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?

Going up...

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

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...

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!