Walls

Still really smoky here.  Floors are 99% finished and I built the last bearing wall for the basement. It was so exciting as I nailed all the pieces together, placing the header for the doorway and everything.  Then, oooh I stood it up and it was good.  Cathryn is here tomorrow and we will nail it into place.  The load of walls on the trailer were put in place, some upright, some lying down still waiting for more sections.

Master bedroom french door access to deck

North wall almost to entrance door.

This took about 2 hours to do so it won't take long to get them all up. We are leaving some off to erect the timber frames but still lots of other work to do.  I really like the view from up here.  You can see the Walker Valley and marshes in the distance.  The view will be well above the nearby houses as well. 

Looking northwest

We have lots to do over the weekend including framing over the stairwell  and  the fireplace floor holes for safety. We won't need this access for a while. There is an airport appreciation day tomorrow so we'll head over there for a while. Take a little break and then back at it.  By the way I found the big hydraulic leak on our backhoe.  Seems the previous owner had installed a new 1 inch line for pressure to the hoe but didn't get it tight enough. Easy fix but lots of fluid on the ground. I was pretty excited when I got it all done! All in all and pretty exciting day.  How's that Kyla?

Len

It's all about wood...

While technically todays entry is written by Dad, I have decided to let him dictate - mostly so it doesn't take forever -  but also to ensure the content is a little "spicy".  I have to say I was a little disappointed with how bland yesterday's entry was.  So lets begin...

This morning started out very hazy, nearby forest fires are starting to affect the area.  However, the temperature was much more reasonable than yesterday with a high of around 28, but without the glaring sun.

First things first, went next door and loaded the walls for the east side of the house onto a flat bed trailer to bring them into the yard to be put up tomorrow.  Lots of holes for windows and doors, easy to imagine them actually being part of a house.  Quite heavy... even with all the holes.

Then it was time to go back to the floor.  While I (Dad - don't forget, I'm just typing over here) cut the joists to length to keep the overhang within limits, Ken and Jesse continued laying down the plywood flooring.  Funny how if you put plywood down upside down the glue ends up on the wrong side.  It makes it much more fun to walk on later!  Took out the last of the temporary walls in the basement and took apart the form for the last small bearing wall in the basement which will hopefully go up tomorrow.

While all of this "finished wood" work was being done, Kyla was working with wood in its raw form.  Cleaning out deadfall and underbrush and generally sprucing up the property along the road while scaring small wildlife.  Her steel-toed boots finally got some use as she managed to drop the only heavy tree in the entire yard on her foot.  Another burning pile was also created.

A huge thank you to the Hawkins for our air conditioned dining room - especially these last few days.

****COMMERCIAL BREAK****

A quick trip to town for the dentist, fill the hole in my mouth with something temporary until I get back to Kelowna ... then to the 108 Mile grocery store for some bison burgers for dinner.  An attempt was made to shop at the Save on Foods in 100 Mile, but apparently the entire population of the Cariboo had the exact same idea.

****BACK TO THE SHOW****

At the end of their day, Ken and Jesse had just run out of plywood and needed the rest of it to complete the floor first thing tomorrow.  But where was the plywood.  Ahhh...Lift #1...conveniently placed on the ground from the first truck.  However, when the second truck came certain packages were placed on top of other packages.  In this case, in an effort to conserve space and ensure no damage to the solid wood exterior doors, they were placed on top of Lift #1.  Lovely.  So what did we do before dinner, uncrated the doors, backed the truck through the yard, loaded the doors onto it (did I mention they weigh approximately 150 pounds each) and drive them over to the basement to be stacked inside.  Fortunately the basement now has a ceiling to protect the doors from the elements.  After moving all of the doors to their new location safely, when we opened Lift #1, it was found that the plywood is actually underneath even more wood bits.  We will deal with that tomorrow.

We moved the camera to a new vantage point to film the floor going in.  Imagine how we got it up there.

This completes another "spicy" day here in vacation land.  Tomorrow looks to bring walls up on the main floor. 

Len.

p.s. Kyla here, I'm going home tomorrow morning and can no longer vouch for the entertainment value to be found here on this blog.  Sorry.

First floor: ladies lingerie, plywood, nails, glue

Cool morning, time to finish up the bearing walls and put in one last curb for a small wall. Flooring is going on as well as bridging, the X between the joists.  We've had a look at the lifts of walls and will be unloading some of them tomorrow.  Kyla has finished with the exterior for now and it looks great, a very anal straight line along the top of the moisture barrier.  We treated ourselves to a dinner at Vidas.  We might actually have an exciting day tomorrow as we finish the plywood floor.

The land is pretty flat up at the house now

The garden area also taking shape

First row of plywood showing the floor joists to be quite accurately placed

All hands on deck

It's going to be a pretty darn nice view from up here

Len

We've struck gold

Greetings from Kyla in 108 Mile ... Dad us unable to blog today, for reasons that will become clear later.  I decided to spend a week of my HARD EARNED vacation time to help out on the house.  Aren't I the good daughter.

Anyways, the morning started off cool and clear with a good egg breakfast to get the day started.

Task 1: Organization.  After the third move of the tool "tent" it was apparent that things needed a little cleaning up, so I organized the tools into some semblance of order.

Meanwhile ... Dad and his crew got busy framing load bearing walls in the basement.  An extremely efficient affair with Dad on the saw and Ken and Jesse on assembly.

Task 2: Now that the temperature has reached a much more reasonable 25+ degrees, it's time to start digging.  Prepping for the "parging" (the stucco like finish that goes below the siding down to the ground) involved un-backfilling around the entire house to a depth of at least 4" below the existing moisture barrier.  It seemed like such a simple job when I started ... but it turns out that some of the holes ended up being over 2' deep and the temperature kept climbing and it is a long way around the entire house.  NOT that I'm complaining or anything.

Back inside ... the main bearing wall down the centre of the basement and two bearing walls running along either side of the bathroom were erected without complications.  Ken's vast experience has come in very handy and his simple tricks and techniques have saved a lot of time and headaches.

And just when we thought the day couldn't get any better ... we struck gold!  Dad felt a little edge on his tooth, played around with it for a moment, and ... VOILA! GOLD!!

... looks like there's a visit to the local dentist coming in the near future.  Apparently the lack of tooth is enough to curb his blogging abilities - thank goodness I was here to take over.

Kyla

On the level

Most of Saturday and Sunday were spent leveling out the gravel in the basement. Lots of work in the heat but good to get it all finished.  We will need another load for the garage and a bit more in the basement. We had all the topsoil moved to a location where we can get at it as we want it.  The place is starting to look like something and we sure have better access to the house. We will be putting the plywood flooring on soon and then we can put up some walls in preparation for the timber frames. If the weather holds that could be next week.  One of the photos shows me shoveling, and being busy.  I didn't take a photo of Cathryn raking it all and checking to see that we were level as we went along.  She is back in Kelowna for the week and Kyla my daughter is here tonight for a few days of hard labor.  Should be some good progress this week.

Len

Backfill Day

Here we are on Saturday morning.  Didn't get to the blog yesterday, so will try for 2 today.  Cath is up for an extended weekend.  Friday the excavator came and started the backfill of the house and building up the garage.  It was really hot and I felt bad for the poor guy in that glass cab - no AC.  Len was busy filling on the inside of the basement and tamping using a hand machine.   Len's hand machine worked ok for what it was doing but glad that it didn't have to do the whole job. When the excavator did the tamping it was really effective and quick.  Here are pictures.  You will see that the doggies, Banjo and Molly, have a great little enclosure to keep them out from under big machines and out of the sun.

My aching back

The last couple of days have been tiring to say the least. Lots of cleanup and prep for the backfilling of the foundation. I cleaned all the lumber from the garage that was used for the scaffolding.  All of the scaffolding was lifted out and stacked ready for pickup.  All the scaffold boards had to be moved out of the way for the backhoe to get near the house.  The rebar also had to be relocated as it will go into the shop foundation eventually.  John Taylor showed up this morning with a dump truck load of rock 1 to 2 inch diameter for the drain pipe around the footings.  I had to shovel and locate this rock with a wheelbarrow as no machine can get to some of the areas yet.  I did move some of the pile around the house with the backhoe.  This shortened up the wheelbarrow journey. Too much shoveling and now I must prepare for a thunderstorm tonight.  I have been doing some time lapse photography using our camcorder.  It's quite cool and I'll edit it eventually into the 5 minute house build.  By for now

Len

Don't try this at home.

I thought, "how hard can it be?" You just peel the back off and stick it to the walls of the foundation.  It goes wherever the dirt will cover up the wall.  Building into a hill will give some pretty tall buried walls, nine and a half feet to be exact.  My guess was a half a day but it took me from 9 in the morning to 9 at night to finish.  Then I went to bed.  Sunday I tackled the drainage around the perimeter.  It has to all go gently downhill to a spot where it would be fed out into the forest,  That took till 2:00 which left lots of day so off I go with a load of peeled off paper and leftover logix supplies to our dump.  When I got back I started hauling out as much scaffolding as I could.  We are still using some of it but that will be gone soon.  Another fun filled day at the lot.  Hello to Cathryn and Victoria, I hope you are following along.

Grampa

The backhoe giveth and the backhoe taketh away

Another day of great progress.  A little tricky around the fireplace footing and the stairway.  Once we got past that it  was clear sailing.  We are having to put beams in to simulate bearing walls until the basement pad is poured.  I have arranged for Cariboo Regional District inspection on Tuesday for the perimeter drainage.  John Taylor will start on Wednesday to backfill the house and the garage.  We will have to spot a couple of loads of gravel for the perimeter drainage and the basement pad. I will be doing the rest of the moisture barrier and piping this weekend.  If I run out of things to do there is lots of blocking between floor joists yet to finish. Might get to that Sunday Lord willing.  The backhoe is a great tool, lots of shovel-fulls per bucket.  A neophyte like me needs to be careful or he might end up placing too much dirt in a particular spot and the have to shovel it out by hand. Oh well nice evening for a little exercise.

Len

Like a fly on flypaper

As you can see we had a bit of progress today. Ken is pretty knowledgeable so things get done.  Luckily we have lovely June at Tamlin who graciously answers all of my queries. It's a little tricky to do all of this without the actual basement concrete floor but it will all come out in the wash. After the boys left for the day I decided to start a little backfill on our lowest corner.  The backhoe can move a lot of dirt which is what I found out when I remembered that we had to put the moisture barrier on before the dirt.  A bit of hand slogging to make room for the sticky stuff and then all went well.  I'll finish the backhoe work tomorrow.  That paper is so sticky when you peel off the backing I thought of the poor flies as I had to peel my fingers free many times.  Note to self,  do not touch the black gooey side.  A couple of photos of our lumber and the stuff stored next door.  Thanks June for holding off on the next shipment.

Len