Cozy in the middle of winter

It's been about a month since we moved into to this house and it seems our collective brains are beginning to settle. Mine, anyway, has been a little wilder than usual this past few months. Striving for the goal of moving in by the holidays with all that had to be done (firewood, a spring box, the ceiling in the dance room, another chimney for an upstairs stove, sealing up a couple doors, etc.) meant living pretty lean as far as time management goes. Writing in this log was among the places to trim fat.

Now to be clear: having moved in by no means means the house is done! You may be able to see in the pictures that the drywall has no mud or paint on it. And the downstairs drywall is still mostly sitting stacked and waiting to be hung up among moving boxes waiting to be smiled upon.










Erica and I are sleeping up in the attic, the kids are sleeping in the dance room where we also eat and spend most of our indoor time. One of the bathrooms has been turned into a temporary kitchen, and the other has a toilet (yesssss) and some more boxes.


So far we've been getting all of our water from the creek, and filtering our drinking water through a countertop filter. It's a romantic notion to haul your water up from a wild stream, but the romance is tested as you walk up the hill. I've been taking strength thinking of people in dryer, poorer parts of the world. There is a video series at our library called Families of the World, which shows a day in the life of a child in all different kinds of places, and one of the things that strikes me about these videos is how many people haul water as a major part of every day, sometimes for miles. What happens when they get sick? Retire?...















The pink insulation in the foreground here surrounds our water source, a spring box. By this I mean it taps into the water flowing just a few feet beneath the surface. There's a line buried that runs up to the house, along side it lies an electrical line. Because the water is so close to the surface, we'll still run it through a filter to keep out bacteria and whatever weird stuff might be running off of our house and vehicles. But what an exciting thought to be able to wash hands and dishes in flowing water! And once we connect gas to the house, we'll be able to choose cold or hot! So far the only water outlet going is the kitchen sink.

The house has been keeping pretty warm, but it gets a little hard to heat when it gets down around 0º. It'll probably be a lot easier when we set up more permanent, efficient wood burners.

Idgy has been coming to visit a few times a day now. I think you can see why.

The goal for 2012 is to finish the downstairs enough to move into it and also build the porches. We plan to have a deck-building party sometime late this summer, maybe Labor Day.

So far we don't have a very good phone connection, but please text anytime, or use a texting website like txtdrop.com. Otherwise stop on by!

We moved in

It's been a busy period since diving back into building this fall, and I apologize for not making time to write, but here are some photos that tell something about what's going on.

Happy new year!

Woodpile days

Well it's National Forest Products week, as you're probably aware. In case you didn't know, there's still time to put your inflatable Paul Bunyan out in the yard. The holiday comes at a good time for me as I'm done hanging drywall for a while, and on to gathering firewood.













I had nothing to do with this photo other than nabbing it off of a sculptor's website because it inspires me. -link- I don't think I'll be making sculptures this year other than the usual rectangular shapes (which I always find attractive).

Yep the upstairs drywall is all hung up now and cleaned up. The joints aren't taped yet but we're going to put that off until the downstairs is finished so we can move in very soon (~1 month?). There will only be a very basic kitchen and other plumbing as it progresses.

This is the fourth year in a row now that we set out in Spring with the goal of moving into this place before Winter's snow. Everyone's getting excited as it seems really close this time.




Erica and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary by staying the night out at the house without our children. And by taking a hike up 'Shattuck's hill.'

Neighborhood place for sale.

Update: This cabin was recently acquired by some new friends as a family getaway.  They're giving it a lot of love.  It now has a second floor and roof and a finished bathroom. We're so grateful you're here!

How to bend drywall

A strong wind this weekend is stripping the trees and giving us the sky back. The colors, smells, and other sensations of this season have been fantastic as usual. The biggest news in the neighborhood lately is the birth of a baby girl to the couple next door. She was born healthy through a long labor and during a hurricane-strength wind storm. As for me, I've been hanging drywall.

We have a plan to get us moved in before the heavy snow which is to roughly finish the upstairs and move into there, and then work on the downstairs through the winter. The other significant part of the plan is that I've committed to working 40 hours on the place every week. This means only a half day on Tuesday and Wednesday and a full day every other day except Sunday. It's not different from what I've been doing except that now I'm counting the hours. It makes a huge difference, as it's very easy to stretch breakfast and checking email into the afternoon. Now if I do that I have to stay at work until after the kids are in bed.

Breaking news: The attic room now has a staircase.









Now to the drywall bending. After experimenting with long scraps over the course of the last couple months using the various tips I learned from people I talked to or read about online, I've come to an understanding of how this is not difficult at all.

The materials you are dealing with are gypsum mud and paper. The two materials have different strengths and work to support each, similar to the way concrete and steel work together. Gypsum becomes flexible when moistened, but paper becomes very weak when wet.  Gypsum's special safety power is that it loves to hold water, so it has the ability to put out fires, and, relevant to the bending process, it sucks water out of whatever it can.

So:
1. Cut the width of your piece as it's much easier to cut a straight piece.

2. Lean the piece against a wall at about 45º and come back later! I bet you can find other things to do. 

3. In hot, humid weather this may be enough to get the bend you want. If it doesn't bend much over the course of an hour or two, you can loosen up the gypsum by wiping the top side only with a wet (but not dripping wet) sponge or dampening it with a spray bottle. Add a little water and wait an hour to see if you need more.

Be sure not to get the paper on the lower side of the sheet wet, because this will cause the sheet to break. Also be sure both sides of the paper have dried before handling the stuff.  It dries pretty quickly as the gypsum soaks up the water.  You may also want to wait until the mud dries inside before handling the piece so it's not too floppy.

You can then handle the bent piece just like a regular sheet.  It's unlikely that it will be exactly the same shape as your framing, but if it's close you should be able to screw it into place, or else slowly use clamps as in this post.


Some people will tell you to slice the paper sheathing many times but I had no luck with this. The sheet would just break where it was cut. 

We have a few curved drywall surfaces in this house, and although there have been moments of impatient regret in the process of their construction, when it's all done I love the curves. For finishing of curved drywall allow for a lot more time than flat surfaces, from 2X to 10X as much time, no exaggeration.
















 And then there’s baseboard and other trim that may cause you some frustration. But if you really like curved walls, you can do it. The sill for this opening in a 2x4 curved wall was cut from a 2 1/4" x 14" slab in order to get the curve, for example, and this baseboard is three 1/4" boards laminated together.

Wedding party process wrapup

It's been almost two weeks already since Auntie Nora's wedding and we're just now getting back on the house building side of things.  It was a fantastic time with family and friends from all across the country and beyond, kids chasing each other in their party clothes, superhuman dancing to Irish accordion tunes, a margarita bar across a fresh bridge, the list goes on and it was all to celebrate the joining of these two people so dear to my heart.

If you have any interest in weddings and/or beautiful pictures I strongly suggest checking them out at the blog of the official photographer, Kat Schleicher: ellagraphstudios.com

Here's another link to a bridal blog that features some of these photos with commentary from Nora and Kat.

But the wedding itself was only one part of the celebration. Nora and Jared came to stay with us for a whole month before the big day, and we worked, ate and played together on the house and grounds as other family members came in numbers congruent with the crescendo of energy leading up to the wonderful happening.

It's remarkable that almost the whole clearing and landscaping for the wedding happened in two two-week sessions. The first being in May, which was mostly Erica and the kids cutting trees and clearing brush, and the second being the last two weeks before the wedding.

Here's May:


















And the same spot on August first. In this photo we're putting a new handle on the post hole digger. The only way I knew it was the same place was by the trees that Erica is sitting on in the previous photo.











One of the first excavation jobs was to make a little road down to the site to haul things up and down. This photo looks up the hill in May.

















And this one looks down in August.

















To get the stumps out and smooth out the site we had help from a rented mini-excavator and our neighbors on their tractor. This is the last week of July.













Assembling the stage.















Then came sod.





































Painting signs
















The lumber which became a dance floor is to become part of a garage in the future. The delivery of this lumber didn't go so well. The truck got stuck in some of the freshly broken sand and it took a few hours and eventually a tow truck to get it out. The poor driver left in the dark, as our kids had just fallen asleep.












A lot of people worked with shovel and wheelbarrow to turn the rugged hillside into pleasant pathways.











Keep in mind it was exceptionally hot and humid these last two weeks. This photo shows the late morning humidity dripping off of a single-pane window. Now that the house is insulated it stays comfortably cool on the ground level all day.







If all this looks like a ton of work, it was, but I dearly love it. I'm tempted to apologize for demystifying the wedding experience for any of the guests, but I'm not going to. Part of the reason I keep this blog is to show what a pain in the ass country living is. There is a story told again and again of a young family moving out into the woods with a notion that it will be a simpler better life only to find that it's not very easy or comfortable. It pushes them to the limit and sometimes beyond. Erica and I were lucky to have a few years in different types of woods houses and most of a year in a tent together before we bought this plot of land. We had a pretty well developed idea of our own limits and each other's as well, but that's not to say they haven't developed further!

For all it's pain, however, the rewards are excellent. Getting to know yourself and your family better is a real wealth. And this time of year, when the berries are ripe, the bugs are gone, and the water is warm is hard to beat. Last night when I stopped working on the insulation at about 9:30, I had a beer on a stump down by the creek, listening to the water and the rustling of the night creatures. Bats, birds, flying squirrels. A coyote sang in the distance. Sometimes I have conversations with the neighbors where we say things like "We get to LIVE here," in hushed tones as if someone might hear. And sometimes I gloat on the internet.

Mudboarding

Our 'mudboarding' party was a busy one. There was way more food and beer than necessary, but we're doing a fine job of using it up before it goes bad. And who can stop the karate chop? Look out.

I was pretty scatter-brained over the weekend. It had been a long week of putting up insulation and making other preparations. I usually underestimate the time it takes to get things done, but with insulation I was exceptionally optimistic. Anyway thanks to everyone for coming and helping turn this place into a fine place to live.

Hauling in nearly 200 sheets of drywall was a feat in itself.



















So far we have sheetrock hung in a bedroom and a half, as well as in the mud room. Sheetrock is one of those brand names, like band-aid, that sometimes does a nicer job of describing the thing than the generic term.













This week is focused on outside work, though. We're preparing a place for my sister's wedding reception and since we're renting a mini-excavator to take out stumps for that there are a bunch of other things to do while it's here. I worked with it today. It's not cheap but worth a lot more than what you pay if you think of how hard it is to dig out a stump by hand or dig a ditch.