Roof complete

Today, exactly two months since we started framing our house, Mike and I put the final plywood pieces on the second story roof. It was definitely time for a high five! It is now easier to imagine how the different areas of the house will be when they are finished. And it all feels good!

Yet as much as I am excited about the house, it's the land that I am starting to feel more deeply attached to. I feel that this piece of land has good chi energy. I feel at peace here and very alive!

HIGHER!

Finally, the author of this blog shows his face. OK, now you've seen it. Back to THE HOUSE.  BTW the nice tie dyed T shirt was a father's day gift from Michelle, my daughter, who did the tie dying.

Today we completed the rafters upstairs including the complex valleys and ridge over the upstairs door to the deck.

Now you can begin to see what the roof line will look like once we're done. 

Robin infant pays a visit

After evicting nesting robins from the house, I was delighted to receive a visit today from this fledgling. He/she was perched on the garden gate and, while I was watching from my chair on the porch, it flew (fluttered) over and landed right at my feet. Completely unconcerned by my big, human presence...
I just hope it becomes confidently airborne before some predator grabs it.
On the construction site, today we manhandled one of the shorter beams into place (the angled one to the right of the post) and installed some of the upstairs rafters. Tomorrow  the crane truck is coming by to hoist and drop the big beam into place.

June 17th

On Friday we got plywood on the rest of the ground floor roof. This gives a much better idea of what the rooms inside will be like when finished and I am very pleased with the way the design is working out.

The next step is to get the remaining beams on the second floor lifted into place by crane so we can build that rood too. In the bottom pic you can see the notches in the wall and in the centre post where one of the beams will sit.

Today (Monday) we took the day off as I was traveling back from my Fathers Day weekend in Vancouver.  Looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow....

June 16th

Rafters have been the theme of the past few days. As you can see, both the living room (left) and kitchen (right) have rafters in place, ready for plywood. 


Today we worked on the short perimeter roof around the bedroom and bathroom. Tomorrow we will be putting plywood on all of this.



Meanwhile, back at the trailer, I've been applying coats of varnish to the big cedar slab table and it's starting to look pretty nice...

Beaming!

This is the "Haida notch" we are putting on the exposed ends of the roof beams.  (upside down). Each beam is 6" wide by 12" deep and 16 feet long. They weigh about 500lbs each so the only way we could get them into place is with a crane...

 Enter Jerome, our building supplies delivery guy. After he had unloaded the lumber and supplies we had ordered we asked him if he could help us get the beams in place. He took a look and said, "No problem." Using the crane on his truck he was able to lift the beams and ever so gently, lower them into the notches prepared for them. In half an hour, all three were in place. Amazing!



And this little beauty was lying in wait for me as I walked to work across the meadow. Such intricate perfection!

June 7th & 8th

Yesterday we did some tricky framing on the little peaked roof over the kitchen window (left of pic). We also built the small deck by the back door using fir beams and a cedar post.


Today we got the roof on the south side of the kitchen/dining room area before we ran out of plywood. Time for another delivery from Quadra Builders. They deliver three times a week to Cortes and are great people to deal with.

The next big step is installing the beams on the second floor. There's a lot of work preparing the framing to receive the beams and getting the beams themselves cut to size and ready for installation.

Finally I caught our apple tree leaf thief in the act!

June 6th

Monday morning and we went at it and put the roof trusses in place over the kitchen -- the room closest to the camera.

We then installed the cedar post under the beams in the entrance way. Mike had notched the post to fit around the main beam but we still had to jack it up about an inch to get the post in. When we lowered the jack it all fell into place, so to speak, very neatly.

This afternoon Simon came for a visit on his way to Sointula where he'll be working for the summer. After dinner we went for a walk at Smelt Bay where it was windy and beautiful!

Going up!

 


This week we have been framing the walls for the second floor.  On Monday we had one wall up...

Today we have all the remaining walls up except the small centre one on the south side where the door to the deck will be.

It's been another wet week and work has moved along at a "modest" pace. But hey, we're on island time so why worry?