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It’s Friday

Trusses are expected to arrive a week from today. 

We are still trying to find the sweet spot where torrential downpours outside don’t result in moisture coming inside…. we are almost there, but not quite.  We have been lucky, so far, and any water that has come in has been caught quickly with nothing ruined…. but it will be very nice to have the trusses up and sheathed so that there are overhangs and a water proof lid on our home. 

We had a torrential downpour yesterday…. all day, so the guys put a bunch of time into clearing the roof of water to start the day and doing some extra taping and flashing before heading home for the weekend.

Walls and water protection

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Rain is coming and we are headed to a wedding

Craig and I have been busy baking the cake for a 250 guest wedding and today, we have to deliver.

Meanwhile, here at the homestead, the guys are preparing for rain. The plan for the day was to do a minimal amount of framing work and then to make sure that everything was buttoned up tight against the rain…. Oh yes, and the electrician came and hooked up the power for the AC.

While we were gone….
  • Craig and the cake in the walk in fridge
  • Lysha and Leanette
  • The bride and groom’s table
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No walls and new walls

The tree cam is back! We have some good footage of today’s work. 

On the inside: the plumbers came and disconnected the fixtures in the yelow bathroom. On the outside: the bedroom wall was knocked down and the new exterior wall was framed.  

Kevin-the-contractor gave us good news: the trusses will arrive on July 6th, which means that we should have a watertight roof over the house by July 10th. That will be a relief for everybody.

say goodbye to our former north wall and hello to the new north wall framing
Framing an exterior wall
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Busting out the meditation room

Monday the crew increased from two to three and the speed of work picked up.  The tree cam wasn’t up because there was a chance of rain and I hadn’t finished the mount for the waterproof box so we don’t have much in the way of movies but we do have some stills.

A temporary wall was put up in the meditation room, about 4′ in from the old exterior wall and then, boom, boom, bang, bang, out came the old exterior wall. Then there was some more bang-banging and all of a sudden we had a new exterior wall framed.

In the middle of all of the banging,  Craig and I scrambled out to the almost demolished exterior wall and scavenged the hardware from the windows so that we have spare hardware for our remaining 60 year old Anderson casement windows.

  • destructo-chango
  • how to mount a camera on a tree
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Birthday Laundry

In honor of Craig’s birthday on Sunday we … went to the laundromat and washed all of our comforters, blankets and sleeping bags. Now we can pack them up and put them in storage.

On the way to The Wash and Wire
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Demo the meditation room

Friday there was some more progress insulating the floor and the guys moved inside and tore apart the meditation room. When they removed the wallboard we finally learned what the house is currently insulated with: rockwool. …. It’s pretty good stuff, but you can’t put enough of it in a wall framed with 2×4’s.

In other news, the HVAC guys (in orange) came and reconnected the AC… whahoo! I’m not normally a big fan of AC but, with the construction going on, we can’t open and close windows at will, so a little help cooling down the inside of the house is fantastic….. plus, once the guys start working inside they will appreciate it.

And….. the camera moved outside to the cherry tree. We need to make some exposure adjustments, and I’m looking around for an inexpensive wide angle lense adaptor, but for the moment, it works. 

At the end of today’s movie you can see a big tarp being secured over the wall and the new foundation. That’s because it’s supposed to rain all weekend and we wouldn’t want to flood the new foundation or have rain driven in through our exposed walls. 

Floor framing, AC hookup, rain protection
  • baseboard heater gone
  • closet trim gone
  • wall board and rockwool insulation gone
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The stone wall

Craig has been working on extending our stone wall.  Some days he’s won the battle, and on other days it won the battle (and Craig ended up with a very bruised finger).  On Thursday, Craig declared victory… for now: 

Meanwhile… down at the roadside,  Craig built a stone wall from the spare stones that had to be moved
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Floor framing

Thursday there was some progress framing and insulating the new crawl space floor. This was held up a little because the HVAC guys said they want to plumb for the relocated radiator location and that would be easier to do before the insulation gets attached to the bottom of the floor joists. 

In other news, we moved the camera outside to the cherry tree and started filming from there. You can see Craig burying the extension cord that powers the camera in the background of the movie.

We need to make some exposure adjustments and see if we can add a wide angle lens adaptor to the setup, but the footage wasn’t too bad for a first try.

We start the day filming from indoors, and then move to the tree
  • how to mount a camera on a tree
  • floor joists
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Sill plate / Floor joists

The new addition to the house ties in to the original foundation and also to the 10′ laundry room addition that a previous owner added. Those two foundations aren’t perfectly level with each other so there has been a bit of extra time spent to get the sill plate for the new exterior walls dead on level. 

So far, we have been filming the construction from a couple of locations inside the house. At this point we really need to move the camera / raspberry pi outside so that we can see the framing action on the wall. We’ve picked a big cherry tree as the place to mount the camera…. tomorrow Craig will mount a 2×4 high up on the trunk and I will try to come up with a waterproof enclosure that we can put the pi/ camera into which we will mount to the 2×4. 

Up until today, the guys did not know that we had been making little time lapse movies of their work. Today we broke the news to them and they took it pretty well… or at least we think they did; proof of their acquiescence will be when the power cord to the cherry tree setup doesn’t magically get unplugged during the day.

attaching the joist hangers
Sill plate take 2. Can we get it level?
Hawley inspecting the new foundation
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First Try at the sillplate, plus another big hole

Tuesday,  materials started showing up for framing up the new exterior walls.  They busted a big (person sized) hole through the old foundation in order to give access to the new foundation…. Plus they started on capping the new foundation blocks.

  • The last of the overhang in the dumpster
  • new materials
  • The access whole to the old basement
Build a level sill plate