, but 70-75 feels awfully nice when it's single digits outside.

New pajamas on Christmas Eve! I don't think the boys understood the pose, but we thought it was funny. Benson didn't.

Thank you, Mom and Dad! We have seven pairs of snow shoes hanging in the mudroom now thanks to Andy and Chris' parents. They'll take some getting used to, and we are all looking forward to a really big snow so we can try them out.

The boys enjoy watching car videos on Chris' computer. On a work related note, you can see the sheathing boards cut and placed on the windowsills in the background. The boards had just come in from outside, so we let them dry (shrink) for a few days before we nailed them down.

Like I said. Weak sauce. We'll have more up early next week, because we actually have made some good progress on the downstairs that we're excited to share.

The Boys' Bathroom

2008-12-22T14:12:00.000-08:00

Signs of the season. We had our first big snow of the year this past weekend, and everything is beautifully white. The sleds, unfortunately, are buried underneath the snow somewhere. Perhaps we'll have a short thaw so they can be recovered before spring.
Andy spent some time in the boys' bathroom this week, framing in tricky bits and putting up drywall. Between the stairs and the plumbing, there is a lot of time-consuming work here.

Same view as the previous photo, but a little further along. With some good tape and mud, this will look really good soon. We put up a bit more drywall after this shot, and only have a few more night's work in here before we can start to finish off the surface.

The other side of the shower. The supply for the shower head is visible here, and will be plumbed directly through the wall.

Between the two weekend days, we had just about 18" of snow. On the right side of the house, above the living room, you can see where a large section of snow slid off the roof. When rain falls off the house, it drops straight down once it clears the edge of the tin. Snow is a totally different story. Snow gathers mass and inertia, and hits the ground about 10' from the house - exactly where the roof pitch would put it if the roof continued all the way to the ground. There is quite a 'wumph' when it hits, so we will definitely not be parking any cars alongside the kitchen windows!

We didn't clear the snow on Saturday, but three out of four cars drive through the snow just fine. The Miata knows when it is out of its element, and stays parked safely at the top.

Over the stone wall and into the clearing. The trails through the woods are gorgeous this time of year, and the hemlocks in particular really add to the scenery.

This is what the cars look like after tromping through a foot of snow. Sometimes we go up the hill a little sideways, with all four wheels spinning. Totally accidental, of course. Safety first!

The Ice Storm

2008-12-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

First off: the local library doesn't trust its patrons with a right-click, so I am unable to adjust the order of these pictures. If they don't comprise a flowing narrative, please forgive me.

For those of you not in the Northeast, we had a major ice storm last week. The worst ice storm in decades, they say. We lost power at our house for only three days, but some people in our area are still out of power, and may not have it back by Christmas. The utility companies have said they basically have to rebuild their entire distribution grid. Lots of work for everybody, that's for sure.

Andy took the day off work when he saw all the ice. Smart move. It would have been a long, slow drive. Andy and Mindy went for a walk with the boys down to the brook, which was really moving with all the rain that had fallen. There is a video of this section of the brook at the end of this post.

Dory had a great time hopping around down by the brook. She is always happy to bound around.

The brook was pretty swollen, and approached both banks. It didn't overflow like it has in years past, but it was still an impressive sight.

Andy's artsy shot through some ice and over the stone wall to the house in the background. We missed most of the major ice by about 100' of elevation. Just a little higher and we might have had lots of trees down like some neighbors had. In the sunlight on Saturday and Sunday, the sparkling ice was incredible, though. Not something you see very often.

Andy and Chris fiddled around outside on Saturday. We straightened up the back of the house, cleared some parking spaces, and cut a lot of kindling. We should have kindling for at least a month or two.

What to do when the girls are out shopping? Take things apart on the dining room table. :) The generator saw a lot of use this past weekend with the power out, and it was making a rough squealing noise. It turned out to be a bearing in the genset, which will be replaced under warranty this week.

Ethan was awfully excited to see the generator. We ran it a few hours a day to run the refrigerator and the Christmas tree lights. Candles provided enough light and ambiance for the house, and the wood stove kept us plenty warm.

Eli fell asleep next to Dory one night by the wood stove. Cozy as can be.

The Vestibule

2008-12-08T16:15:00.001-08:00

I know, I know... the Christmas tree has nothing to do with building the house, but the outside shots show a little glimpse of what it is like to arrive at the house at night, with the glow of the wood and the doll-house like view of the inside.

Mindy likes to put the Christmas tree up on the weekend after Thanksgiving, so that is the Skyline tradition now. No, we didn't cut the tree from our land. Our trees are all forest growth, so they're either 70' tall and scraggly, or they're 3' tall and thin as a whisp. We could grow some just for Christmas, but those will all be a few years out. This tree came from a local tree farm, a cut your own place just up the road.A little further away, and a lot more fuzzy. Night shots are difficult without a tripod, and it's apparent that Chris didn't use one for this picture.
Getting ready for snow. One of the ag tires for the tractor needed to be inflated, so Chris took it to a shop to have the bead reset, and Andy bought a compressor on craigslist. Yes, we go there again. :) Ahh, it's good to be back. The front tires are set at 30 psi, and they're both on the tractor now, ready for the first snow. It's a little tractor, and we expect to have a lot of fun clearing the first good snowfall. After that... it may get pretty tedious.
We finished the North wall of siding on Saturday, complete with a motley selection of boards. Function over form, right? Besides, this is the back of the house, and aside from the blog, doesn't see much action right now. In a few years when the garage is in, and the bbq pit is done, the back of the house will be its own destination. Until then, it's the place where we pile everything that will one day fit in the garage.
Speaking of a garage, we decided that we needed somewhere to store our tools and spare parts and such. A full on garage is out of the question for this year, so we designed an addition to the house, one that will keep the weather off a few things over the next few months. Brian helped us finish the last bits on the North wall, and then stuck around to help design and install part of the vestibule. We chose the North side of the house, and will use the flat area just outside the craft room window. It's protected from the weather already, so with a roof overhead we hope it will really be a decent spot.
This isn't the final structure, but it's a solid start. We have a few more boards to put up for strength, some for looks, and some for convenience. It covers a 10' x 12' area.
A more distant view, but taken at the same time, so no further along in the process. Benson is familiarizing himself with the tractor. He thinks he's big enough to drive it. We think he's the right size to drive it, but we're not going to let him loose on it quite yet.
Benson helped nail the roof on the vestibule, and had a good time up there on the slant. He said he had a really good view from 12' feet off the ground. We really like the red of the finished boards, but these natural boards certainly have their own beauty, too. They will all be grey by the time spring comes around.

The South Wall of Siding

2008-12-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

Andy installed the ballisters on the stairs to the loft this week. We haven't fully committed to a plan for the end of the railing or the top of the posts that support it. We're working on it. Sort of. It came up about a month ago, but we haven't discussed it in awhile.
Mindy had some fun at Ikea last week, so the boy's room is pretty well sorted. There is plenty of room for books, toys, and three little boys.

Robb and Colin, a father and son siding team, came out with some other friends on Saturday again. It's fun to get together with good people and do good work. This was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so we had lots of turkey and pie for lunch.

This is one of the retaining walls that help the house to settle into the ground. There are two more much like this one on the other side of the house. The windows on the half wall are pretty low to the ground, and we wonder if we'll need to shovel snow away from them during the winter.

Harold Gushue came out on Saturday, too. At 91, he's the oldest helper we've had out here. He even brought his grandfather's hammer to use on the house. Harold built a cottage on an island off the coast of Canada a long time ago, so this was all old hat to him. The view from the cherry tree. Maybe I should have taken this picture at night - then you wouldn't be able to tell that we'd run out of painted boards! I think we'll run out of primed boards before we're totally wrapped up, but they'll be ok for the next few months. By the end of the day we had boards past the windows on this wall. The East wall isn't in any of these pictures, but it's about 75% done. With as much help as we've had, it has been great to work on multiple walls at the same time. Ladders really become the bottleneck at that point.

The parting view from Saturday afternoon. With the siding up, it really looks like home now.

Words cannot describe the joy we feel when we come home to the house. With smoke curling up from the chimney, the lights of the Christmas tree in the central dining room window, and that beautiful red wall settled into the hill, it's an amazing thing to behold.

We truly appreciate every moment that has gone into this project, both our own and from all of our friends and family who have helped over the last year or so.

We love it!

The First Siding Party

2008-11-24T17:27:00.000-08:00

Eli put himself to sleep one night. He really enjoys feeling like one of the boys wearing "ear nobs". Chris and Andy were putting up sheathing boards in the boy's room that night, and with a hammer drill and a circular saw just a few feet away, this was the only sure way to get some rest!Apparently we didn't take a picture of the finished room, but you get the idea. The sheathing boards now extend up to the floor joists, and there are just a few pieces left to finish in between the joists and along the South wall. Speaking of the South wall - the sheetrock is in place on the lower half of the wall, and the window sill is installed. The sill is 18" of 3/4" poplar. It should hold up pretty well to the abuse a boy's room will see. We can't say the same for the window. That glass seems destined to meet a soccer ball within the next few months.
We cleaned up the dining room a bit - which means more boxes are piled in other rooms. Not very much is actually 'put away' yet, but at least is out of the sight. A bare floor gives your eyes some breathing room, so to speak.
The current state of the living room. The twin rocking chairs are in a cozy spot in front of the fire.
This armwah (it looks way cooler spelled that way) used to be a TV hutch in Andy and Mindy's house, but now it's a game closet. It's about 2" too wide to fit between those posts, so it isn't quite backed against the wall. There still seems to be plenty of room, though, and for now, it's a good spot to keep all the games.
Roger said he's been wanting to put stairs here since he first saw the doorway, and he finally got his chance. He and a bunch of other friends came by on Saturday to help with siding. When the ladders became the bottleneck, we set to work building these stairs and working on the boy's room.
It was a cold, blustery day. At 8 am we were still well below 20 degrees, and with the wind, it didn't feel much over 5. The sunlight on the South wall made it tolerable, and the excitement of watching the siding go up was worth the chill.
We primed and painted these boards several months ago. They were stacked neatly under plastic, and in the humidity of the summer months they seemed to have stuck together quite well. They're scuffed and well-worn, but still brand new! We are very happy with the look, and the weathered appearance really makes it seem old already. Good old, not used up and worn out old. We'll add a trim piece to the corner one day.
This is how we ended things on Saturday afternoon. The West wall is done, and 25% of the North and South walls are done, too. The gable ends of the house really soak up the time.
The parting shot from the cherry tree. We live in a barn!

The Move. The What?! Yes, the Move.

2008-11-16T18:08:00.000-08:00

This was a busy week at the homestead, and we have lots of friends to thank for the progress that was made. Thank you!

Robb came by two nights this week and installed some kitchen cabinets. He enjoyed using the pocket jig, and was impressed by how sturdy everything came out. We started installing the cabinets at the north end of the kitchen, with the cabinets snugged into the corner, then worked steadily south until we came to the gap for the stove. We left the remaining cabinets loose to give the plumber plenty of space to hook up the gas line to the stove.Karen cut a few boards to fit her bathroom, and decided to sand them before she put them in place. We had cleaned out the house a bit before this picture. It sure was handy to have the tools readily at hand on the workbench in the dining room, but it's really cool to have such an open floor space, too.
Dory really likes the orange chair. She curls right up in a ball. Andy is working on drywall, fitting pieces against the roofline near the peak of the house.
Karen with the Makita in the dining room. Within a few days, it will be unacceptable to run the circular saw in the dining room. Too bad. It makes for an awfully nice shop floor.
Don came by on Monday and Tuesday night this week. On Monday he applied the first coat of tung oil in the loft bedroom. On Tuesday, he applied the second coat. Sometime this coming week we'll begin the application of the carnuba wax.
This picture reminded me of Plato's cave. Andy was cutting drywall again. Yeah, he does that alot. He finished installing everything down to the basement, so it's one uniform plane for 3 1/2 stories.
Chris and Karen's tub is installed and working. I suppose we ought to sweep the floor, but after that... it's bath time. Sometimes a good hot soak is just what a body needs.
The power has been turned on upstairs, so most of the lights and outlets work now. Andy and Chris finished the chimney installation, including the 8' of chimney pipe outside the house and the necessary extended brackets. It looks very tall, but the draught should be ideal.So clean! Mindy did a lot of cleaning to prepare for the move. She went through an entire bottle of windex to take the sawdust off the windows. The house will never be this empty again.
Same view, but on Saturday morning. :) Full of stuff. You know how they say if you move in before the house is done, you'll never finish? Well, we believe that to be true, and we accept that it will remain so in our case. However, there are always more good things to do with your time than time to do them all. If a perfect house takes a back seat to something more worthwhile, them we're all for it.
A lot of friends helped us out with the move on Friday night. I know a lot of you reading this are also looking to build your own house, so let me point out what you may already know. There are friends, and then there are friends. Some friends will come by for an hour on a sunny afternoon and pound a few nails. And some friends won't quit until the work is done, regardless of the hour. We're blessed to have both kinds of friends, but some people in our lives really went the extra mile this week, and we look forward to serving them somehow in the future.
What to do with a working stove? Bake cookies! Karen is in the foreground unboxing kitchen supplies, Eli is stirring, Benson is trying to find baking powder, and Mindy is supervising the stirring. The range hood is not totally installed yet, but the stove works, the fridge works, and the sink works. Close enough for us. We'll finish the rest of it up later. No, really, we will. Before the garage, probably. Before the shop, though? Well, that's just crazy talk.
The living room has filled in a bit. The house has changed in very dramatic ways for us this week. It will never go back to what it was, and with the excitement of change there is always the sad tug of the memory of all the happy hours that brought us to this point.
We don't always work, you know. Eli and Chris played Mancala on Sunday afternoon.Mmmm... toasty. We lit the first fire on Sunday afternoon, and boy does it feel good! The chimney works beautifully, and there's nothing else quite like wood heat. It isn't really cold enough for a fire yet, but it was just too tempting sitting there empty.

We plan to work on the downstairs bedrooms this coming week, and expect to report good progress on that front when we write next.

The Return of the Zing

2008-11-08T19:20:00.000-08:00

This is the beginning of the form for the kitchen island countertop. It is made from 3/4" melamine, and will be poured upside-down. The rectangle in the middle is the cutout for the sink. We will add sides, a soap dish area, maybe a drainage tray. We'll see.The electrician installed some switches this week, but no circuit breakers yet. Karen was doing some sanding in her and Chris' bathroom to prep for paint.
Karen in the bathroom, but without the dusk mask so you see it's really her. The wall behind her is finished, and you can see the cutouts for the sink drains and supply lines. The matching vanities will go in soon.
This one is for Amber. Sorry about the flash and the sawdust. Mindy cleaned a lot of space on Saturday night; made room for tools and wood downstairs and generally got a few rooms ready for actual living. That's not all she did this week, of course, but it's what she was doing when I went around on Saturday night taking pictures.
Ok... you can barely see Karen in there, but she's on the stairway doing some sanding on the railing. The dining room has been cleared out a bit, though Andy and Chris still have to move some wood. Mindy put tung oil on the edges of the stair treads, so another railing piece has been installed. Andy is in the background somewhere, mudding some drywall.
These are Andy's legs. He is mudding the wall inside Chris and Karen's room. He has already done most of the stairway and inside the dining room, along with the wall in the kitchen. This is a better view of the new railing piece that was installed. We really need to put the ballisters in place on the stairs.
The South wall of Chris and Karen's room. Chris has lots of ideas for the lofty space here, but unfortunately does not have enough voting power to overturn Karen's veto authority.
One window is messy and not too pretty. The other is a little less messy and a little more pretty. These are 1x8 sheathing boards with the tongues ripped off. Ripped with a saw, by the way, not just ripped with plyers or something.
Remember this color? The cranberry zinging has begun! There are a few sections that need to be done so the electrician and plumber can finish their work, so we will focus on those areas. We don't expect to finish all of this soon. But it's a start, and once some more inside work has been completed, this will be a fun way to pass the time. It was raining at the time of the picture. Not snow, not sawdust, just rain.

The First Sheets of Drywall

2008-11-03T20:21:00.001-08:00

Chris and Karen were up in Maine on Sunday, so the blog is a bit late. We did make a bit of progress last week, though, and it's only right that we report on our status.

We put up some more boards in Chris and Karen's bedroom. Their closet is closed in on the left, and the bathroom is closed in, too. All we have to do is hang the door! Sort of...

You can see a large stack of drywall in this picture. 50 sheets of 4x8 material should cover most of the area where we've chosen to put some color in the house to contrast with the pine.
Andy and Chris worked on the chimney for the woodstove this week. Cutting a hole in your roof is a bit unsettling.

Nearly done. We have a few screws left to put in place, and there are two more lengths for the outside that need to be installed. It was less than 40 degrees and pitch black when we called it quits on the roof that night. We worked on a few more things inside, then Andy rode his motorcycle home. What is the windchill factor for a 40 mph wind when the actual temp is in the upper 30's? COLD!

Some friends of Chris' came over to help on Saturday, and we put them to work with some sheathing in the loft bedroom. Thanks, Tommy and Kitty!

Yes, the pictures could be in better order. This is the finished hole in the roof, with 2" clearance to any combustible material.

Some of the drywall on the North end of the dining room.

On the same plane as the dining room wall, this is the entrance to Chris and Karen's room. The drywall in their room has already been hung. To line up properly with the studs, one of the sheets in this picture protrudes into the doorway a little bit. Our doorway isn't really that narrow.

Tired of drywall yet? This is the kitchen. We left a blank space for the plumber to run the gas lines to the range. Once he does that, we'll wrap this up, mud it all, and install the kitchen cabinets.

Benson tried three different drills for this job, and he settled on the corded Bosch. He really likes to help, and it was great to be able to hand this job over to such a willing worker.

Brian came over again on Saturday and did most of the updates in Chris and Karen's room. Aside from family, Brian has been the biggest help out here. When you take it upon yourself to build a house, it's important to understand that when you're tired, it's dark, it's late, you're hungry, or whatever... you still have a house to build, so you just keep going. It's been great to have a friend who understands how we approach this project and who steps in whenever he can to help. Not everybody "gets it". Brian does.

Just a forewarning... we will all be in NYC for a baby blessing next Sunday, so the blog might be a Monday event next week, too.

The Flux Capacitor

2008-10-26T14:03:00.001-07:00

We chose a spot for the woodstove this week. There was much discussion about location - next to the stairs, against the wall, in the corner, in the hallway, in the dining room, outside, etc... in the end, we are all happy with the spot we chose. This picture shows the beginning of the hearth - two 1/2" sheets of plywood screwed together and to the floor.More hearth work. Andy and Chris measured and cut the slate, and Andy is seen here applying the grout. It's messy work, but it really cleans up well.

Mindy has taped off some areas on the side of the stairs. We will apply dark tung oil to the stair treads themselves, but the stringer (which will stay exposed, by the way) will be a few coats of polyacrilic like the posts and ceilings. The railing to the loft is attached in this picture. I don't have any pictures of the assembly pieces, but I'll have some next week. In the bottom right of the picture is a 48" post built out of three 2x6's, just like the posts everywhere else. It also has a tenon that extends into a mortise we cut into the floor. The tenon is secured from underneath the floor, the side of the post is attached with long bolts that come through the stringer, and the railing is attached with 4" screws through a spacer block that Andy curved with the table saw. The 4" screws are not as long as we would like, so we'll replace those with 6" screws this week. Maybe. Anyway, it's on the list of things to do.

The hearth will end up with a wood trim piece around the sides. Karen wanted slate there, and we all agree it would look good, but we aren't very confident of slate taking abuse well, and on the sides of a hearth, it surely will see some abuse.Andy jointing the ballisters for the handrail to the loft or the basement. They're all the same stock, just like the railings we have in place in the loft now.
The excavators dug the lines for the propane this week.
And then the propane company installed the tank and filled it up. This is a 1,000 gallon tank, meant to ensure that the propane truck doesn't have to worry about accessing our house in the winter. Our driveway can be treacherous.
Andy and Chris' dad came out this week and put in a lot of hours of help. Six straight days, in fact. The house just seems to swallow up work. Grandpa and Eli are taking a little snack break while they watch the workers install the propane tank.
Sanding the living room floor. From what I remember in high school Earth Science, the seasons are caused by changes in the angle of insolation. As the earth tilts away from the sun, the sun rises lower and lower in the sky each day until the winter solstice. That means cooler weather, but it also means more light penetration in the house. We are thrilled with the amount of light that comes in our South wall. Thrilled, I tell ya. The white sheets on the right are 3/4" melamine, which we will use to build the forms for the concrete countertops for the kitchen. We plan to build and pour in the living room, and then carry them into the kitchen for installation. They will need about a week to cure.
Dad and Chris assembled the rest of the kitchen cabinets this week. Lots of measuring, cutting, and using all the fun tools. They made two trips into town for more hardwood plywood - some birch, and some cherry.
The kitchen island is mostly in place here, and Dad has the railing clamped to it for some plane work. Andy routed the edge of the railing with a 3/4" roundover bit, but there was a 1/16" lip on top that needed some extra hand work. Dad planed it, sanded it, and called it good.
The island, placed mostly in position and nearly ready to be screwed together and have the top fastened in place.
What do you think the shelf life of an Eli is?

Seriously. Have we mentioned how much we love the light that comes into the house? The island is secured in place in this picture. Cabinets are screwed to each other with #8 1 1/4" screws, and screwed to the floor with 2" pocket screws. If the island moves, the whole house must be moving with it. But really, who has time to move the island when you can just watch the sunlight dance across the floor all day?The electricians have begun to install lights in the ceilings. We had to build special brackets for some of them. This light is in the living room. It's on a chain, so no bracket required. The pitch of the roof is too much for some of the other lights, however. Lights that were designed for more normal installations in a flat ceiling.
Our plumber, John. Great guy to work with. He's friendly with the kids and the dogs, and he sings while he works. He's working on the vents for the island in this picture from Saturday afternoon. The open nature of the house is tricky, and instead of boxing in an ABS pipe or trying to use paint to disguise it we chose copper. Oops... I mean coppah.

This is our flux capacitor. Andy says it's steampunk. After a brief moment on teh google, Chris agrees. We think it's a pretty cool feature. This will be the view as you stand at the sink in the island.To prepare for the back stoop, Dad moved the pallets and scraped the dirt away to replace it with gravel.The Boy Scouts were out on Saturday morning and used the circular saw and some hammers to build this platform. It's 24" high and 48" square. The top surface is interior flooring with the tongue ripped off. No, we don't expect it to last very long out in the elements like this, but it's a good temporary solution until we build the real deck or stonework to take its place.The parting shot from the cherry tree. Back stoop, back steps, and the refrigerator and woodstove have been moved inside the house. Looking a bit cleaner out there! We have four pallets in place to hold some fire wood. It won't be long until we'll need it.

2008-10-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

I took a few more pictures of the bathroom vanity for somebody who was curious how it was built. While I was at it, I took the sink and faucet out of their boxes and set them in place, too. :) That's always the fun part.
This last picture probably shows the construction method best. Sorry it's a bit fuzzy. The lower shelf and the counter top surface are both made from left-over 2x6 tongue and groove flooring. The rest of the wood; the posts and rails, are ripped from 2x4s. The posts and rails are all 1 1/2" square, and are held together with pocket screws. You could also mortise and tenon the joints, but we just don't have the time right now, and pocket screws are a simple, square, sturdy joint that takes a neat jig, but not a lot of time.
The flooring pieces were glued together, clamped in place for 24 hours, then cut to length and screwed in place from underneath the rail that supports each flat surface.

I know... not exactly a professional how-to, but I hope it answers your questions, Serina.

Chris

The Kitchen Carcasses

2008-10-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

Well, that's one more week gone by. Where did the time go? Let's see:

Andy installed a few more slate tiles in the mudroom. There is still some grout-work to do there, so maybe we'll get to that in the coming week.Karen is routing a side panel of the kitchen cabinets to prepare for assembly. Benson used the router this week, too. Benson really likes to try everything. Except sweeping. Maybe he thinks he has the sweeping thing all figured out already.
We began to assemble the hearth pieces this week, but we didn't get very far. The hearth will be tiled with slate, just like the mudroom. The woodstove will end up about where Andy is standing.
A friend of Chris' came over on Saturday and helped out for a few hours. Tariq and Benson helped assemble these cabinet carcasses, and it's neat to see them in place. There is quite a bit of work to do on them, obviously. But we're making steady progress.
A wider view of the kitchen progress. The island surface you see here will be at 36" high, and on the East side (the left) will be a raised area where we are sure to gather for pie. And ice cream. Or maybe just pie. Or maybe just ice cream... oh, the dilemmas we will have!
Sorry, Karen. You have a looooong way to go with that little bitty sander. With softwood floors, we thought it prudent to avoid the commercial floor sanders in favor of a more delicate approach. Karen and Mindy have spent hours and hours sanding around the house, and room by room, we move closer to the end.
A bit of innocent vandalism for a nephew in New York. Happy birthday, Hunter!
Chris and Karen's bedroom, with a view through to the bathroom in the background. The wall is closed in now, and that makes a real nice shift from having everything so open.
The two Takagi tankless water heaters are mostly installed. The vents have a few extra pieces to put together early next week. A 1,000 gallon propane tank will be installed on Tuesday, and shortly after that, we hope to turn on the slab and heat the house up a bit. The propane tank will be underground, thankfully. At 5'x5'x18', it's not exactly subtle.
Andy and Mindy's bathroom has seen some big changes. They chose a vanity, sink, and hardware, and that is basically roughed in at this point. The shower base is also installed, but we still have to figure out the walls and put those together.
We built a small vanity for the mudroom bath this week, and applied a single coat of dark tung oil, just like the floor. Actually, the top surface of the vanity was made from extra flooring pieces, so it matches the floor pretty well, and will look great on the slate. The holes for the drain and faucet are finished, and it was tempting to put the vessel and faucet in place. All in good time.
The excavators made some good progress on the grading around the house. This is the window on the North wall. It would have been a huge undertaking for us to get these stones into place ourselves. We plan a similar retaining wall for the garden area and for the entrance to the front door. Which is really on the side. Anyway, it will also have stones there. We hope to see that come together this week after they install the propane tank.

The Loft Floor

2008-10-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

This is a direct continuation of last week's pictures - the mudroom bathroom. Andy and Chris cut and installed the slate this week. This is the first half of the room done.The rest of the tiles are in place, with the grout yet to be done.
The grout is done but not totally cleaned up in this picture, and the rest of the mudroom floor has been primed for the mortar and wonderboard. We would like to install the tile in the rest of the room this coming week.
Andy routering (yes, Russell, I know that's not a word) one of the panels for the kitchen. We chose a Bosch router that has a fixed and a plunge base. It is a wonderful machine to use. Stable, smooth, and reliable. We're glad to have a project that required its purchase. :)
The current view of the kitchen, as seen from the loft. It's a mess, I know. The only excuse is lack of time - we'll make things orderly later. This is propped up in place so the plumber can see where things will be installed. Based on this mock-up, he should be able to drill holes in the floor and our cabinets, run the pex needed, and do all the rest he has to do. We are using 3/4" birch plywood for most of the carcasses, but anywhere a wall will be visible we will use 3/4" cherry ply. The faces and doors will be cherry hardwood. Since the countertop will be a very heavy concrete slab, we chose to double up the verticals wherever possible. We want the load of the top distributed evenly around a solid base.

Karen working on the bathroom vanities. She experimented with some sanding and some stain, but I think we'll end up painting these. The stain of the floor is a very rich color, and the room will probably look best without too many contrasting grain patterns.
The loft is the most empty room in the house right now, so Chris brought some work up there during the week, too.
Snowing in the house again? Mindy was sanding the floor to prepare for the tung oil, and the flash on the camera does funny things with the sawdust in the air. Eli enjoys his window seat.See? Mindy is still sanding. In the winter months, the sunlight will shine well into the house, but it looks beautiful all year round. The well-lit south wall is one of our favorite features of the house.
The loft as seen from the living room. Nice straight rails, and it feels good to have the room closed off up there. We haven't heard for sure if we'll need to install electric outlets along the loft walls. We should find out this week when the electrical inspection takes place.
Two coats of tung oil are down on the floor at this point. It makes for a warm, inviting surface.
Even with just a few dim bulbs on in the house, the windows really light up. When one light is on, we'll be able to walk around the entire upstairs part of the house - with no walls, everything carries between the rooms. Light, sound... yes, I think it will always be a noisy, happy house.
This view hasn't changed too much. The doors are painted, the rear latch is installed... but that's about it. The grey cube is the Osburn woodstove we picked out, and the blue monolith is the refrigerator. These two things are too heavy to move very often, and they would just be in the way if we brought them inside. They'll be ok out here for a little bit, but we'll be glad to get them in and put them to use.

The Powah is On!

2008-10-05T06:47:00.000-07:00

The powah is turned on, and we have lights to prove it now. The rough electric is finished for the entire basement level and part of the main living level. That work will continue this coming week. The electrician knows our move-in date, and he's on board with finishing his work in time for that.The outlets along the South wall.
Wiring and a smoke detector hardwired into the wall on the North end of the dining room/South wall of Chris and Karen's bathroom.
We put up some more railing sections in the loft on Saturday. They came out straight and sturdy, just like the house. We think the look matches well. These will end up with a coat or three of poly just like the rest of the non-floor surfaces in the house. We ripped 2x4s to make the ballisters, and a single 2x4 was cut to length for the top and bottom rail. Each ballister is ripped from a 2x4, cut to length, jointed, sanded, drilled with four holes, and finally installed. They take a lot of time, but it's happy work, and it's fun to see them put in place.
Mindy was busy this week on the basement floor. The acid stain is down, and on Monday she'll be back to apply the neutralizer. The color is called "Old Hickory". It's certainly a big change from the natural grey. We are excited to see the finished surface, and have one floor surface totally done.

Like I said... Mindy was busy this week. She also spent some time in Chris and Karen's bathroom, working on the floor there. We chose a dark tung oil as the finished surface for the upper floors. This room will end up with a water-resistant finish, so it's unique in that respect, but the color will be the same everywhere. It's great to see it go on, and Mindy said it was very simple to apply.
Andy is working on the ballisters for the loft. He had a smooth system set up, like a one-man assembly line. While he wasn't taking this picture, Chris was in the loft assembling the kits Andy had put together for each section of rail.
Ahh, we hope Benson will remember with fondness the good old days of playing in the leach field.
Eli being Eli. We used the back "steps" as a mixing area. There was a constantly changing mix of paint, oil, and cement there this week.
Light grey to dark grey. The dark grey will be the finished color for both doors. By the time we left the house on Saturday evening, both doors were painted, reinstalled, and the mudroom door latch was installed. The door to the kitchen will require some drilling for the different style latch the girls chose.

We bought the slate for the mudroom floor on Saturday. Eventually we will install this everywhere in the mudroom, and possibly near the other entrance as well. For now, we will focus on the mudroom bath, since the fixtures are dependent on the floor being in place.We thought this was great to see, so we have pictures of each step so far. The first layer is milky white paint. This took awhile to dry, and the dogs stepped through it at one point, so there are white paw prints leading into the kitchen before they slowly fade. Quite poetic, really.
The second layer is 1/4" of mortar, applied with a trowel made specifically for this purpose. You can add this to the list of things we've never done before - building a house really makes you stretch into new abilities.
The third layer is wonderboard, a 1/4" board of mesh and concrete. This is pressed onto the mortar, and then screwed in place. On top of this will be another coat of mortar, then the slate and the grout. Can't wait to see the next step! We ran out of time on Saturday, so the slate will need to wait until next week.

The Week Mindy Was Right

2008-09-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

The four of us had some big e-mail discussions this week about stoves, floor stains, colors, railings, and who knows what else. Mindy had some great ideas about the floor, had done some research on options, and we all agreed that she was right. Anyway, that's the story about the blog title... now on to the work this week!

The power is turned on at the house finally! All the connections were made a week or so ago, but the utility company hadn't flipped the switch yet. So we called the utility company...

Us: Hello, we are building a new residence on Skyline Trail. The poles and lines were installed and inspected, but the power is not turned on at the house yet. Will you flip the switch so we have power, please?

Them: Well, let me look. Ahh, well, it says here that you haven't paid your bill for installation yet. We can't turn on the power until you pay the bill.

Us: Ok. Umm, wait... we haven't received a bill yet. How much was it for?

Them: Oh, we haven't sent it yet.

Us: Oh, ok. Well, how much is it, and we'll come in tomorrow with a check.

Them: Oh, we don't know. We haven't generated the final amount yet.

Us: So... ummm... what if we pay $2,000 tomorrow, and if that's too much you can just issue us a refund later. We would really like the power turned on.

Them: Um, ok.

Us: Yippee!

We have the beginnings of a septic system now. The tank is in, the lines are connected, and the leach field is dug. It's neat to see the grading of what will be lawn next summer. The slope of the land was really disrupted during the excavation process, and now we can begin to see how things will look when construction is wrapped up.
The view from the house. This was taken through the screen, so the image is a bit odd.
Benson, Ethan, and Eli were taking some pictures the other night, and the next few shots are from their budding artist portfolios. This first pictures is Andy preparing some wood for a bathroom vanity. He and Chris cut the framing pieces for two vanities and assembled one of them before the tornado of the two younger boys got to be too much. Benson was a big help, and is getting really good with the drill.
Proof that Chris does actually work once in awhile.
I don't really know, but this much is clear... Benson is taking the picture, Ethan is holding earmuffs in front of his face, Eli is just behind Ethan, and Andy is smiling at something Chris must have been talking about... which is odd, because Chris is always so somber.

The Sanding, The Tub, and Some Other Stuff

2008-09-22T15:24:00.000-07:00

We had a very busy Saturday... which always feels wonderful.

The electrical panel is up near the last pole, and all of the electrical lines are connected. The power may actually be on at this very moment. After so many months of work, that's a pretty neat thing.A few months ago we put up a picture of a chipmunk eating seeds on a little bird feeder. Well, apparently the chipmunk let a seed drop by the wayside, and it happened to fall on good soil. We have a sunflower! And we probably ought to mow the lawn...
Andy framed in the doors to he and his wife's bedroom. They'll have two french doors here soon, and it should be a real pretty spot with the sun coming in through the window in the morning.
So tell me this... not to define gender roles, but how do four men end up outside scrubbing a tub while the girls are inside using power tools? I mean, that just doesn't seem right. The tub was quite a transformation, though, and it was fun to watch it change. Most of the marks on the porcelain came off with elbow grease, and there are just a few spots on the inside that will require a solvent of some kind. We have painted the outside surface and the feet, and now there is a real crisp line between the inside and outside surfaces.

Eli likes to work, and sanding a floor is one job right at his level. We will be sanding the floor to stain and seal it before the tub and vanities are put in place. This is the only bathroom in the house that will end up with the original wood floor. The mudroom bath will have a slate floor, and the two bathrooms downstairs will have acid stained concrete floors. We still haven't fully decided on a floor stain. Andy and Chris have decided to agree with Mindy and Karen, so... yep, we're waiting on the girls to tell us what we all like.More sanding. Eli is in the way back, Mindy is working the DeWalt, and Jenn Baird is working the Craftsman. Lots o' work being done here, and it's nice to have friends out to help.
The kitchen floor is not the final resting place for the tub, but Karen decided to take a break and enjoy it here anyway. The faucet came in the mail on Monday, so we're excited to put it in place and see how it looks all together.
This was a photo from one night during this week. Karen is sanding in her and Chris' bedroom, and the lamp really throws some good light around the house. Andy and Mindy's french doors can be seen leaning against one of the loft posts on the right.
The jointer was put to good use this week as we prepared wood for the loft railing. We've decided on a square look for the railing, so we are busy ripping and smoothing 2x2 stock.
This was Saturday's crew. Lots of happy faces. Some are yawning, some are chewing oreos, and one is trying to look a little bit taller with a creative use of blocks.
So yes, the blog wasn't up on Sunday afternoon. Chris and Karen decided to run down to NY for the afternoon to visit Chris' sister. Karen was busy with the camera as we were taking a "shortcut" through the Bronx. Russell was clamoring for a blog update last night, and if nobody else, he'll appreciate this pic.

The 50th Post

2008-09-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

Andy worked on the basement window sills for a bit this week. He added some structural bits so when the sill is put in place, anybody can hop up on it and sit in the window. That's the idea, at least. The sills on this wall will be 18" deep, so if you can fit half a cheek on, you ought to be reasonably comfy.
Chris working late one night. He started on the bathroom vanities, and had a bit of laminating to do with the stock from the local store. The lantern makes a very pleasant light to work by. The workbench is on heavy-duty casters which we love. None of us have worked on a portable workbench before, and really appreciate being able to wheel it around to change an angle or adjust the space to a wall or a walkway. Very convenient. This is something we picked up from craigslist awhile back. Before our self-imposed ban.
If this looks pretty hokey, I think you're right. But it was functional, I can say that much. The electrician laid out four spools around our basement, then gathered the cables together, tied them to the 300' snake that he had run through our underground utility pipes, and then pushed the cables through while his assistant pulled from the other end. They were pretty heavy by the end there, and the actual measurement worked out to 275'. With an inspection and a final connection, we'll have power at the house. The telephone company was out at the same time, and we have phone service now, too. We'll check the local salvation army stores for a decent standard phone - until we have power, we just want a phone that can run off a dial tone.
More work on the bathroom vanities. The blue tool in the foreground and on the left is a Kreg pocket hole jig. If you're not sure what that is, it's worth a look-up, and if you've never built anything using pocket holes, I recommend it highly. They make a strong, square, sturdy joint with no clamping. Great jig, and worth every penny.
This is a start to one of Chris and Karen's sinks. We haven't totally come to consensus on the final design, but the basic framework is here. 2" x 2" legs and rails, with a curved front face that matches the curve of the sink. We'll narrow it down as we go, and the wood will probably end up being painted black. Or white. Seriously. You'd think we'd pick something that could be compromised on, but no... we have to prefer opposites! The faucet and the sink is a go, however, so those won't change. Karen did a nice job of picking those out.

Stuff in a row, waiting for installation. Four toilets and three sinks, with more sinks already near their installation spots and lots of faucets somewhere else... lest you forget, building a house is a big project. Big, I tell you.

Remember that guy from the FirstDay video who says you really have to be determined to build a house? Yeah. He's right.

The Pressure Tank

2008-09-07T17:14:00.001-07:00

We framed the pocket door to Chris and Karen's bedroom. There is not a lot of surface area, so we chose to use wood screws in place of nails for these doors. They seem very solid. For now, we'll use the doors that came with the FirstDay kit, but eventually, I think some of our doors will be swapped out for french doors with glass panes. We'll see.
The electrician installed the circuit box in the house this week. The well guys were busy, too. They ran the lines from the well to the house and installed the pressure tank. It's pretty big and ugly. Maybe we can paint it pink to match the walls.

Andy finished the framing peak for the bedroom at the end of the loft. Now it's all set for drywall - this is one wall that will be painted instead of pine sheathing. I think the girls have chosen green. My guess is that there's a fancy name for the actual paint, but the color will still be... yep, green.
We also made some good progress with spending money this week, and our wallets are emptier than ever. We bought three sinks, two toilets, one water heater, and have chosen several faucets that we'll be ordering soon. Not a bad haul! With four opinions to work around, it can be tough to make decisions sometimes, but this feels like good progress. There just aren't too many more fixtures on which to fixate.

The Backfilled Utility Trench

2008-08-31T17:28:00.001-07:00

The utility trench was backfilled last week. There was some delay by the subcontractor. I know, I know, I say that all the time. They came out one night and didn't work because they couldn't find the key to the excavator. They made some calls to the guy who drove it last, looked all around in the cab of the excavator, and still couldn't find the key. The boss ended up buying a new key from the manufacturer and getting to work at our place on Thursday.

On Saturday, 20 miles away at Andy and Mindy's apartment, Benson found a little key and asked Mindy if dad was missing a tractor key. Eli pipes up - "no, that's the key to the big orange and grey tractor". Oooops!Andy hung the pocket door in the mudroom this week. It glides nice and smooth.
The door to the boy's room in the basement is also hung. It's kind of a hassle to use, so we just walk through the walls to save time.
Doors, doors, doors. This is the door from the craft room to the utility room. It works, but we just walk around it.

It was a busy week, and this week is already busy on paper. We'll be at the beach for Labor Day, and have some plans for the house later in the week. Ideally, the utility company will be able to connect our power lines this week. That will be a great change.

The Utility Trench

2008-08-24T12:51:00.001-07:00

Andy added a touch of home this week. We almost look official now! He was feeling creative with the circular saw, so the post has some attractive geometry at the top. It's nice to see the mailbox there. I really look forward to shoveling it out of the snowbank in a few months.The excavator finally showed up this week. They dug the utility trench between the last pole and the house. The electrician laid a 4" pipe for power, a 3" pipe for phone, and Andy laid a 3/4" pipe for our own line back to the edge of the site. When the trench is backfilled, the cables can be pulled through the pipes and run into the house. It's an awful mess right now, and I'll be glad to see this covered up.
The view from the hill. The power runs along the side of the house, and enters on the west wall of the northwest corner. We were worried about the ledge there, but they seem to have gotten around it just fine.

In the larger version of this picture (click the picture to open it bigger), you can tell that this is the Landy Excellent Excavator. Makes you wonder what other models they have... acceptable? super-awesome? In any case, this is one is excellent. And it has two cranberry zing handprints on it. At the height of a 3-year old. Not much of a mystery there.When he's not painting excavators, Eli actually looks pretty peaceful. He was hanging out in the house yesterday while Karen sanded, Andy worked on the framing for the mudroom pocket door, and Chris and Benson worked on the framing for the pocket door to Chris and Karen's bathroom.
Benson is busy with the hammer. This is the framing for above the pocket door. The drain for the toilet is on Benson's left, and is sunk against the floor. We have chosen to keep the wood floor in the bathroom instead of using tile or anything else. We plan to use an epoxy of some kind, then some marine sealant to keep the wood free of any external moisture.
The half-bath in the mudroom took a bit of intricate framework. It is in a small corner of a small room, so we are utilizing a pocket door to save on space.

The 17th of August

2008-08-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

Andy and a local friend worked in the basement for a bit on Saturday. We screwed 2x4 supports to the ceiling - the insulation will run right up to the ceiling, and will be screwed into those 2x4 supports. Andy seems pretty happy with how they came out.

Benson and another friend are painting the siding. We painted a first and second coat on about 40 boards, and put a first coat on another 20 or so. One more sunny day and all the siding will be cranberry zinged. Benson tolerates the brush-work, but greatly prefers the roller.
Another load of materials from Home Depot. There's a pressure treated 4x4 post there for the mailbox, some 3/4" PVC pipe that will be buried so we can run a light from the house back to the edge of the house site. It will be our Narnia light, and it may turn out to be a pretty cool way to watch the snow fall. The light will be about 250 ft. from the South wall of the house.
This is the panel we built to be installed next to the last utility pole. The meter for power and the phone will be mounted to this. We have a few ideas to make this more attractive than it seems, but if anybody has any suggestions, we're listening.

The First Rough Plumbing

2008-08-10T13:25:00.001-07:00

This is the rough plumbing in Chris and Karen's bathroom. They will have two sinks here, connected to the drain and the vent seen here. It's nice to see the infrastructure go up, but it sure gets tricky to hide it all well.Andy painted lots of boards on Saturday. I know these pictures all look the same, but really, they're different days. In fact, the upper set of boards has a set of dusty dog prints on the left hand side. I think it was Dory, the Whippet/Russell mix that is new to the family. She and her friend Bean, a Brittany Spaniel, joined us this week when Mindy caved and couldn't resist them. They really are good dogs, and they are both a welcome addition out here. I don't have any pictures of them this week.
We built a frame for the pocket door to Chris and Karen's bedroom. From this angle, the door way will be on the left, and will slide into a pocket that we haven't built yet. Everything is the correct height now, and once the rough inspection is done, we'll get the pocket framed and hang the door.
We did a lot more work in the basement, and have nearly all of it insulated now. There are just a few spots left to do along the lower wall, and then all the trim work at the top. That will take some time, because the rafters are in the way, and we'll have to trim around each of them individually. Our hammer drill broke Saturday afternoon, or we would have made more progress here. We'll replace it this coming week and get right back to it.
We have a new house rule: No more craigslist. Chris took the picture below driving home our latest toy. Tool... I said tool! This will extend our abilities considerably and allow us to take on projects around the house site that we otherwise could not have considered.

The Utility Poles

2008-08-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

We have a hodge-podge of pictures this week. Lots of work took place, but nothing really coherent. I kind of miss the days when progress was easy, when all day was spent on one thing - the floor, or the rafters, or the dining room bents. One task, one day. Now we are pulled in a dozen directions at once, and things are nowhere near as simple. Still satisfying, but less simple.

The utility company installed the four poles this week. There are three 40' poles and one 35' pole. The poles are not as ugly as I expected, and I must admit, I like to see them there. The pole pictured below is the last pole, placed right at the entrance to the house site. The meter will be at this point, mounted on a panel next to the pole. From there to the house, all power and phone lines will run underground.
If you wondered how Christopher's Miata made it down our driveway... it was fixed this week. Flat and reasonably smooth, at least until it rains again. The long term solution will involve better grading, swales along the drive, and perhaps some vegetation. But for now, if Chris can drive in? Anybody can drive in.The electrician has a fancy rig for drilling through foundation walls. He drilled two holes on Saturday, and this is where the power will enter the house. The drill bits are liquid-cooled, and they were quite messy. We brought water up from the brook for this. Yes, just water. No fish were harmed in the making of this house.
Another shot of the ceiling. We are pleased with the look of it now, and the ceiling won't need any more coats. The posts and beams will, and we have continued to work on that as we get the chance. You can see the scaffolding on the lower right of the picture - one 2x12 stretched over the kitchen and resting between the loft floor and a header on the west wall.
A friend came over on Saturday morning and we put him right to work. He put another coat on all the posts and beams in the loft, and a little bit downstairs in the living room.
Benson helped us put up some more insulation in the basement. We bought a hammer-drill and a carbide bit to drill the pilot, and then we drive Tapcon screws through the firring strips, the 2" of foam, and into the concrete. Benson is using the Dewalt drill to drive the screws in place.
The west wall is partially insulated. The electrician wanted the first 4' done, so he can lay out wires for sockets. We'll finish the rest of the wall later.
Andy is working on the left, applying Minwax to the ceiling. The boys are watching Alice in Wonderland on his laptop. Quiet and peaceful working night. It's tough to work on the house with the boys - they can only stay interested so long, and it can be a real battle to put in full days of work out here. Mindy has done well at keeping them involved and helpful.
With Andy working below, the movie playing in the dining room, and Chris walking around with the camera, Karen and Mindy are plotting something. Lights, maybe? Faucets? It's a mystery.
Ever wondered how far rain falls from the house? The answer: exactly the distance of overhang on the roof. The rain has drilled quite a trench in the soft, unpacked sand along our house. This is one of those things that bothers us, but isn't on the front burner right now. One can only do so much, and it turns out four can only do so much, too.

The South Wall - Basement Insulation

2008-07-27T16:26:00.000-07:00

This is the view from the mudroom as you enter the house. The quilt on the right is covering the planer. We have started to apply the protective finish on some of our wood surfaces, and you can just make out the wet shine on some of the main floor posts. After some spot-testing and lots of discussion, it seems we all like the natural wood the best. At this point, we don't plan on staining any interior surfaces. We are using a Minwax polycrilic water-based sealer to protect the wood. There will be a few walls where painted drywall will add a different surface and color to break up the solid wood view. Plus there will be toys everywhere, spaghetti on the walls, and Christopher sliding down his firepole to add some aesthetic appeal.

The underside of the loft and the dining room ceiling - this has been treated with the Minwax as well. It will take a few coats before everything is sealed well.
Karen is busy in the loft, though sadly is without her hat this weekend.More siding boards have been painted this week, and our stack of Pepto-bismol wood is gradually changing into a stack of Cranberry Zing.
The insulation is up on the South wall in the basement. This is the half wall, and there will be a 16" window-sill here soon. We won't finish the insulation on the full walls until the plumbing and electric has been run along the sill plate.

Ahh, craigslist. We have a serious weakness for free materials, and despite the rolled eyes from Karen and Mindy, Chris and Andy picked up a few loads of bricks this week. They will become a patio, a walkway, a built-in dutch oven, or a whole host of other options. Not this year, though.We have had a lot of big rainstorms this year, and our partially completed driveway has really taken a beating. It has become clear that we will need some tools of our own to maintain it, especially this corner between the stream and the road. For reference, the water bottle is about 10" high, and the deepest ravine in the picture is about 16". One day our site company will come back and finish this properly. Maybe this week, maybe not. It's the subcontractor shuffle, and you never really know when they're going to show up.

The Basement Framing

2008-07-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

The front of the basement stays quite light, even in the afternoon. But on the North wall, away from any of the egress windows... that's a different story. We've planned our utility room and food pantry for that section of the house. Given the lack of natural light in this area, sometimes we work by flashlight.

And sometimes we work by lantern.
This is how the basement will be insulated. We will continue to trim the pieces to fit the beams. The plumbing and electric systems will use the small area behind the top of the foam sheets as a chase. Since the insulation on the outside of the wall extends to the sill plate, there is about 10" of overlap between the 2" of pink foam and the 4" of yellow foam. Time will tell, but we're looking forward to a nice warm space.
This is the boy's room, looking North toward the pantry. The boy's room is almost all framed in now, and their bathroom is about done, too.
I think this is called point of convergence, but in any case it's a neat shot of the hallway in the basement.
It was a busy week, and since Mindy and the boys had things to do at their apartment on Saturday, I don't have any pictures of them helping in the basement. I found some pictures from Christmas of last year when they were helping out in the basement, though, so hopefully that will appease those of you clamoring for their pictures. :)
Mindy was taking off the metal spikes from the forms in this photo. The forms are stacked in the cage to her right.
Benson took care of a lot of the spikes as well - the sledge was handy for this, and despite the cold weather, he was quickly working without a hat or gloves, and his cheeks are all rosy.
Ok, back to warmer weather. Karen and Chris painted about 40 more boards with the final coat.
All laid out to dry. We had several staging areas set up, with boards at varying levels of completeness. Karen and Mindy have a good system of organization with the paint, and it's a comfort to know we won't need to paint from the ladder.
We agreed on an electrician this week, Chris met with the power company to establish pole locations, and the well company came out to finalize their work.

The power company will return this coming week to begin setting poles, the excavator will return to finish up the bridge, driveway and septic system, and we'll all be back to paint, sand, and frame some more.

The Last Door, Last Windows, and Basement Slab

2008-07-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

A quick note: Mindy's boys were sick this week, so we apologize for no pictures of the little builders or Mindy. Two out of three are feeling better now, and they'll all be back next week. :)

Scott and the rest of his concrete crew showed up on Monday, and the basement floor is poured. It's very hard and very grey. Which, after 6 months of uneven gravel, is quite a novelty. We aren't quite used to it yet, but we're forging ahead anyway. The whirlygig is hanging from a board stretched across the stair hole in the picture below - Scott picked it up on Wednesday. Once the walls are placed in the basement, we'll sand the posts down and remove any traces of the concrete that splattered on them during the pour.
Andy and Chris' parents were out visiting this week, and Dad did a lot of sanding with us. We brought two more workbenches/shelves out to the house, and the bench made a good solid platform for Dad to reach the higher places.
Chris measured and cut the stairs to the basement. This set ended up with 14 steps, with an easy rise of 7 1/8". A switch to 13 steps would have meant a rise outside the code allowance. There will be a pressure treated "shoe" to keep the stringers off the concrete slab.
The second stringer. We sanded them down while they rested on the sawhorses, and prepared the space through the first floor deck.
Andy trimmed the hole a bit, and we moved the doors and windows out of the way. Again. The french doors are for Andy and Mindy's bedroom downstairs.

Andy and Dad cut the treads for the stairs, then drilled and screwed them in place. Apparently Dad didn't read the whole memo, so next time he'll be sure that his red t-shirt also has white trim. Man, it's tough to find good help these days.
The stairs from below. The rear window is installed also. The hole for that window was poured very crooked - we aren't sure why, since the rest of the foundation came out so well. Rest assured, the window is level and plumb. The framing below the window will all be covered up before we're done. I mentioned that the stringers will have a pressure treated "shoe" to keep them off the slab, but for now we just have a spacer in there.
We also put in the front windows, which were the last three to go in. They change the look of the house quite a bit. They also make it more awkward to hop in and out of the windows, which we are all prone to do.
The view from the North side. The rear egress window is in, as are the mudroom door and the kitchen door. All closed up!

The Kitchen Door and a Little More

2008-07-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

We've had a busy week! Lots of help, and lots of evening work. We're starting to get very eager to move in to the house. There is a sense of urgency in the air, so we're busy little bees.

Karen and Benson are painting the siding here. It will be a relief not to have to paint the house from a ladder. The paint looks orange in this picture, but it isn't...
Our resident timber tiger. He eats all of our bird seed, and can fit a surprising amount of it in his cheeks. He's living in the cracks of the rocks that were displaced during blasting for the basement. I hope he's not home when the excavator moves all that around.

Christopher is working, and Karen is not. But she's happy, and who am I to argue with that? This is the second loop of tubing for the radiant floor. It was very satisfying to put in, and seemed to progress very smoothly. Our plumber cautioned us to keep the loops about a foot away from any toilets. He's seen radiant floors melt the wax ring that seals the toilet to the floor. There are rubber gaskets you can use instead of wax, but we kept the tubing well clear of toilet drains.
Andy and Benson are working on the final hookups to the manifold in preparation for the pressure test. We have four loops of roughly 250' apiece. There are eight valves on the manifold; four outgoing lines, and four return lines. Once everything was hooked up and secure, we pressurized the system to 50 psi, then let it sit for two hours. The pressure gauge didn't change, so we were all set. If the pressure had dropped on its own, there would have been a lot of troubleshooting to find the leak. We're glad we didn't have to redo any of it.
Close-up of the manifold.
Everything is connected. The outgoing lines are on the left, and the return lines are on the right. There isn't a right or wrong way to set those up, they just need to be specified.
The kitchen door is finally in place. There are so many tasks at this stage, it's hard to keep on top of everything. Only one door came in from Perkins, so when we get up to the store this week, FirstDay said they'd have another exterior door waiting for us. John offered to have it sent down to us, but we need to run up there anyhow, so we'll pick that up while we're there. Notice the big first step from the kitchen floor to Andy's level. I don't think we'll be using this door for awhile.
Sanding. Sanding. Sanding. Wow, there is a lot of wood in this house. We had four sanders running this weekend - a Ridgid belt sander we bought recently, a DeWalt orbital sander, and two other little sanders that aren't nearly as effective, bought before we had a project large enough to justify a large tool budget.
We stuffed the cracks around the windows with pink fiberglass insulation. It's rewarding to feel the insulation in place and know that all the little seams and cracks are filled. Ideally, we would have cut the window insulation exactly the right size for the window, and would have no need to chink at all. Amateurs... Maybe on our next house we'll be a little more exact.

Some good friends came by on Friday and helped for awhile. This is Amanda, making her first cut with a circular saw. Both cuts came out just right, and they became trim pieces for around the egress window on the North wall. We installed that window, but apparently haven't taken a picture of it yet.
Hmmm... I think the perp was Andy, in the loft, with the belt sander.
Mindy took the trailer and the Subie to NY this past week to pick up the cherry. Andy and Chris' parents helped load it, and this is Dad, ratcheting the load up securely. They will be in Massachusetts this coming week, and will help on the house for a few days. This will be their first trip to the house since they helped with the decking way back in January.
We have lots of plans for this coming week - the basement floor is scheduled to be poured on Monday, the well guys should be back sometime this week, the excavator will be back to start on the rest of his work later in the week, and we will sand, polyurethane, and paint everything we can. We also have a few more trees to cut down before we send them away to be milled. Plus there's the rest of the kitchen to design, the basement to frame, the cherry plywood to buy, and the cabinet carcasses to build.

I'm beginning to think people were right - building a house is quite a bit of work!

The Well and the Slab Insulation

2008-06-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

The well has been dug! Well, at least we hope so... they don't have a final reading on the water flow yet. So here's the story... we have two wells already on the property, but they're both unusable. One is a modern artesian that pumps plenty of water and is 180 ft. deep, but is too far from the house to be of any use. The other is an older style well that is only a few feet deep now. It's also too far from the house site.

We assumed the new well, near the house, would be roughly the same depth as the artesian near the road. We were wrong, however, and we've learned a lot about wells this week. Our new well was dug through 440' of solid rock, and still didn't pump enough water. The options were to either dig deeper, or use a method called hydrofracturing, at a cost of about $1,800. It's not guaranteed to work, though neither is a deeper hole, so either choice entails a bit of risk.

We chose to hydrofracture, so the well company pumped in 2,400 gallons of water, then pressurized it to 900 psi, until the pressure broke and dropped to about 100 psi, indicating that a vein underground had broken, and opened up a new passageway somewhere. They went down another couple hundred feet and did the same thing, pressurizing the water to 1,100 psi until it broke and dropped again. After the pressure has equalized and they can get an accurate reading on the water flow, we'll know how it all worked. Until then, we can rest easy knowing that the well is a cool $10,000 over budget. Yippee.

Our house was built by the Blues Brothers.

The well truck getting started. It's an enormous truck that lifts completely off the ground with the integrated hydraulic systems.

440' of rock has to go somewhere. The powder ran everywhere and tracks everywhere, but it won't be long until the site work is done and we clean up all this mess.
Karen and Mindy worked on priming a lot more of the exterior siding. They'll probably be finished this week, and shortly after that we'll get started with the real paint color.Which we have chosen, by the way! It's called Cranberry Zing, and just to be clear, it's the red on the right, not the pink on the left.
We set up some workspace in the living room. For now, we have the band saw, the jointer, and an assembly table. We bought a Bosch router this week, and that will also be out at the house soon enough. Mindy is heading to Andy and Chris' parent's place tomorrow morning with the Subie and the trailer to pick up the cherry wood for the kitchen.More pinkness. We laid 2" of extruded polystyrene on the basement floor. It looks neat having a totally flat floor down there, even though the surface isn't entirely uniform yet.
Benson also helped with the insulation in the basement. He liked to tape the seams best.
Karen helped in the basement, too. It was a pain fiddling around the plumbing bits.
The next step was to lay down the wire mesh on top of the foam. The tubing for the radiant system will be zip-tied to the mesh early next week. Ideally, the slab will be poured by the time I write next week's post.

The Pinkness

2008-06-22T18:50:00.001-07:00

Yes, I know... we missed a week! Chris and Karen were out of town last week, and despite the best of intentions, didn't get a chance to put up a post. Hopefully everything tonight will make up for lost time.

We've had a busy couple weeks, so I'll try to catch up with everything that has gone on. So first off: we can now end sentences with prepositions. Yep. It's all good. Second, we have started priming the ship lap siding, in preparation for it's final color and eventual installation. It's a pretty gruesome shade of pink right now, and really, it looks terrible. The house will be red, so the primer is a mix of white and 1/3 color. This should make the final coat go on well.

Ethan and Eli found a house of their own inside our unit of ship lap.

Ethan is hard at work with the pepto-bismol. Ethan's favorite color is pink, so we may have one unhappy fellow when we start changing it all to red. Speaking of which, we found a Behr paint they call "Cranberry Zing" that we all like. That may be the one.
Eli doesn't have a hard hat like Ethan, but you can't argue with his game face. He is seriously focused. Besides, he's superman!
The backyard is a mess - it's become a staging area for priming the siding. One set of pallets for the original stack, another set for the primed boards, and two painting areas in between. The brown tarp sticking up is covering a planer that we bought last week. We'll use it to build the kitchen cabinets. We also bought a band saw and a jointer, so we're feeling more and more prepared to tackle the cabinet work. A router is on the shopping list, a good blade for the table saw, and that may just about do it.
I don't think the house has changed much from this view, but here you go anyway. We really ought to get those doors put up.
Chris had fun playing with insulation tangrams, fitting pieces together for the final peak on the South side. Where the fit isn't perfect, we'll use spray foam to fill the cracks.
All the insulation is up now. That peak is a looong way off the ground. Technically, we have a few more strips of insulation to do along the bases of the egress windows. But they're straight and at ground level, and we'll get to those right before we put the windows in.
Our plumber has been busy this week, too. He likes to play Sinatra while he's working, which we think is pretty cool. This is the middle bay in the basement, and is just about finished. There are two full baths down here, along with a laundry hookup and an extra sink.

We used the chainsaw for a bit this week also. These are two that Andy took down yesterday. We'll work on some more this coming week. We have a large pile of logs we've saved from the clearing process that we'd like to have milled. A nearby mill has quoted $.25/board foot, which seems pretty reasonable for around here. They charge a pick-up fee, so once we have all the trees down that we had planned to mill, we'll give them a call and arrange the work.
This "stack" is mostly pine and hemlock, and will make a lot of something one day. It will take a year or two to dry, depending on how thick we have it milled . Natural drying takes about a year for every inch of thickness.