Windows!

Well, summer seems to have ended, but not before Jon worked an 18 hour day to get a water barrier painted on the plywood, making the house look much more complete somehow. Yesterday was another long, hectic day of concrete pours (the footing here for our south-facing deck outside of the living room)

and putting in most of the windows, yay!

A little update...

It's been a busy end of summer (though we have sun again today and maybe 75 tomorrow which is welcome, I wasn't ready for rain and low 60s to set in yet!). The plumber, electricians and framers have been busy running wires, window framing and piping all over the place. From the outside you'd never know anything is happening but trust me, as the one who cleans up in the evenings, things are progressing! ;-)

The excavators were back to do the septic, run the electric lines including the line out to the pasture for the solar panels, water lines etc... Here is a picture taken by our friend Doug who flies a special ultra-light plane and likes to do fly-bys in the evening when the winds are dying down.

It's fun to see basically the entire property down to the stream on the far left. The gravel lines are the septic drain area and then the silt fence. We worked madly last Monday to get the root barrier and then special soil on top of the garage roof, and then realized we put the root barrier on upside down so I spent a couple days last week shoveling the soil around and flipping it ;-)

While we wait for the windows and doors to come, I'm working on staining the cedar shingles that will cover about a third of the house, and getting organized to plant the green roof, reseed the trench areas, plant some fruit and nut trees if I can get around to it, and do some garden prep before the rains really set in. Wish me luck!

Time to reseed again

The last couple of weeks have been a hectic jumble of plumbers, excavators, radiant heat guys, interior framing, and window/door orders. As a result, our place looks a little like a whirlwind came with trenches everywhere.

Things are really starting to come together though! Here is our warmboard radiant flooring with the pipe newly laid this morning after I put some elbow grease into cleaning it yesterday...

It's officially a house... Now where is the rain?!

Yes, after a record cool and wet summer, we finally got the roof waterproofing material on and the boards on the walls before what was supposed to be another rainy few days and now it refuses to rain! Which is too bad, we wanted to test the roofing and see if we missed spots, plus the grass could really use a drenching. Oh well, we had fun rolling this stuff out with our harnesses and ropes keeping us on the slope, though our neighbor seemed to think she should sit in view of us and make sure nothing too exciting happened ;-) We've also ordered the windows, the metal roof will go on in the next few weeks, the interior framing starts this week...

Swingin' from the rafters!

Well, not really but they look pretty solid!

The roof trusses are up, as well as all of the framing of the upstairs and downstairs. It's so fun to see the blocking of the windows; our architect did a great job of window placement on the house to optimize the different views and connect with other parts of the property.

 For instance, from the almighty kitchen I'll be able to see the deck, garden, goat shed, street-side of the house and have a view of the mountains! And Jon thinks I spend a lot of time in the kitchen now! Anyway, there's Jim, heading up the framing of the house...

Here is a shot from last week, the view of the house from the main road, definitely the more imposing face. The master bedroom will be on the bottom floor of this corner, with a covered deck above...

'Bout done with the bedrooms!

It's been a busy last week, and since the clouds have decided to rain out my climbing plans, I've been around to take pictures of the progress. Here are a couple of the framing of the bedroom floor and stairs leading down to it.










And then here is a view from the corner of the master bedroom, looking back through towards the stairs up to the front door.

Also, the bees are going like gangbusters with the blackberries blooming, moving into the 4th and last box of the Warre hive soon and attaching some comb to the window here in the top bar hive.

And then I've been having fun (sweating... a lot) digging sand and gravel out of the goat barn. After reading Joel Salatin's latest book on farming I decided deep straw bedding that can compost would be better, and after not talking to me for an hour after I suggested some changes to the barn, Jon said alright, but you get to dig out the sand ;-)

Summer strikes!

Sorry it's been a while again, July just began and I feel like it's almost over! Anyway, the garage is framed and getting some plywood while the guys waited for the concrete slab in the downstairs of the house to be poured last Friday. Here is a shot from outside our bedroom, looking into the bedroom level and the garage.

The framing on the house should start on Thursday! In the meantime (besides climbing and enjoying fireworks with my neice and nephew on Guemes Island) I've been enjoying (mostly) being a grass farmer. I think I'm successful, though we'll see if it can weather the next week of 70+ degree sunny days while we're gone climbing and visiting friends. The goat shed is waiting for me to shovel sand out of the foundation because I had a Joel Salatin epiphany and begged Jon to redesign it a little a few weeks ago, to which he looked sick and begged me not to do this with the house ;-)