Decking the Porch

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!

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

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!

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'

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!

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

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?