Last week of May 2013

The weather has been cold, very windy and drizzly.  We have been working with foam board insulation so there are a lot of cut offs on the construction site and the wind has been strong enough to blow them up over the house into the neighbor's property so I spent a fair amount of my time chasing down errant foam and building paper.

As the weather was so stinky we worked closer to the ground for 3 days this week.  We installed the round window in the tower.  It is even more stunning than Carol and I imagined it would be.

The floor in this picture is a temporary floor, the pond and big rock are right below.  We will leave this floor until we get the walls insulated and sheet-rocked.

Started working on the stairway to the "tower keep".  It is more of a ladder, very similar to the ladders on military ships.  The treads are mortised into the stringers.

While I roughed in the electrical wiring, Sam and Luke installed windows in the master bedroom.

The hole thru the hallway wall is temporary access.  The master bedroom is between two huge chunks of rock and the only access we have to this side of the bedroom for moving big pieces of construction material is thru this hole.

This is the view of the rocks through the window above the sunken tub.  The window is a slider, so when the weather is warm we will be able to open the window while we soak in the ofuro.

Sam completed the installation of the foam insulation on the top of the tower on Saturday, except for one rafter bay, he ran out of spray foam... we have used about 100 cans of the contractor's size spray foam on this project... I should have purchased stock in the company before we started construction.

This week, if the weather cooperates we will complete the tower roof, including shingles, and we will get the windows installed.

The list of things to do gets shorter day by day and we are beginning to see the end of the project.  We set a completion goal of the 1st of July about a month ago, and we are going to work our asses off toward that goal but most likely we will need another 30 days to complete the work.

It has been great fun for us to live in the house.  The expanse of windows on the south wall is breath taking... we can follow the flight of birds from one side of the house to the other... it is really something.  By the way the birds are back here, we have seen grey jays, western tanager (Piranga ludoviciana), robins and mountain blue birds.  We have seen wild turkeys on the road to town but none in the yard so far this year.  We see deer in the yard every day or so.  I am looking forward to the butterflies, I hope to get a picture of the yellow swallowtail this year.  And this morning... we had an female elk walk through the property!  First time we have seen an elk here.

Going climbing today with the judo group.  And later they will be by to take a look at the house.

Life is wonderful!!!!!!!!

Van

April 29th thru May 24th

It has been over a month since I last blogged about the project - it has been a busy month.  Carol was gone for a couple of weeks, and with the additional cooking, cleaning, etc. that she takes care of I ran out of hours at the end of the day to add to the blog. 

On the last blog, April 28th, we were working on the hallway that connects the tower to the master bedroom suite.  Carol and I had a long discussion and decided that we were going to stain the rafters in the hallway a dark color and I really like the effect.  The niche (bump out) on the right side of the picture will house the samurai armor that I received from my judo students two years ago at Kangeiko, our annual judo winter training festival in Fargo.

Construction on the "tower keep" starts.

This picture puts into perspective how high the "tower keep" will be when it is completed.















Starting sheathing.

The exterior is sheathed, the interior timber frame and rafters installed, we are working on installing a vapor barrier on the ceiling boards.  Sam Rudd is helping us for a few weeks.

When you are about 25' in the air it is important to be safe.  Here Sam and I are modeling safety harnesses, actually rock climbing gear.  It allowed us to work on the edges of the roof without the fear/danger of falling.

Sam and Luke built a scaffold around the top of the tower to make it easier and safer to work on the "tower keep".  Both Sam and Luke think we should build a permanent deck around the top of the tower.  Several of our friends agree with Sam and Luke... I think NOT!  Just so you know!  The scaffold lumber will eventually be used for the deck on the south side of the house.

View of the hallway roof.  This roof and the roof over the tower are different in construction from the rest of the house.  Most of the house is an engineered hot roof, these roofs are both cold roofs, a space is left above the insulation for air flow (a hot roof has no ventilation and is more complicated to build.)  Four layers of 2" foam insulation were installed in each rafter bay and spray foamed to close off all spaces.

 

First shingle ready to be installed.



The blogger software starts to get a bit dodgy after I get more than half a dozen pictures installed...  so I am going to close this session.  This session covers from the end of April thru the 3rd week in May.  This afternoon I will take a few more pictures of the work that we accomplished in the last week and post them, hopefully, tomorrow. 

All ya'll have a great weekend!

Van