Walls go up

Happy Thanksgiving.



I am thankful for having a moment to reflect, however brief.







Having a regular crew has been wonderful. We've been out there most of every day since last Monday. And despite Josiah falling off a wall and bruising a heel pretty bad, and a few technical problems we've managed to get the downstairs load-bearing walls up, and fix the floor joists and upstairs subfloor on top of them.





Tomorrow we'll have a party all day and begin putting up walls upstairs. Tools and materials are all ready to go. We'll bring sausages, bean salad and tea. The little cabin will be toasty. You are welcome to come out and make a joyful noise in the quiet woods.

Framing begins

Framing time has begun. We got the site cleaned up this past weekend in preparation for a crew of four and two loads of forest products from Alberta and other far away places. It's always a little wierd buying wood from far away when you live in a forest. But it's like gathering firewood. If you can get your truck right next to some, it's a whole lot easier driving for a half hour to get it, rather than hauling it on your shoulder four hundred feet from your house. The wood came late, and we time to go make a fire in the little cabin before the driver came up the road, swearing and sweating.


He dumped it like a madman.




By the end of the day we had a wall and half up.


tomorrow should be exciting.

More Drawings

Here's a view of the dance hall from the woodstove.


Also: some sketches of where we intend to put windows and doors.

Masonry Complete!

It has been a good, difficult week. We were blessed with help and weather at the same time, and were able to get the concrete work finished, with the exception of waterproofing the exterior.


Monday morning was friggin' gorgeous. ->


Brad is on the left here, trying to see how far it is to the ground. The next photos jump to Tuesday.



Here Ian and Lake are making turds out of mortar.






































Our kids as well as Chris and Jen's came out on Tuesday and were able to help quite a bit.

















On Wednesday we came out to fill cores with concrete and rebar. Kyle joined us and had more patience with the children than me. Here he helps Mossy, but Moses did fill one of these cores all the way up by himself.



Erica had a nice chat with the mixer.->













Thursday and Friday were clean up days, filling and smoothing joints and making a concrete shoulder on the footing. It's a great relief to have this behind us. Now comes the very exciting framing stage. As always, help is welcome. I have a notion to have a roof raising party on Thanksgiving weekend or maybe even Thanksgiving day. More to come on that. Let me know if you can come.