Allard Lodge

November

2011-01-17T17:28:00.001-08:00

Hmmm, what do we have here? A little post that I started in January and then never finished!

Here's some more pictures of the back of the house. We were still working on the roof well into November, luckily the rains held off a little bit.

In this picture, the shed dormer is part way shingled.
However, the weather was still wet enough that it had to be covered up with a tarp when work was completed for the day.

The front of the house was finished first. You can see the tarp pulled over from the shed dormer while the guys worked on it during the day.

As of the day before Thanksgiving the roof is finished! There is still a little bit of work to be done, like lead work on some of the logs, but the house is safe for winter!!!

October

2011-01-17T17:22:00.000-08:00

I worked on staining/clearing the last of the fascia boards, inside of course since the weather was still not quite so great.
We've got the plumbing vents poked through and the sheeting done on the back side. You can see the tarps pulled back so we can work...but we didn't take them off because we had to pull them back over at the end of the night. We had a big hole cut in the roof for the skylight.

Just two sections left to go for roofing on the back side.

But the front side is done! Like that hail on the roof? It was cold!

September work

2011-01-15T19:42:00.000-08:00

By September, we were really seeing some progress and getting those shingles up was such a huge relief for us! But, there's still lots of work to be done.

Dad worked on creating this lead flashing so that water doesn't run down the logs and get underneath the shingles. There's still some counter flashing that gets cut in above this lead.

We started to see shingles go up on the main roof.

Lots of metal flashing going up too. Roy got those shingles cut perfectly.

Roy was eager to get going on the shingles, but we were still running behind, so we used up all available daylight hours - and then some. We had to get the cedar fascia boards all up before he could start on the shingles. He worked himself out of a job quite a few days and then we'd hurry and try to get another section ready for him to work on.

In this picture, you can see the fascia up on the left dormer, but not on the right dormer yet. And Roy worked up the center as far as he could before starting on the dormers.

You can see in this picture the insulation still going up on the back side of the house while they worked on roofing the front side.

Dad & I worked our behinds off trying to get ahead of the other guys so that we could be ready for sheeting by the time Roy made his way around the back of the house. In this picture Dad's cutting the insulation to width to fit in between the stringers.

The early morning sun shining on the house~makes you see just how green that roof is.

Before we got finished with the front side of the house, the rains came back. We thought we'd been done with the tarps, but we had to drag them back out again to protect the peak of the roof and the entire back side of the house which was still completed unprotected.

More roof work

2011-01-12T17:48:00.000-08:00

In August, Papa came to visit/supervise and made a new friend~

Dana drilled some holes for more lights, and yes this set-up IS OSHA approved~

We had a bear making regular, nightly visits through the neigborhood~

Bandit worked way too hard and had to nap, often~

And we worked alot on the roof. All the insulation came in 4'X8' sheets so they all had to be cut to fit between the stringers. We did two layers of insulation, so there was lots of cutting/fitting going on.

Once we got all the insulation in we were able to start sheeting~

Remember, it's 27' to the peak on this side, and the 10/12 pitch of the roof makes it very difficult to work on~

Almost got the front side sheeted, just some small pieces left to cut into place~

Once the front side was done, we moved around to the back side. This section of roof is above our dining room~

Roofing

2010-12-04T12:43:00.000-08:00

One of the few things we decided not to do ourselves was the roof - meaning just the tar paper and shingles. Once we got the porch decked, Roy (the roofer) could start roofing the porch. It was so nice to see progress happening while we were still working on other things. So one sunny day we loaded up the roof with shingles and tar paper. The Gradall of course made this so much easier!

You can see in this picture that we have the shingles piled up in the center. It really was so nice to have shingles going up even when we still had tarps on parts of the house!

Here you can see the shingles loaded along the back and up the sides.

And the tarps are still on, but the front porch is protected with tar paper and shingles.

While Roy was working on the shingles, we were still working on:

Leveling all the stringers on the main portion of the roof~

Planing down any areas that weren't level~

More leveling of stringers~

Drilling about 6,743 vent holes in the stringers~

And finishing up with some more A35 clips~

All this before we were ready to start insulating the roof. We had all this insulation stored inside the house, so first order of business was getting all the insulation organized outside~

And there was a lot of it! In this pic you can also see that Roy made it around the back side of the house with the shingles. We still haven't been able to tear the tarps off the back side yet.

We enlisted Aaron and Jeanie to help cut the insulation to size~

We filled up all the spaces between stringers with two layers of insulation~

The front side is fully insulated and the porch is roofed~

Finally the back side of the house is uncovered, wired, lights in and ready for insulation~Insulation cut and piled up ready to go in~

We've come a long way, baby.

2010-12-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

Well, the summer is over and the rain is here. Hard to believe it's already December. We spent a lot of time working on the house, and it really shows now. We worked on the porch, the roof, the electrical and the plumbing. While we still have a looooooong way to go, we made huge steps this year.

Before we could put the roof on, the electrical and plumbing had to be completed.

We had to decide where each of our pocket lights needed to go, as the wiring has to be run up through the roof system.

Each hole had to be cut from below and above since the tongue and groove is so thick.

When we were done, we had holes all over in the ceiling. It did rain once before we got the roof on, and we had water running down through some of these lights. Luckily, it wasn't much rain and didn't really hurt much.

Then the actual lights get put in from above and wired.

We had to drill holes in the stringers to connect the lights all together and then drill small holes in the ceiling to run the wires back down into the house to connect to the light switches. It was not easy figuring out where all the lights and switches needed to go. And Harvey and Dana framed up for the chimney.

Decking the Porch

2010-09-07T06:36:00.000-07:00

July brought us some more good weather and the opportunity to get our fascia stained.

The south side of the house before decking the tongue and groove.

The porch roof at one of the corners:

We got some help from some friends for the decking, which made it go a lot quicker!

It didn't go so quickly though once we got to the logs. Each board had to be cut to fit perfectly around the logs.

And we also had to cut into the main section of the roof for the porch roof to fit up inside it. Our roofer insisted on this so that he could run the shingles up underneath the main roof. This should help us a lot with the rain and keeping things dry.

You can see here the porch roof cutting up underneath the main roof.

And the same view from below.

Bye, bye tarps...hello porch!

2010-08-17T08:19:00.000-07:00

So after a whole winter of the tongue and groove taking up residence in our shop, a whole winter of tip toeing around this trailer and not being able to open up the beer fridge all the way....finally the sun comes out and the tongue and groove goes outside!

All winter long we had some pretty bad wind storms. Many days the tarps looked like this: (Notice you can see through part of the tarp there...not good)

And many mornings before work we had to push out water bubbles that had formed in between the porch header logs. Note that when I say "bubbles" I really mean "lakes". No joke. Sometimes there was so much water stuck in the tarps you couldn't push it out and you had to let it siphon for hours before the bubble was small enough to push the rest of the water out. Good riddance tarps. I never want to see you again.

The weather was still kind of iffy through the first part of June, so we did leave the smaller tarps on. These ones were hidden underneath the 100' X 100'. You can see the tongue and groove going on the porch here.

And here the front side of the porch is completely decked in tongue and groove.

The view from below:

And at the end of the front side, waiting to work around the north side of the house.

Winter work

2010-07-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

The rains seemed like they would never end this year. We spent a lot of time working on the interior of the house. Building new walls and just finishing up some of the details we didn't make it to earlier.

We worked on the kitchen quite a bit. Below are some pictures of my bar area.

Nothing's level, nothing's square. Boy oh boy is this fun!
Finally you can see it coming together. This picture below is looking out of the kitchen towards the living room on the left and the dining room on the right.

And below is the fancy sliding wall we built for the kitchen so that we'll have somewhere to hang our cabinets. They can't be hung directly on the logs because the logs will compress over time and I don't want my cabinets moving! The window will be above my sink.
We've also gotten a lot of our wiring run through the house.

This is our master bath. The shower is on the left and my linen cabinet is front and center.

The view from my loft looking outside. Funny how all you can see is the inside of the tarp!

Here is looking from the loft toward my master bedroom. The master bath is on the left, bedroom on the right and the doorway right in the middle.

And, we got a new puppy. This is Rowdy. He's a better climber than a helper!

Oops!

2010-06-28T23:04:00.001-07:00

Well apparently I was a bad picture taker this winter. I don't have any pics for November, December or January. So check out my last 2 posts to get caught up through 2009 and I'll dive into 2010 just as soon as I can.

Rain's a-comin'

2010-06-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Funny thing is that for the month of October - the entire month of October - the only pictures I have of the house are ones of this tarp. This 100' X 100', 350lbs behemoth tarp. This tarp that Dana and I spread out on the tip top of the house BY OURSELVES. Let me just say, that I am lucky to be alive.

Who knew they made tarps this big? And, yes, we really didn't work on the house the whole month. It was hunting season and raining after all. Priorities.

Surprise!

2010-06-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, amazingly we are still building a house. Curiously enough it seems that my blog posts dropped off sometime before hunting season began and then just never started again. We of course took some time off working on the house for hunting season and then the rains came and not much more work got done on the house. We did actually get some work done inside the house during the winter time and now that summer is here again we are seeing some more progress. So for those of you in far away lands (Indiana, anyone? Ohio, maybe?) I'll try to bring you up to speed.

We did a little work framing inside the house. This picture is looking north at my master bathroom wall.

This picture is looking west at my master bathroom & walk-in closet wall. Bath is on the left, closet on the right.

This picture is looking south toward the loft area and you can see on the left, there is no floor. That is where the living room is open to the ceiling. The master bath wall is on the right.

We didn't get too much done inside before we made it back outside to work on the porch some more. When we put up the porch rafters we left them long because we hadn't yet decided how long we wanted the overhang to be.

This is where it gets technical:

Just look at the precision.

And the final product:

Even though it doesn't look like it, there really was a string line, measuring tape and level involved in the process.

Oh, and hunting season wasn't a complete waste of time:

Rafters, rafters, rafters

2009-08-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

There's not much to say about these rafters, except that they have been a major pain in the rear. Our house is custom. Each log is hand cut, measured, leveled, ground and then repeat. Over and over and over.

Here's the view from my perch on the gradall platform. I get to run that come along you see in the corner of the picture to get the log exactly where we want it. Pretty ingenious if you ask me.

My grinder, my friend. Yeah right. This grinder has been attached to my hand for so long now, I have a permanent claw grip. I'm learning that it is completely normal for your fingers to be numb each morning when you wake up. No biggie. But just look how beautiful those notches are. You'll never see them again. Unless you stand on a ladder on my porch to get a gander.

Dana starts out the notch with his chainsaw, then comes me and my grinder. Good times, good times.

Umm, looks like we're thinking here. It's nice that the thinking happens before we start making cuts in the logs.

And, this is why we want to think about it first. It's not fun to cut with your chainsaw overhead. It's even less fun if you have to do it twice.

Sawdust? What sawdust? It pretty much looks like we get snow year round at our house.

Is that really safe?

Going up...

2009-08-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

Bandit likes to be where ever he thinks he's going to get to GO somewhere. He'll wait in the back of the truck to make sure you don't forget to take him with you. And he loves to just be on the car trailer. If it's hooked up to the truck or not, that's where he likes to be. Of course, it is much better when moving, as he likes to stand on the trailer while riding around the yard like he is king of the mountain. Apparently, being up in the air is just as exciting as leaving the confines of our yard or hanging out on the trailer.

This day, he decided that being on the platform of the gradall was the place to be. We lifted him up in the air to see what he would do and he just laid there.

So, we let him back down and hooked up the log. Even having the ratchet strap tied down above him was no bother. If he could ride, he was happy. It took quite a bit of coersion to get him off of there. But I was not going to be 20 feet up in the air with my dog on the platform next to me...

Everybody likes to get in on a little riding the platform action...when our nieces were here they wanted to see what it was like after watching Dana and I up there all day. Don't everyone freak out....Grandpa Frank went up there with them to make sure they didn't jump off or do anything dumb. Safety first.

The boom's not fully extended, but they're still up there quite a ways.

I'm not sure how great they thought it was while they were up there, but once they got down it was pretty cool to have been up there. Although I guess Nicole pointed out to Grandma & Grandpa afterwards that they were standing next to a sign that said "Do not lift personnel". Hmmm...Safety first I tell ya! Adult supervision, adult supervision. No one was hurt in the making of these photographs. I promise.

Porch rafters

2009-08-11T20:30:00.000-07:00

We are finally getting closer to having this porch together. We are now working on the rafters, which are a pain in the rear to say the least. They are very time consuming. Each one gets a notch cut in it to fit down perfectly on header below it. To do this, each log gets lifted up to it's position on the header, measured, leveled, scribed and then taken back down for the chainsaw cut. After that, we lift it back up to it's place on the porch and set back down. Then we hold our breath to see how well it fits.

Here's a picture of the first two in place. They look pretty lonely.

Continuing work across the front of the house. It looks like this picture is of putting the log up to do the scribing...no notches cut yet.

Here it looks like we've got it up for the second time, after the notch has been cut to check the fit.

Sometimes (ok, everytime) there's a little more cutting or grinding that has to happen to get the logs to fit in place. It's a pretty slow process.

Finally, we've gotten most of the logs up on the front of the house. As of this picture, we've yet to start on the sides or the back. You'll also notice that we skipped the corners. You'll know why later...

The view of the logs from the master bedroom window...or I might just be standing on the Gradall platform for this. Hard to say.

More header work...

2009-07-23T19:43:00.000-07:00

We spent days putting up these headers, so here are more pictures.
Each header has to be centered and leveled. Then you have to drill a hole so your lag bolt can go all the way through the header into the log below....a tornado couldn't blow this thing away there's so much metal holding it together!

Here's Dana's crazy dad working with him up on the platform.

My crazy Dad running the equipment.

Frank, again, running a string line for who knows what. I've lost count of how many rolls of string we've gone through...

Dana is just as happy as can be sitting up on top of those logs!

In case you were wondering...

2009-07-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

how Dana made those fancy corners fit together so well. After the first log is up you can stand on the Gradall platform and cut off the end with a chainsaw. You know where your outside corner should be, so this part is easy.

This part: easy as well! All you have to do is balance on the log 14 feet in the air and try to get your chainsaw all the way around the log you are working on.

Don't worry, the Gradall is there to catch you if you fall backwards...just don't fall the other way.

Then you can cut your other log and hope, hope, hope that they fit together just right!

And of course they do! See how simple this is...you too can build your own log house!

Ok, ok, so there might have been a little more cutting and a lot more grinding to get them to fit...

Setting up headers

2009-07-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

Finally after setting up all of the porch beams, we can move on to the headers. I just have to say that I love, love, love, love the Gradall! This is absolutely the most useful thing that we have purchased. Although, as you can see, a little man power is still necessary once in a while!

Getting the headers all lined up and centered on the beams. I just can not even imagine how we would do this if we didn't have that Gradall.

The perfect corners that Dana meticulously cut and sanded to fit so well together!

View of the back from the loft windows.

Ouch!

2009-07-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

A while back while we were working inside the house building walls. I got stung by something. I was standing on the stairs taking a creative picture of the guys below me when something buzzed my ear and landed on my shoulder. It then proceeded to sting/bite me on the neck and a couple of times on my back. Holy cow it hurt!! After that we bug bombed the house. We found a bunch of dead flies but never anything that could have stung me like that. Flash forward to today. Apparently hornets decided to take nest up by the roof. They built a huge nest up next to our ridge beam. So we bought some spray that was supposed to spray 20 feet. Dana crawled up on a ladder in the middle of the night to spray them. The spray only sprayed about 5 feet. The hornets are 27 feet in the air! So Dana had to crawl up on the Gradall platform to spray them. They got mad! A couple of them thumped Dana in the chest while he was spraying so we decided that was enough for tonight. This was what we found when we got up in the morning:

They were everywhere. But somehow we didn't kill all of them because they've come back twice more now to rebuild their nest. We finally bought some different spray and it seems that they might possibly be gone for good. Lets hope so, because we're spending a lot of time building the porch on that side of the house and I don't want to get stung again! Yuck!

Porch work

2009-07-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

All the logs are uncovered and sorted out. These are the logs we're using for the porch posts. They all had to be squared off (as much as a log can be squared off), cut and sanded smooth on the bottom. The bottoms of each log got treated with copper green and got a piece of pressure treated wood screwed on. Each piece of pressure treated was cut with the jigsaw to fit the bottom of the log.

The pressure treated fit pretty well by the time we were done.

While the Gradall is great for moving logs around, sometimes they just need to be man-handled. Each log had a hole drilled in the bottom of it to set down on the piece of rebar sticking up out of the concrete posts.

The logs all stood up pretty quickly. I think we had them all standing after just a couple of days after work.

Next up: headers and rafters!

Summer time!

2009-07-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

Apparently I'm a little behind on my blogging again. Since I've been getting hassled by some who frequent this blog (you know who you are) here are some more pictures of what's been going on around here.

We're working on the interior walls upstairs. Here's Bandit guarding the newly purchased lumber for those walls.

Finally the sun has come out a little bit around here. It wasn't a bad winter, but it just has stayed wet for so long we've been too nervous to pull out the logs from under the tarps. But since we've finally got the concrete work done, it's time to get started on the porch. Even with heavy equipment it can take all day to move piles of logs around. I still feel so lucky that we were able to purchase the Gradall. I really have no idea how people build houses without something like this!

These are the logs we will be using to build the porch with.

Pouring

2009-05-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

This is the only picture I took last Sunday. Dana, Dad and I poured concrete all day long, so no one was available to take any pictures. I'm sure our neighbors loved us that day - the concrete mixer ran until 8:45 that night. And it is NOT quiet in any way! The concrete needs a bit of baby sitting after it's poured. You have to keep it smoothed out and then when it's just dry enough I had to put the drift pins in there (the little pieces of rebar that sit right in the center). Then when it's even drier, but not all the way dry, you have to go around and edge all of the sides. We finally ate dinner about 10pm and then had to go back out around 11pm to do all the edging and make sure it was setting up ok. It was a long day to say the least.

Monday morning Aaron was back from the camping trip that we missed out on and came by to help us pour the last side.

So glad to be able to say that one more little task has been completed! Next up - standing up the logs for the porch. Stay tuned...

Updated views of the house

2009-05-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures showing more recent views of the north, west and south sides of the house. These are all from last weekend. Notice the tarps still on the roof. Once we get the porch posts standing and the porch roof system started those will be pulled off so we can finally finish the roof!

Dana and Dad are working to make sure all of the form board squares are just that...square. Lots of pushing and pulling to get the boards in just the right spot before they can be screwed.

Form Boards

2009-05-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

Here's part of the form boards up on the north side of the house.

Bandit's always right in the middle of things with whatever random stick he can find. Usually it's some 2X4 that he's found laying around.

My beautifully dug hole. After we dug the hole and put up the form board, we went through and touched up the holes to make sure that they were exactly the same size as the form squares and made sure the corners were nicely squared off. It was a LOT of digging.

The measured, leveled and fully screwed together forms on the west side of the house.

Porch posts...again!

2009-05-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day weekend. Always love having a long weekend. We thought about going camping with friends. You know, take some time to relax, sit in the sun, drink some beer. That didn't happen. Instead we spent all day Saturday digging holes around the remaining two sides of the house. We measured for all of the squares, painted our lines and got them all dug. Then we started building the forms for these sides.

We had to put up some of our batter boards again, since they had been run over many times with various pieces of equipment. We ran our string lines, measured every which way and made sure everything was level.

Then we got to drive stakes in everywhere to make sure none of our boards moved.

Filling in low spots

2009-05-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

We put a couple of dump trailer loads of dirt on the north side of the house. It took quite a bit of dirt to bring it up, and even then we were still lower than we wanted to be.

There's Bandit again, we still couldn't get him out of that trailer! I think he really likes to lay on the cool dirt. Luckily with the dump trailer we didn't have to do too much shoveling, but some of the dirt stuck in there. It was still really damp.

Here's where we built up the dirt around the forms that sat so high off the ground.

You can see here just how soupy that side of the house was. With so much rain it never dried out and that's the main road to the back yard, so everytime we drove over it, it just got worse and worse. It's been a couple of weeks now since we've really had any rain, so it's dried out quite a bit since then.

Moving mountains

2009-05-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

The north side of the house is much lower than the south side. Below is a picture of the forms that we built for the front (east side) of the house. As you can see, when we made it to the north side, the forms were quite a ways from the ground. We decided that before we built the forms on the north side we would bring in some dirt to make things easier. On the east side we had to figure something out so the concrete wouldn't go everywhere, so we built up the holes with sheetrock and then piled dirt up around it. We had a couple little blow outs, but nothing too major. But, we thought we'd make it easier on ourselves the next time around.

The very back yard was really uneven, so Dana stole dirt from the high spots. Thank goodness for tractors!

Bandit always wants to go along for a ride, you can't keep him out of that trailer. I don't think he thought it was so fun once the trailer was filled with dirt! He got himself un-buried though and then just walked all over the top of all the dirt.

More concrete - 2nd side of house

2009-05-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

A couple weekends ago we poured concrete for the porch posts on the south side of the house. I had to work part of the day...had to give a presentation at a first time home buyers workshop. Fun! So my contribution to the work that day was to cut and tie rebar. There are 28 (?) porch posts around the house. We had already finished the ones on the front of the house, obviously. So before I went to work I made 6 more squares of rebar for the holes that Dana and Dennis were going to pour that day. When I came home I made the remaining 13, to try to get ahead of the game a little bit for the next pouring weekend.

Dana and I had dug the holes for the concrete one night after work that week and then the next night he and Leonard built the forms, which is no small job. It made it easier for pouring day, as all the guys then had to do was mix and pour the concrete.

We've been using Leonard's concrete mixer, which is great because we can pull it to right in front of the hole, mix the concrete and then try to dump it right in the hole. Of course it can't be just that easy though, so we had to build a wooden chute to catch the concrete, and then use a shovel to get it all in the hole. It takes about two full mixes to fill up one hole.

Here's Dana and Dennis smoothing out the tops of the concrete before it fully dries. One more side down! Only two to go!

Concrete...

2009-05-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

I realize I'm a little behind on my posting for the house so here are some pictures of the porch posts on the front side of the house. We spent a day stripping off the forms and cleaning them up so they can be used again. There's still 3 sides of the house that need concrete poured! The concrete has metal strapping and rebar set in it to stand the logs up on to start building the porch. We poured 9 of these along the front.

Spring is finally here! Lots of flowers blooming in the yard and all of the trees have leaves back on them! Must mean that summer's coming and the rain will stop!

After: Pacific Nomad

2009-05-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

Here are pictures of the finished boat. The owner decided to change the boat's name from Roller Bay to Pacific Nomad. The boat turned out great, of course. Dana's last boat. The end of an era. It must be hard to leave this...everything is so familiar. But, exciting things are happening and life is good. :)

Before: Roller Bay

2009-05-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

Dana has officially built his last boat. Here are some pictures of the Roller Bay in the process of being sponsoned. This boat kept it's original length, but they made the boat wider. These pictures are a little old, since the boat is now completed, but for some reason I could only upload a few pictures at a time, so there will be another post for the After pictures. I think Dana is pretty happy to be away from the heights, the smoke, the cutting and grinding...all of it.

Porch posts

2009-04-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, the guys formed up for the concrete for the porch posts on the front of the house. We'll still have to do this around the other three sides of the house, but we've got the front done at least. We spent most of Saturday mixing and pouring concrete. Not too many pictures from that day, because I had to help. I got to be the one to shovel it in to the hole after the guys mixed it up. Lots of fun and I'm still sore today! :)

March pictures

2009-04-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

I am having serious issues with my computer right now. I've decided to start taking pictures in RAW and I can't upload them to my blog like I used to. So you might see a posting with just pictures in it until I remember to upload the pictures before I start typing my little story. I'll figure it out eventually, so just be patient with me.

Changes, changes

2009-04-14T20:44:00.000-07:00

Things have been pretty exciting around our house lately. Spring is finally here so we are actually making some progress on our house. The mortgage business is keeping me super busy right now, so that's my big excuse for not keeping up on my blogging.

The biggest thing happening right now is that Dana decided to quit the job he's worked at for the past 11 1/2 years. Wow! He is now the proud half owner of a countertop fabrication/construction business. Quite a big change for him, but I think it is really a great move for him. This will give him more flexibility with his time, so I'm crossing my fingers for more work on the house this summer! His partner in the business is our friend Leonard, who you've read about in this blog. The guys work absolutely great together and they both have the same work ethic, which is a big plus! Hopefully I'll get to post some pictures of their work in the not so distant future, although I think it will be quite a while before I get countertops in my kitchen and bathrooms...

The last couple of weekends have been fairly productive for our little house. The guys have the downstairs interior walls just about completed. There is quite a bit of extra work that goes into building those walls. They have to be built to absorb the shrinkage of the logs, so they basically have to be sliding walls. I think the walls will be ignored again for a while, since the weather is changing a little bit for the better, we'll be back to working outside again.

No pain, no gain.

2009-03-06T18:23:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, Dana's good friend Leonard who has been our main help with this enormous project had an unfortunate accident and broke his back and his shoulder. (Dana, Aaron and Leonard went to the hills unsupervised - need I say more) It's been just been about 4 weeks now since that happened. Dana's spent quite a bit of time over the last couple weeks trying to help Leonard and his wife with whatever they needed until Leonard was moving around a little better. Last weekend, Leonard decided that he was tired of sitting around the house and that a broken back wasn't going to hold him back. So, he showed up to help build walls inside the house. Keep in mind that Leonard is still not allowed to lift more than 5 pounds so Dana wore himself out running around all day trying to make sure that Leonard wasn't lifting what he isn't supposed to. Leonard is much like Dana in that he needs to be busy, needs to be working all the time. The last couple of weeks have been really hard on him, so he's ready to get going again!

Last weekend Dana and Leonard made more progress on framing up some of the interior walls. They definitely go up much slower than conventional walls do, but the guys are getting the hang of it and are getting quicker and quicker.

I'm pretty sure that weighs more than 5 pounds!! In this picture, the wall that is built and laying on the ground seperates the kitchen from the laundry room. That door to the left goes out of the laundry room on to the back deck. Leonard is walking in what will be the bathroom and the guest bedroom is behind him.

This is the custom work that the guys had to create for this wall, since it didn't land directly below a log. The walls all have to be built in a way that they can absorb the settling of the house as all of the logs will shrink and settle.

Building the wall that seperates the laundry room and kitchen.

And the most exciting part of all of this is that Dana gets to use a chainsaw inside the house! Each wall gets notching on either side of it into the main, exterior logs so that the wall coverings (probably tounge and groove) slide into those notches and you don't end up with gaps or uneven seams.

Another work day is planned for tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have another update soon.

Diamond Lake

2009-01-13T21:18:00.000-08:00

So, we haven't really been working on the house lately. I have no updates, no new pictures. The only thing that I can say about the house right now is that it is staying pretty dry inside throughout the wonderful rain storms we get here in CC. Since there's not an update on the house, I thought I'd give you an update on us.

We didn't have the greatest Christmas. Hagen got sick while we were in Redding and we took him to the vet there. Turns out he was pretty sick (we had no idea before this weekend). Long story short (and it makes me too sad to tell it anymore) we had to put him to sleep. Most of you know that we had Hagen for almost 8 years, so it was really hard for us to do it. It's been quite an adjustment for us and Bandit not having him here anymore.

Dana and I have both been really busy at work. Dana's got a new boat in the shop - the Roller Bay. And surprisingly, lots of people still want mortgages right now. I've been working longer days to keep up and it's been a little draining. We decided to take last weekend off from all responsibility and went up to Diamond Lake, Oregon to ride our quads in the snow. The weather and the snow were both perfect and we had a great time. We haven't taken the quads anywhere in a while because we were so busy working on the house, but it was definitely time to get away.

There are lots of trails at Diamond Lake that are groomed for quads and snowmobiles. We were definitely the odd-man out with our quads. Most people there had brand-new snowmobiles and expensive enclosed trailers.

Keep in mind that it was REALLY cold and I'm wearing like 17 layers of clothes. Yes, I'm still working out, no I haven't gained any weight. Although you really can't tell that by this picture.
The Umpqua River. We had lunch here on Sunday.
One of the beautiful trails we rode our quads down at full speed.

We had so much fun last weekend that we're going to try to get up there again before the snow melts.

We've had some really nice weather so far this week. If it holds out through the weekend we might get some more work done on the house. It's so hard to be motivated during the winter, but we've got so much work still ahead of us. We'll get back to it one of these days!

December already?

2008-12-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

Suprisingly the weather has been quite nice here in CC. We've had a few days of rain, so we've kept the tarps on the house for the most part. We've got one last section of roof that needs our 2X8's, so we've just been folding the tarp back from that section so we can work on it. Leonard was over on Saturday again so he and Dana got to be up on the roof while I ran the Gradall.

Here the guys are cutting the cedar fascia to put up on the front and sides of the dormer.

Here the guys are fitting all of the 2X8's in the valley on the south side of the dormer.

Dana and Leonard got the valleys on the south and north side of the dormer finished on Saturday. Then on Sunday I got to be the helper on the roof and we got some more of the 2X8's put up, working toward the edge of the dormer at the front of the house. We still have all of the blocking to do out on the edge of the dormer (I think there's pictures of what that looks like in my earlier postings from working on the other dormer). We had to quit early on Sunday afternoon because it started sprinkling a bit and got really slippery up on the roof. So we called it quits and pulled the tarp back over that section. We finished out the day working inside the house, we had one last window to frame up and get covered. We've been doing a little bit of work inside the house each night after work, but of course the bulk of it is still getting done on Saturday and Sunday. We'll have another full weekend again this coming weekend if the rains stay away. It's been a pretty dry winter so far, I hear we are really behind on our average rainfall, which is just fine by me! We'll cross our fingers that it stays this way for a while!

Finishing out November

2008-12-03T11:24:00.000-08:00

Here are some more pictures and an update on our November progress:

We broke down and bought the Gradall that we used all summer. It just makes things so much easier, especially when Dana and I are trying to work by ourselves.

The winter rains have made parts of our yard a muddy mess.
A friend of ours has been nice enough to bring us some wood chips to spread out around the house. (Thanks Gavin!)
And, the dads have been playing around some more with the tractor. We've taken out some more of the alder trees close to the house, so they've been working on taking those stumps out.

Unfortunately I don't have many more pictures from this month. Dana's been putting me to work quite a bit, so I don't have much chance to take pictures. We've still been trying to work as much as we can, but of course it's getting dark around 5 now, so we don't have much daylight during the week. We spent the whole Thanksgiving weekend working on little things around the house. The weather was really nice over the weekend so we sprayed the house again. We had 2 coats of stain on there, but still needed to put the clear up. We got one coat of clear sprayed on about 1/2 of the house by Sunday night. And we pulled the tarps off of the roof to finish up some little things. We had some more blocking to finish on the roof and more A35 clips...I think we must have put up about 400+ of those now. It seems like there's still lots of little things to finish up that you just never get around to. Those little things take up a lot of time and don't show any progress! We got most of those things done and then on Monday morning we woke up to the prediction of rain! So, we scrambled around that morning to get the tarps spread back over the roof. We made it, and luckily so, because it actually rained pretty hard throughout Monday night. Everything stayed nice and dry though!

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

More roofing

2008-11-17T10:26:00.000-08:00

We had very nice weather over the weekend, which helps a lot when trying to build a house. We've made some more progress, so here are some updated pictures.

Here, Dana and Leonard are working on the blocking for the north side of the roof. The dormer in the picture will be the master bedroom window.

They got the facia board up and the blocking completed on that section. You can see in this picture a big tarp on that south side dormer. Dana and I got that up last weekend before the rains hit. There is one spot on that dormer where water keeps leaking in somehow and running down one of the logs in the living room. It's driving me crazy! We also covered all of the door and window openings with some plywood to help keep the rains out this winter, remember it rains sideways here! We've still got so much work to do there's no way we'll get the windows in before the real winter weather hits.
Here, Dana and Harvey are up on the roof on the south side of the house. Getting ready to put up the facia board and start the blocking on the back side of the house.
Since Harvey was up on the roof all day, I got to baby-sit his little ones. They are very easily entertained and we had a fun day. Much easier than being up on the roof!
Poor Hagen...both girls have been a little shy with him, I think because he's so big. But today they had no problems crawling on him and posing for pictures with him!
Here's the guys putting the 2X8's up. My dining room is directly below this section of the roof they're working on. Harvey's up on the peak and Dana is working from the bucket on the manlift.

Ok, the peak of the roof is 27' in the air. That's my husband way up there in the manlift bucket. Crazy man!
Dana and I spent all day Sunday puting up A35 brackets. The entire back side of the house has now been completed (just as far as brackets go) and we started working on the front. We had to quit last night about 5:45 because it was too dark to see anymore. I hate winter time!

Tractor Work

2008-11-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

Earlier this summer, we fell some trees behind the house that were much too close to where our deck will be. In between working on the roof, we've started digging out the stumps from those trees.

Here is a picture of some of those stumps before we started digging too much.

Frank helped out doing some tractor work while the guys were working on the roof. He must really like running that tractor, because on the day in question I came home from work to find him already digging with that backhoe. Before Dana even made it home from work, Frank already had the tractor stuck in the hole that we'd been digging!
Granted, it was a very deep hole!
Luckily, I have some four-wheeling experience, so we put some logs under the tires and were able to get it un-stuck before Dana even got home. My dad showed up and ran the "Heavy Chevy" to help pull the stump out. Here's my dad and Frank celebrating after getting the stump out of the ground.
One last trouble-some stump to go. Dana kept having to dig the hole deeper and deeper. No Frank's not kneeling in that hole-he's standing!
We finally got the stump loose in the hole, but it was heavier than the tractor, so we had a really hard time getting it out of the ground. Frank and Dana worked on getting all of the dirt possible out of the roots and then Dana took the chain saw to it and cut off as much as he could.
There are no pictures of the stump coming out of the ground, because by that time I was driving the Heavy Chevy with a rope and chain attached to the stump. The ground was pretty slippery since it's been raining, so it was really hard to get traction. After quite a few hard runs with the truck and Dana using the tractor bucket to help lift the stump, we finally got it out of the hole. And now there it sits, right next to the hole it came out of. We did fill in the hole with the now muddy dirt piled up next to it, but funny thing, there's just not quite enough. We've been getting a bit of rain the last few days, so it is getting very muddy.

Roofing

2008-10-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

Our time right now is spent working on the roof system. Dana and Leonard have been putting up the 2X8's which are the foundation of the roof system. After the 2X8's go hundreds of A35 clips (little brackets to hold the 2X8's down), then our recessed lighting fits down in between the 2X8's, followed by the insulation, plywood, tar paper and finally, shingles.

Here the guys are working on the shed dormer. We've got the 2X8's and all of the A35 clips finished on this dormer. This was the easy one...only a 4/12 pitch roof. All of the other sections of the roof will be much harder - the rest is all 10/12 pitch.

Here's Leonard and Dana working on one of the valleys. Lots of extra angles and cutting here.

Working on the master bedroom dormer.

One side of the dormer done! (No A35 clips yet though...we've still got to find a way to put those up without falling off the roof)

Putting up the facia on the north side of the house. Gotta love having a man-lift and Gradall to help! It makes things much easier!

Staining

2008-10-16T15:45:00.000-07:00

One of the big projects to get the house ready for winter is staining all of the logs. This doesn't sound like too horrible of a job, but it is a real pain in the rear! It is very time consuming as it has to be sprayed on and then back-brushed. (Like, meaning with a little, bitty paint brush by HAND!) If it's not back-brushed you get streaks over the house. The entire house gets two coats of stain, then a coat of special sealer over the log ends and then a coat of clear over the top. Here's some pictures of the staining process.

The other major project is getting a roof completed. Here's some pictures of Dana and Leonard working on the roof system over the shed dormer.

September progress

2008-10-14T16:09:00.001-07:00

So, my original plan to post updates at least once a week has failed. At this point, I'll be lucky if I post once a month!

Here are a few more pictures from September. There's not much new to see. Everything seems to be going so slow right now, and we took some time off to go hunting.

The entire second story gets sheeted with plywood. When we get a chance we will cut the holes for the windows and then finish with half-logs over the top of the plywood. And, here are some pics of the inside of the house.

In memory of Bruno

2008-09-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

This week Crescent City (and our country) lost a good man - Bruno de Solenni. Bruno was killed in Afghanistan on Saturday. We hear everyday on the news how many more soldiers have been killed, but it doesn't seem real until it hits close to home. I've known Bruno for more than 10 years. He was such a great guy and he always seemed to be in a good mood. This is such a sad time for his family and for all who knew him. Please take the time to read the letter below that Bruno sent just two weeks ago. Regardless of your point of view of the war, please think of our soldiers who are out there risking their lives while trying to make the world a safer place.

To our hero Bruno, you are always in our hearts.

Letter from Afghanistan
Published: September 22, 2008
Editor's note: This is the unedited version of the letter emailed to Triplicate reporter Adam Madison on Sept. 11 from Afghanistan by Capt. Bruno de Solenni of Crescent City.

Hi Adam, my name is Capt. Bruno de Solenni and I am writing you in regards to your article that I finally was able to read online.

I really wasn't sure what to expect, especially nowadays with some of the crap that you read in the news. I will say that I was surprised and pleased that it wasn't over-sensationalized and you kept a good theme on the topic.

I guess the main reason I am writing you is to thank you for your support and the point of view that you took on the article. I know that sometimes it is difficult to actually print something without being biased and taking just one side. But I will tell you the truth and give you an honest opinion about my life in the National Guard, about the war over here and many of the decisions leading to my third tour in the Middle East.

First off, when I first joined the National Guard, back in 1996, I had no idea that I would be here today. I do remember making the decision on Christmas Day when I was about 20 years old and felt like I was going nowhere with my life and needed to take a new direction. As my father and mother had stated earlier, I was always fascinated with history and the military, and was amazed at some of the hardships my grandfather endured in both WWI and WWII.

So the following Monday on the 26th I called a recruiter, and took the asvab test on the 27th in Eureka. Three days later I was down at the Oakland Meps station getting sworn in as a 62E (heavy equipment operator). When they asked when I wanted to go to Basic, I told them, "how about next week?" and they kind of laughed at me and explained that the soonest they could get me in was 30 days. On the 29th I boarded a plane and my life was forever changed, without me even knowing what lay ahead.

Eventually, a few years after joining, I did decided to go back to college at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Ore., where there was a GOLD (Guard Officer Leadership Development) program that allowed me to earn a federal commission as an Army officer while I continued to work toward my degree (which the National Guard also paid for).

In a sense, I was doing exactly what the National Guard said I could do if I joined … Finally, on May 11, 2001, I received my commission as a young, immature, 2nd lieutenant full of piss and vinegar still not knowing exactly what I was getting into.

When Sept. 11 happened, it was then that I realized that things were going to be very different for me and the rest of this country. One month later our battalion received the alert order that we would mobilize the following year to fill in on the current MFO (Multi National Force and Observers) mission in Sinai, Egypt. After returning from Egypt, I was home for eight months before volunteering again to go to Iraq for OIF II. It was there I truly (became) an infantry officer and learned a lot about myself and people in general.

Upon my return from Iraq, I was positive about what was going on there but very resentful at the way the media was covering the war over there. In my own view, I personally feel that some of the media deliberately fueled that war based on their own biased political views and I still hold them accountable for their actions.

Something that still upsets me is the fact that they exploited some of the crimes soldiers committed over there as a reflective view to the rest of the world of what our armies stood for. I am not saying that we didn't make mistakes, we did make them and we have painfully corrected them.

After returning from Iraq I took a break and just stuck to the one weekend a month traditional Guard and used my experiences from Iraq to lead a recon/sniper platoon out of the Grants Pass Armory for about 2.5 years. Then I received the opportunity to come to Afghanistan and work as an Embedded Trainer with the Afghanistan Army.

Some of the biggest dilemmas that I think we have faced here are mostly the fact that Afghanistan seems to have been put on the back burner up until a few months ago when the casualties here began to exceed those in Iraq where there are four times as many soldiers. Our true problems here are definitely reflective of the Pakistani border and the lack of troops covering it, which has been an issue for years and is being exploited by the Taliban as they train freely in Pakistan, unopposed by anyone.

In my opinion, Afghanistan does need a troop surge of American soldiers as well, otherwise we will only be able to sustain combat operations with minimal effect of containing Taliban insurgents. As I speak about this, these are only my views and opinions based on my experiences.

Even though I am now recuperating in the rear and doing fine, much of my time along with other teammates has been spent in the Helmand Province working with a handful of British soldiers in small isolated FOBs conducting offensive operations with the Afghan National Army. Our task is to mentor them during combat operations and to provide both air support and indirect fire support, which seems to sometimes be a daily necessity over here.

The good days over here are when we are truly sticking it to the Taliban in a firefight that is in our favor and you just dropped 130 105mm rounds on their position. Or when a ... hot F-15 pilot flies over your head strafing the Taliban with his Vulcan cannons.

The (bad) days are when you are covering up your your sergeant major from being exposed to the dust-out of a Chinook helicopter that is landing to medivac him out. At the same time he cries because he doesn't want to leave his team as he lies there half paralyzed with shrapnel in him, while fluids are coming out of his eyes and ears signifying severe brain trauma, (meaning we cant give him morphine).

The bad days are when you put your buddy in a body bag and you don't even recognize him because his limbs are missing and there holes in him everywhere. The miracles are when his last words are, "tell my wife and kids I love them," before he dies in his best friend's arms after struggling for several agonizing minutes to get the words out because there is a fist-size hole in his head.

And last but not least, the best days are when an Afghan comes up to you thanking you for everything that you have done to help them and for making their (home) a better place now that the Taliban are gone.

If anything, this is probably the biggest reason why I proudly enjoy being over here. I can't explain it to anyone and there is no description of what it feels like, but it was the same feeling I got when I was in Iraq as well. And I am sure it's the same feeling that generations of American soldiers before me have gotten as they fought and sacrificed their lives for the freedoms that we enjoy today.

Perhaps the biggest thing that has made being over here much more bearable, is the amount of public support that we have received from people. Getting a care package or a letter of support when you are out in the middle of nowhere from a complete stranger, thanking you, does make the day seem a little better.

I would especially like to thank my Aunt Jan Martin, and The local Troop Support organization who have provided care packages to soldiers serving overseas and have volunteered endless hours of their time and energy making our lives easier. The British soldiers (who don't get anything) are extremely grateful as well.

Along with this, I would especially like to thank the members of the VFW who donated several hundred dollars of G.I. shirts to the company of Afghans that I have been mentoring. You have all truly made my life and my job easier. Without your support, life would not be as pleasant.

Last but not least I would truly like to thank everyone who has supported the soldiers and the efforts toward supporting these wars even when there wasn't an end in sight. Until about 6 months ago there wasn't a news outlet that was saying that the Iraq war was winnable and that this was another vietnam in the making. Had we let the politicians get ahold of this war it would have been.

Fortunately our president (who is not perfect) has stood his ground against the naysayers who deliberately exploited the death of American soldiers for their own political gain, showing no regard to their families and loved ones who are still mourning them to this day.

I can understand what it was like for Vietnam veterans who returned from the war and were spat upon for wearing their uniform and standing up for what they believed in. Unfortunately this is still all-too-true for many of the British soldiers returning home to their own country. There are even certain ethnic religious neighborhoods where they cannot even wear their uniforms because they will be beat up in their own country.

I pray to God we never come to that and thank the fact that what has changed drastically between Vietnam and now is that even if the public doesn't support the war, they still support troops which makes a huge difference. This is especially comforting if you are one of those soldiers walking through the airport wearing your uniform and coming home on leave or returning from a deployment.

Once again, I cannot thank everyone enough for their support and all that they have done …
Sincerely,
Capt.
Bruno de Solenni

September 1-7 update

2008-09-19T12:39:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of the progress we made from September 1-7. We've been working on framing up the second story and sheeting it with plywood. We painted all of the plywood before we put it up just to help protect it a little better.
Here you can see the framing work in the dormers.

I'm getting pretty good at running heavy equipment. Dana even trusts me enough to stand on the forks and let me lift him up in the air! More to follow!

Finally-here are some new pictures

2008-09-11T16:31:00.000-07:00

To catch us up a little bit here are some pictures from the week of August 19-24. We had a dry, sunny week so we took the tarps off and started laying down roofing felt.

Here's Dana and Dennis spreading the felt between the front two dormer windows. This is a 10-12 pitch roof, so it's really steep!

Here's the front side almost covered. We worked until well after dark, so I don't have any pictures of the guys finishing it!
Frank and I put down the felt on the shed dormer. It's only a 4-12 pitch, not near as steep as the rest of the house!
Here's the back side of the house almost covered in felt.
Hagen tries to stay as close as possible to Dana at all times. This is as close as he could get while Dana was putting up the felt.

We're ok...

2008-09-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

So I hear grumblings that people out there are worried about us because I haven't posted in so long. Really I didn't even realize that I haven't posted since August!

Things have been CRAZY around here. I've been working late most nights because I am so busy at work. Don't get me wrong-that's a good thing. Especially in this kind of real estate market. But, that puts me behind on everything that demands my attention at home.

I do have some more pictures of the progress we've made on the house, but they are still on my camera. I promise I will make my best effort to get them on here one of these days. We're at the point on the house where the progress is harder to see. There's a lot of little things to be done right now that I'm sure you won't want to see pictures of (except for you Papa!).

I've also been having to work on the house more, so I can't be behind the camera as much. This week I learned to run the Grad-all, and I must say, I'm getting pretty good with a hammer...or at least the air-powered nail gun. :)

It's nice to know that so many of you are watching my blog. Leave us some comments so we know what you think of the house! We'd love to hear your thoughts...only the good ones, of course! And I do promise to update this as soon as I can. Don't give up on me!

Framing and RAIN!

2008-08-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

We live in Crescent City. It is no surprise that it rains here...a lot. But, August?! Come on now. So, needless to say, Monday was not spent working on the house. It was spent covering the house up. It sprinkled on Monday and dripped a little inside the house before we could get it covered up all the way. Tuesday wasn't so bad, just a thick, heavy fog. But Wednesday it decided to blow and rain. We had it covered up pretty well though and nothing got ruined...just a little wet.

Since things were covered up we were still able to get some work done inside the house. We now are framing the upstairs exterior walls for the windows.

The guys got the entire west wall framed:

And the entire north wall:

More progress.

2008-08-20T13:49:00.001-07:00

Yes, we have still been working on the house, although you couldn't tell by looking at the blog...

Since my last post, Dana has finished laying the tongue and groove on the dormer over looking the living room:

The finished dormer from the inside - looking from the second story loft area.

Dad sanding for a smooth finish to lay the tongue and groove down.

That's me in the background standing on a load of tongue and groove - on the forklift approximately 25 feet in the air!

Dana and Leonard nailing down the tongue and groove on the shed dormer.

Working until late, as always!

Here are Dana and I standing on top of the forklift again...scary.

Especially considering this is the crazy guy running the thing!!

We finished out the week by cutting off all of the long pieces of tongue and groove all around the house. Next step: roofing and framing in for all of the windows and doors!

Finishing out the week

2008-08-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

Thursday and Friday were spent nailing down the pine tongue and groove. The guys completed the front of the house, sans one dormer and part of the back of the house.

The main part of our crew for the week. Frank, Dennis, Tim, Gus, Dana and Will. The guys all worked really hard and got done a lot more than we ever expected!

Day 3-Wednesday

2008-08-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

Here are some shots of the progress we made on Wednesday.

Using the crane to set the beams to make the shed dormer along the back side of the house.

Building the dormers on the front of the house. This one is above my living room.

The view from the top!

Finally our last order of business for the day was to start nailing down the tongue and groove that will be my ceiling.

Tuesday-Day 2

2008-08-07T09:55:00.000-07:00

Since we got the exterior wall logs completely up on day 1, we were able to move inside for day 2. Full logs sit on top of a ridge beam that runs almost the full length of the house. These logs are the ceiling for my two downstairs bedrooms, the bathroom, laundry room and kitchen. Above those logs goes tounge and groove pine. No drywall ceilings here...just wood!

Here are Tim, Gus and Frank working on setting the shorter glue-lam beam. This is looking from my kitchen toward my living room.

This picture is looking from the living room to the two downstairs bedrooms. Aaron is standing about where my staircase will be.
This picture is looking from the living room into the kitchen. To the right of the kitchen is the laundry room, then the bathroom and finally in the back corner is one bedroom.

Here Dana, Dennis, Aaron, Gus and Tim are racing to get the tounge and groove nailed down above those logs.

Here you can see the top of the tounge and groove which will be the base for my second story floor.

Yes, I work a little bit too! :)

Using the crane to set the main ridge beam in the house.

Setting the logs that create our "trusses".

These are the logs that make up our roof system.

The view at the end of day 2.

Bonus Day 1 pics

2008-08-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

I know everyone is grumbling at me, because I have not been so good about posting this week. I've been a little busy. Here are some more pictures from day 1.

The Gradall is a wonderful piece of equipment...it made our job so much easier and faster. We had each course of logs stacked up together, so Dana was able to grab those logs with the fork lift and place them in the center of the foundation. Then the guys could just pick up the log they needed and put it on the wall where it needed to go.

Dad and Dennis stapled all of the gasket foam in between the logs.

Once we got to the higher courses of logs, we had to use the crane to set the heavier logs.

Using the crane to set one of the glue-lam beams. You are looking at my dining room and kitchen.

Log construction 101: Day 1

2008-08-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

I loved to play with Lincoln Logs as a kid. I stacked those logs so many times making different houses. I realize that playing with those logs so many years ago should have given me a little insight into what I'm dealing with today. Little did I know...

We spent all day Saturday sorting through logs. They are all numbered as to where the go in the walls of my house. Each row of logs is referred to as a "course". So you start with course 1, all the way up to course 14. The logs were a jumbled up mess when we started. Courses 1-10 were all mixed together and bundled up in about 5 different stacks. Courses 11-14 were also all mixed up in their stacks. By the time we were done on Saturday we had each course stacked in it's own little pile.

We placed courses 1 & 2 on the foundation so the logs were just right there ready to be screwed down. We put the other courses in order close to the foundation so that Dana could just lift them on to the foundation with the forklift.

Monday morning two guys from the log home dealership showed up to help us re-assemble all of these logs. They told us that someone would have the job of finding each log that they would need. We told them that we all ready knew where they were, but they didn't quite believe us. They then told us that on the first day you only get 3 courses set up...4 if you're really lucky. HA! We got all 14 courses set! I don't think they knew how hard we work. We've got an awesome crew. The guys from the log home place are Tim and Gus. Then we had my dad, Dana's dad, Dana, Aaron, Dennis, Dana's mom and me. My mom stayed home to cook a nice big dinner for us all! Everyone had their own assigned job and everyone was hurrying to get ahead of the next guy. We had a nice little competition going between everyone and as a result we got a LOT done. So basically we got 2 days of work done in 1 day. Hopefully we can keep this pace going all week.

1st Delivery

2008-07-31T15:19:00.000-07:00

So I made it out of bed this morning about 5:30am (my second morning in a row!) and I am still alive to talk about it! For those of you who haven't caught on yet-I am SO not a morning person. We got the first semi load of logs unloaded and set in various places through out my yard. Here are pictures of the load...it was pretty high and heavy!

This is all for now...I've got to run to meet Dana at work. He's driving the crane home today so I have to follow him home.

Log Delivery

2008-07-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

It is confirmed...our logs will be delivered over the next two days in three different shipments. The first shipment will be here tomorrow morning between 6am & 7am, the second shipment sometime tomorrow evening and the last shipment on Friday morning between 6am & 7am.

We will soon be seeing MUCH progress! Yay!

One more weekend down...

2008-07-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

I hate to disappoint, but I don't have new pictures to post yet. Saturday Dana, Leonard, my dad and I left for Medford at 6am (*yuck*) to check out the logs for the house. Yes, it is all assembled and no, you can't see any pictures of it until it's set up on our property!

The house is absolutely beautiful and my imagination was running wild with how the inside is going to look once we get it done. I did give the log home place a little bit of a hard time...there were some things I wasn't happy with. Nothing big, mostly just cosmetic items. So, I left him with a short list of things I expect them to fix before the logs are delivered this week. We should get our pallets of logs probably on Wednesday or Thursday. Then on Monday the 4th, the reassembly begins!

Yesterday we spent the day moving around the lumber we are now storing in our yard, just trying to get things set up for the logs to be delivered. We've still got some trees to fell in the yard so we can be sure that the crane will be able to get around all sides of the house. We've also got a little more work to do on the subfloor. Hopefully this week will be a little more laid back than the past weeks have been. We need to rest up for next week!

Subfloor

2008-07-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

The guys have been working very hard getting the subfloor done.

Here are some new pictures that show the stem wall built down the center of the house,

The BCI's set up and nailed down,

Dana and Leonard nailing down the plywood

Leonard, Dana and Frank putting down more plywood.

Rat slab!

2008-07-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't posted for a few days...not because the guys haven't been working! I was sick over the weekend and just haven't been able to get caught up. So I'll try to do a couple posts so you can see all the progress we've made since last week.

As you've already seen, we have a 3 foot tall stem wall. This is so Dana doesn't have to crawl around on his hands and knees underneath the house later in life. This past weekend we poured more concrete so we have a rat slab under the house. This is so Dana doesn't have to walk around in dirt underneath the house! He is so spoiled...

Here are Dana, Will, Josh, Leonard and Frank getting the sand spread out for the slab. All the rebar is set out and tied together...the concrete is ready to be poured over the top. I tied all that rebar together! :)

Here's my guys shoveling the concrete...I should have been helping but I was laying on the couch sick with the flu. Amazing they managed to get it done without me! Ha ha.

The finished product...it turned out perfect!

Foundation progress

2008-07-08T13:25:00.001-07:00

The concrete is here!

Pumping the concrete into the forms.

Harvey, Dana and Will cleaning up the top of the concrete.

Papa and Frank taking a break. Man, supervising is hard work!

The finished product!

The beginning...

2008-07-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

Leveling out the lot.

Digging out the trench for the stem wall.

Putting up the forms for concrete.

Before Picture

2008-07-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

Finally, it begins!

2008-06-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

We have finally started construction on our house! I will try to keep everyone up to date on our progress by posting pictures every week or so, as time allows. We are currently working on our foundation...every night after work and all weekend long! As soon as I get my pictures downloaded I'll get some posted for you all to see. So check back to see how we're doing!