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