Emma

Can it get any cuter than this??

The Pine slog

Now that the frame is up, the next job to complete is to put all the tongue in groove pine over the frame. As you can imagine, there is a lot of pine, and it takes a long time to get it all on there!

This is a view from the top of the staging on the south wall, down into the house.

Here is Erick, cutting out a little doorway so we can get into the house:

This is the north west corner - there will be a door just to the left of that corner. Emma approves of the pine.

This is the north east corner, where the master bedroom is on the ground floor.

And a view from outside, looking at the north west corner of the house.

And as promised, the new (rented) toy. It's called a zoom-boom and it's a forklift with an extendable arm that reaches 20 + feet. It sure is handy for getting lumber and things up to the roof!

Rain rain go away!

The second truck arrived on Monday evening carrying the remainder of the house materials coming from Maine. This includes the rest of the wall and roof panels, the tongue in groove pine which will line the inside of our exterior walls, and the decking for the second floor (tongue in groove hemlock). The next task is to start putting up the pine, and yesterday the boys got started on that after unloading the truck with our new (rented) toy (picture of that coming tomorrow).

Anyway, Erick and I had grand plans of doing lots of work last night until it started doing this:

Unloading the first truck in the rain pretty much ruined Erick and I on working in the rain for a while, so last night we laid around and did laundry. By the way, I hope Crystal wins american Idol!

Big update!

I think that Musquash has some of the prettiest skies... Here is an example. This was Thursday evening, coming into Musquash.
Here is the house Wednesday evening: The staging is up and all ready for the crane coming the next day to raise the walls.

And here we are Thursday evening - the walls are up!!

This is Friday afternoon - here you see the crane raising the trusses for the roof:

Here is the side view after all the trusses were on - we are still missing the rafter tails which extend the roofline down to meet the top of the wall on the left hand side:

A view inside the frame - this doesn't do it justice.

And a view of the frame as of Sunday evening.

Another view of the frame:

It's pretty surreal to see it up, after months and month of planning!

A start on the frame

As you know, the first load of our frame arrived from Gerald Fowler (Timber Frame Solutions in Thorndike ME) on Friday last week. Gerald has been great throughout this process - taking panicked phone calls, answering hundreds of silly (and not so silly) questions, and generally making it possible for us to get anywhere with our house. He has guided us through every part of the process - faxing us diagrams to give to the foundation guy, talking to the foundation guy, advising us on windows, tools, materials, electrical plans, etc. Pretty much for every single thing that we've bought, built, rented, or thought about for our house, Gerald's given us input.

Anyway, the frame, the panels (which serve double duty as the walls and insulation), the sheathing (tongue in groove pine), decking for the 2nd floor, and the sill plates have all been provided by Gerald. The frame (and everything else) is measured and cut precisely for our needs so all we have to do is put it together. (Ha!)

This week Erick has stayed home from work to begin putting the frame together. He's had some help, and in two days Erick, Wayne, and Garret have put on the sill plates, built the south, east, west, and one of our two north walls, and assembled all the gable ends. The next step in the frame is done using the crane again: everything gets lifted off the ground and secured in place.

So here is a picture of the four walls laying across our slab:

Another shot of the walls:

Erick and Wayne standing by the gable ends:

Another shot of the gable ends, and a closer look at the walls (8' north wall is on the top-left):

Emma tries out the slab

Emma thought she'd give our new slab a try this weekend.

" Hrmm... Why is my bum warm? I think it's safe to lay down..."

"It smells alright.... and it feels so nice on my tummy!"

"mmmmm warm tummy!"

zzzzzz.....

First flatbed arrived

Well on Friday afternoon last week, the trailer arrived with the first shipment of our timberframe. We were blown away by the size of some of the beams, with the largest being 6" x 10" x 24'. Three men can't pick those suckers up!

So Saturday morning, early if not bright, we went up to the lot to meet the boom truck to unload the trailer. The weather was, shall we say, not cooperating.
The boom truck arrived at 7:45 am.

We got underway very quickly - with Erick and I setting up blocking to lay the beams on, strapping the beams, hooking the straps to the ball on the crane, and Kevin (the crane guy) moving the loads where we directed. We pretty much layed everything out on the north and east walls of the frame, since the well digging truck was parked behing the house we had to leave the south and west sides free so he could get back out.

And before we knew it, the trailer was empty! Well, ok, it took 2 and a half hours and it poured the entire time. BUT we were done by 11:00 am. After that we were absolutely exhausted, and spent the rest of the morning/early afternoon lying around being lazy.

And... now we know where the low spots on our floor are. ;)

And here we are Sunday morning, with all the lumber tarped over:

Stay tuned - I will be posting another update today! :)

Solar Slab performing like a champ!

As you know, the slab was poured on Tuesday. The whole point of having the slab is so that it will absorb heat from the sun and help to warm our house in winter. Well, yesterday was a sunny day, and when I went up to the lot around 7:30 pm, and sat myself down on the slab, it was pleasantly warm. It stayed warm until after 9:00, too. Yippee! I look forward to seeing how well it retains heat when it has a house (and walls) around it!

The floor is done!

Who would have thought that plain old concrete can be so pretty? Here is the finished floor:
And our new front step:

And as promised an intermediary step:

Erick and Ryan fitting in the last peices of sub-floor insulation:

We have a floor!!

Ok here is a shot that Erick took this morning right after they finished trowelling the concrete floor. This is not what the finished product will look like - it still needs several layers of sealant, and oh yeah, it also needs to dry! More later... (I will also be posting some pictures of the intermediate steps between the last update and now).