The West Wall

 Here is a photograph looking South at the recent excavation adjacent to the house. This is the uphill, Western, side of the house. We used our old garden tiller to break up  the hard soil and make it easier to shovel up the hill. I have done several projects with this excavation method. It is labor intensive though it does save money on equipment rentals. The other upside to this method is that the soil is not compacted by a large machine nor is it difficult to maneuver the small garden tiller into positions where a large excavator  would not fit.

Here I have dug out some of the up hill area West of the house. The plan here is to create a concrete path to the back of the house ( North side). The path will be covered and the soil will be retained. The retaining wall will create a nice border for planting shade tolerant plants. The plant root structure will help mitigate water coming down the hill ( assisted by gravel in fill and a french drain) Placing concrete on the ground around the house will help with reducing pest problems inside the house as there will not be vegetation and soil directly proximal to the house to provide harborage.

Here is another shot looking at the excavation. On another note: the roof covering over the concrete path will be approximately four feet. This covering will allow us to forgo guttering the upper roof as the lower roof will catch all of the rain off of the upper one. The best long term reward here is in regard to accessibility. The upper roof is difficult to access relative to the lower roof. Being tucked into the woods means there will be a decent amount of leaf and needle litter that will deposit into gutters. Gutter cleaning will be imperative. The lower guttering will allow easier and safer access to the gutters. The pollen dropped off the pine trees make the upper roof slippery to work on in addition to their elevation. Ultimately, I would rather avoid the upper roof and so the lower roof and guttering create a little work for today and less for tomorrow.

The house is wrapped! We are almost completely dried in. I have a door to frame up and then we are golden.

roof: ON

    The roof is on. All but the final two panels where painstakingly put in place with a hammer and ratchet. Though we have a generator it would serve better as a massive paper weight or anchor. Thus, we put the panels in by hand. Tap, Tap, crank. I tried feverishly not to fall off the roof as I aimed to hit the purlins. Only once did I actually have a place picked out on the ground where I thought I was going to land.
     While the roof may not be perfect, it will not leak. It is going to be well insulated and it blends well with the surrounding forrest. Oh, and I did not die or break a bone while building it. All in all  I consider it a successful roofing experience.

second floor update

 The second floor is almost done. We have to a few windows to install and the stud work to support said windows. The roof is coming along nicely. We have all of the roof trusses up as of this past weekend. The pictures hearer show all but two trusses up. The photos also show the house before the North wall was built. More photos are to come. I often get distracted with building and forget to stop and take photos of the progress. We are using metal roofing and a radiant barrier on the roof. We nailed wide purlins in place to stabilize the trusses before placing the radiant barrier down. Once the radiant insulation was in place we nailed purlins on top of our wide purlins. These top purlins will allow us to screw the metal down while still maintaining an air space between the radiant insulation and the metal roof. This air gap is important in order for the radiant barrier to work properly, according to my reading.
The main floor is wrapped in tyvek. The windows are in and it is starting to feel like a real house. My next post will have the first photos of inside.

Second floor

       This past week has proved to be productive. Partly due to the threat of impending rain and partly because we made a conscious effort to build on multiple days. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the camera for a daily snap shot. The photo to the left is our progress as of the end of the week.  The sub floor is done, save a small strip that will allow access to the crawl space. The second floor has half of the studs done. Yes, we are building the second floor with traditional framing as opposed to timber framing. Building the timber ribs was fun and interesting but there is no way we can safely raise ribs on a second floor. Not to mention we ran out of cured oak for the process. So, standard stud walls it is. We are using saw mill cut pine from the mill five miles away. 2x4x8s are 2.40 a board and that beats Lowes by a mile, not to mention it is locally sourced, cut and milled. Additionally, the wood from the mill is true cut as opposed to the "standard" lumber from the store that is labeled 2x4 but is really smaller.
      We were able to build a jig and finish half of our roof trusses this week. We lifted them into place with a reasonable amount of grunting and ladder climbing. The metal roofing and reflective bubble insulation was picked up this week and we will hopefully install it in the next couple days.
     Yesterday, amidst the rain, we burned four large piles of brush. Most of the brush was from clearing the site for the house. We also burned a large amount of brush from our recent clearing in the forest surrounding the house. The burning really helped to clean up the surrounding area and removing the downed brush from the forest will make room for our hazelnut planting this Fall.
    Below are several more pictures of the house in its current state, taken from different angles. The second to bottom photo is taken from the lower field and gives good perspective on how the house sits up on the hill.