Bring in the professionals!

I had been losing serious sleep thinking about getting up on our roof to tar paper. I have this bazaar kind of fear of heights where, when I am up high I am not the least bit frightened, even balanced on a precarious spot I'm completely unfazed. But when I'm standing on solid ground and thinking about being way up high I am just a ball of nerves...a complete wreck. I have a fear of being afraid of heights! How absurd is that?
Well anyway, early this morning, on our way out of Spenard's Builder Supply after purchasing some very long 2x4's for making a chicken ladder (ladder with a right angle on top to hook over the roof ridge), I stopped by the contractors desk to ask Kevin if he had any ideas regarding hiring someone to paper our roof for us. He was extremely helpful and gave me a name and number. I called, got a good quote (well, extremely cheap if the standard by which it's measured is how much I would pay to not have to do it myself) and voila, Thanks to Ryan Walker & Assoc. we have a papered roof. No more soggy, sodden, damp and moldy. Hooray! It was pretty amazing to watch these guys work too. They just scampered around up there with out being harnessed in or anything, lugging rolls of tarpaper around like it was for fun. Now the no-harness thing is admittedly pretty stupid, and they're young so maybe they just haven't figured out yet that the whole mortality issue applies to them as much as it does to the rest of us, but seriously, I've tried to walk on that roof and it's insanely steep. A 12/12 pitch is nothing to sneeze at. They have skills!

A break in the weather and some more roof!

Well, Dad and Matt are to thank for our fantastically sheathed roof. We've had a little break in the weather and they both really got cracking framing up the overhangs and throwing up all of the sheathing. With a little tar-paper, this roof will actually do what a roof is intended to do! Dad leaves on Monday and Matt and I are both nervous about being our own task-masters, but I think that we'll find plenty that can get accomplished in the two weeks that he's away. First item of business is to finish shingling the Forrest Glen house, which will be a piece of cake with that gentle 6/12 pitch to walk on. Why did I think a 12/12 pitch was a good idea for our house? Why can't I ever do things the easy way? Heck, after we had the first floor framed up I was wondering why we even needed a second story...the first floor seemed so big and spacious...
Oh well, it is what it is and if Dad says it can be done than it can. It will certainly seem like a palace to us...easily the largest place Matt and I have ever lived in before. Much more spacious than our first apartment in San Francisco which was a cute 225 sq/ft. About it, Mum said, "one had to go outside to change one's mind". True that.

Rafters in the rain

You don't really get a sense from the pictures, but it has been pouring down rain all day and for that matter, pretty much all summer. Some say the wettest summer in recorded history, I say it blows. We had to come home for lunch to change our clothes because all three of us were completely soaked. Everything is so incredibly wet and covered in sloggy mud. Ugh.
Anyway, regardless, we've managed to put up the rafters. Look! A roof! The dormer and nook bump-out are roofed as well and eventually we'll tackle the front gable over the not-there-yet porch. The current goal is to get the roof sheathed and tar-papered to stop the torrents of water pouring into our basement. Dad is leaving for two weeks on Monday, so we're struggling to get things buttoned up before he goes. We'll also try to shingle the Forrest Glen house if we get a little bit of a break in the weather. Boo rain!

We managed to get the gigantic 22' beam into place yesterday with a few wall jacks and much clever planning on Dads part. Since then we've set all the second floor joists and decked it over. The entire exterior is sheathed save for the gable ends, which haven't been built yet. I think we'll be building roof on Monday! The biocycle mound is complete and is a little higher than I expected...will make a good little sledding hill come winter ;-)

More walls and some sheathing

All the exterior walls have been stood and we've begun sheathing. It's so exciting to be able to walk around on the deck and look out a window! We've framed up a partial wall downstairs to support one end of the huge beam that will run down the center of the house and support the second floor joists. It's such a funny tall house, but I think that if we get creative with some siding detail to break up the vertical lines, it will turn out to be a pretty little cottage. Bea really likes the nook off the kitchen, and wants it to be her room...heh heh.

This is where our poop goes!!

Our biocycle is in the ground! It was a truly amazing feat getting it off the trailer and into the hole and I was impressed by the back-hoe acrobatics of Dennis, our dirt-man. Phew! It's already begun to be backfilled and tomorrow Dennis will start on the drain field and Gus, the biocycle engineer, will be back up to finish the installation. It's very exciting to have a little waste treatment facility in our back yard...more so than you might imagine. Hooray!

Walls!

Hooray! We have temporary power and put up our first two walls today. Since we're building a story and a half, we're doing partial balloon framing for the two eave walls. We're doing this instead of platform framing the first floor and then adding a two foot knee-wall to the second floor, which would create a potential problem with the rafters putting pressure on the knee-walls and pushing them out. The walls are 11 feet as is, but you can imagine that the first 8 feet is the first floor, then a foot of floor joists for the second story and then two more feet up to give some additional lift to the roof and create more space on the second floor. Trust me, it makes sense, although it takes a bit longer to do all the figuring and double figuring since it's not the standard way to build. Balloon framing is sort of old fashioned, but it seems to make sense for this little house. Also, in the exciting news catagory...Bea started her first day of preschool! She woke up this morning at 6:30 and announced proudly, "Wake up, today is my first day of school and I get my own cubby with my name on it!!" The day unfolded with as much enthusiasm as it began and Bea was beaming when we picked her up. She proudly showed us a rock and a leaf that she found to add to the Nature table. The preschool is a fabulous little waldorf-inspired place with fewer then a dozen kids. She's been attending the friday playgroup with Matt since we arrived last August, but now she's three and is ready for the three day a week program.

almost....ready....to....build....walls....

Well, we've got the lumber, but are waiting for the power. Any day now....
And just to show you out there in the blogosphere who might be thinking that we've been lazing about while things move slowly on our house, here's a before and after picture of the Forest Glen house we've been building for the last month. Now that's progress.