'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 ;-)

Things are starting to look real!

And somehow the goat barn got framed first!

Jon has been busy learning how to weld so that the 1200 lb steel beam that will hold up the living roof on the garage is ready to get installed, and I have spent the last week at the farm all day preparing all of our new soil for seeding and then watering as summer weather seems to have finally struck Seattle.

Here is a view down into the bedroom level of the house. Concrete slab will be poured on top of the sand, with radiant heating embedded as well as rebar, and then the framing will start.

No more vistas of plastic!

It's been a busy week here but we finally got the concrete walls coated in the waterproofing tar and then the drain mat up so the excavators can fill the dirt in around the buildings to bring everything thing up to elevation. The concrete walls that you see will all be at about floor level, of the garage, the goat shed, and then the downstairs bedrooms.

It's pretty great to finally get to walk around the house without being stuck in muddy trenches, and great fun to visualize the actual elevations of things. Here are some pics of the goat shed concrete footings, the garage and shop, and the downstairs elevations of the house.

Also, here is a before shot of the guys pouring the concrete slab floors of the garage, basement and root cellar.

Marathon #1 done... and boy am I glad it is...

 Well, it was the first over 70 degree weekend we've had in Washington, with the coldest March - May period since the 50's, what better time to go run for five hours? I've been doing some training though mostly on trail, and wanted to try a marathon. My friend Becca and I spent the night at my dad's house on Lopez and then raced to the ferry this morning for the San Juan Island marathon.

In all I feel pretty good now but made all of the rookie mistakes of running too fast the first half, not eating enough, and then dying in the sun, heat and hills for the second half. I did a lot of walking and averaged an 11 minute mile but in all nothing hurts and now that I am rehydrated and fed, am feeling more like myself.

The recovery took a while though, I almost fainted a couple of times waiting for the ferry home and ate too soon, it's amazing that a half-day run can be harder than multi-day climbs. I don't do very well in the heat though, so I'm looking forward to fine tuning some things and running in normal Seattle weather if there is a 'next time'.

The walls are up...

It's been a busy week, but the walls are up (goat barn soon to come), the boards are down, the scaffolds have both been moved for the third time, and we've only had one day of pouring rain ;-) Seriously though, it's really cool to see the concrete walls somehow, and to walk around down in the basement under where the garage will be. The shiny metal in the picture is sitting on top of huge 400 lb I-beams, and will be part of the floor of the garage but we can walk on it now. Next steps are filling in the dirt and drain rock around the outside of the concrete walls, then the metal framing going up and concrete slabs for floors and the concrete lower walls of the goat barn (just enough to get them above ground level). It's been fun lately, lots of activity and trucks, joking around, and bees buzzing around our pasture of buttercups...

Also, here is Jon using tractor's forklifts to unload insulation for under the concrete slab floors from a semi, those forklifts have paid for themselves so many times over!

Soon to be pouring...

Sorry it has been a while since I posted about the house but things are moving surely if a little slowly. Since we decided to use the extra space excavated, our concrete guy has been working six days a week to get the forms up for the monstrous concrete walls that will enclose our basement, root cellar, and part of the bedroom floor. Saturday the last of the exterior forms went up so now the only way in or out of the structure is using the scaffolds that Jon spent days constructing. Anyway, the walls should get poured Thursday or Friday.

We've also spent 'a few' hours digging trenches around the outside of the foundations so the water drains without undermining the concrete, and which will hold drain pipe once all of the dirt gets filled in around the house again. Once the walls are poured the dirt will get filled in again up to the current ground level. Then Jon will breath a huge sigh of relief that we're to the framing and processes he is more familiar with. And maybe he'll get to take a day off and relax ;) You know it's serious when he has to turn down an arduous backcountry rescue mission...