All wrapped up

The house is Tyveked, and the windows are all in!
The guys worked hard today, I'm told that it's tough to decide if this was harder than putting in that ridge pole in the dark or not (see the Dancing in the Dark post if you don't know what I mean). Union Guy thinks this was tougher - the windows were very heavy and they had only one super duper suction cup thing to hold them with.
They made a sled to slide the windows from where they were stored in a big crate ... notice the gray cat sitting on Contractor Man's feet. That's Shadowcat - he'd just been told that there were no free rides, as he'd been sitting on the sled riding along!

Sure looks good. Roof comes next week, we're almost to lockup!

And for this week...

We have natural gas hooked up to the pipeline. All three cats survived the procedure. Yay! Plumber Man can now come and hook up things indoors so we have HEAT!

It has been over ten degrees daily for the past few days. Wow.

The roofing materials will be onsite on Monday. Contractor Man will go pick them up and deliver them himself.

Windows and solar system support pillars will be put in starting tomorrow.

Bought all the light fixtures and two smoke detectors on the weekend. Whew.

Union Guy is out at Apple Jack Creek today: he built my bathroom sink cabinet from Ikea this morning (always a much bigger job than anyone anticipates, which is why I asked him to do it, instead of fooling myself into thinking I could just "get that done some evening") and says that he's had to take the cats out of his toolbox three times already, and that all the pawprints inside the bathroom cabinet are my problem.

And, since Union Guy is working tomorrow as well, I get to have a shower tonight and sleep in town. :)

Roof Update

Sounds like Contractor Man has a solution for the roof ... this is good news! More details as they arrive, but we do have a solution. Might even have a roof by next week!

A roof over our heads ... soon

Soon, but not today.

There was a mixup: the roofing instructions we were sent said put strapping up (not sheathing) on the roof. We did that.

The roofer arrived, and looked at the instructions that came with the roof, and said, wait, it says right here that this particular kind of roof has to go over sheathing, not strapping.

Oops.

So, Contractor Man, being the wonderful man that he is, is in the process of solving this problem for me. He and the package company guys (who are also really good - they admitted straight up that this was their mistake, and will cover the costs of fixing the problem) have some alternatives and he'll have more info for me soon. Basically, the preferred solution is to get the *right* kind of metal from somewhere local (it exists, we know this) as that's faster and easier in the long run than getting sheathing, installing it (a 2 day job) and doing all that work.

So, yet another delay, but hey, nobody's sick, nobody's dying, the weather is warming up for the weekend, we are comfortable and well housed in our tiny cabin, and really, it's just one more small glitch in the grand scheme of things.

It's disappointing, to be sure, but hey, things happen.

Curiosity and the Cat

Well, we all know what curiosity did to the cat.


Mikan has, apparently, suffered that fate.


The crew was out doing backfill around the house this week, and the cats seemed fine all day. When The Boy went to let them in, though, only Diesel returned. There was no sign anywhere of Mikan. We suspect that he was checking out the trench and got backfilled in place. :(

So, we were left with one lonely and cold Diesel, who had nobody to help keep her warm at night and keep her company during the day. We went back to the place we got Diesel and Mikan, and there were 2 more kittens (from a different litter, so slightly older) who were still waiting for homes ... and we brought them home. At least now we are "resourced in anticipation of possible attrition": if we lose one more (heavens preserve us), the one who is left will at least have a buddy to keep him or her warm.

So, I now introduce to you our next two members of the acreage crew: Moke and Shadowcat.

Moke is the way that The Boy pronounced "smoke" when he was very small - there was a huge forest fire around the time he was 2, and the smoke drifted through the streets. "Moke, Mommy!" he would announce. So, the light gray and white cat is named Moke cause that's what she looks like. We struggled with finding a name for the lovely dark gray cat, and settled on Shadowcat because his stripes and dark coat would colour him perfectly for hiding in the shadows.

So, that's our animal situation for this week.

The house progress ... well, we have the roof going on today, and oi! I just remembered I have to call the Natural Gas people so they can fax me a work order. I'll go do that. More later on this same station....

Snowing in my Living Room

Yesterday it snowed in the living room. It looked kind of neat, a few flakes drifting down through the latticework that is currently the roof. Here's an action shot of yesterday's adventures: The Boy standing in his loft (wearing his bike helmet as he had been out riding earlier), and Contractor Man climbing the stringers on the roof, carrying insulation up to the peak. He is utterly fearless up there, even with a 20 foot drop below him, it doesn't seem to affect him at all.He doesn't normally work weekends, but he came on Saturday so that we'd be ready for Roofing Guy who is scheduled to arrive Monday.
He's a very good man, Contractor Man.



Today began with the usual greeting from the kittens - they were sitting in the bedroom window when we arrived, and promptly raced over to say hello. While we got the fire going (keeps The Boy occupied, and burns up our scrap, and keeps us all warm, so it is a multi-purpose sort of fire) Diesel and Mikan were busy climbing all over us.




We worked on wiring this weekend ... Here is an action shot of Solar Neighbour pulling wire up through one of the the holes drilled in the floor. Plumber Dude was there today as well, working on the air exchange system and the in floor heating. He let me use his super duper big drill with the auger bit to drill the holes for the wires ... wow, does that thing ever eat through the wood fast! Of course, it also weighs an awful lot, and I really felt like a wimpy girl any number of times today. Still, we got all the holes drilled, all the outlet boxes mounted, and the wire pulled for all of the outlets at the front half of the house. Next weekend, we should be able to finish up .. and Solar Dude plans to come out and hook up the panels, so we may even have live power in a week. Cool!


This week should see a number of big events: the roof should go on, the backfill should be done (so we don't have a moat around the building anymore), the windows go in (and then we're pretty well sealed up!), the natural gas hookup should happen, and the septic system should be complete. It's very exciting. It sure is a lot of work - I hauled the lumber out of the way today and stacked it all up so that it'll be clear for the backfill equipment, and I'm worn right out. It's painfully obvious that I spend most of my days sitting behind a computer keyboard, not lifting anything heavier than a coffee mug. :S

Fitting Dresses and Pulling Nails

It was a reasonably warm day, all things considered, and that's a good thing - the crew were up on the roof most of the day getting the "peak" at the front to sit exactly right. It was a lot like the final fitting of a body-hugging dress ... try it out, adjust a little, try it again, adjust it some more. By the end of the day it was there, and with just a little more tweaking we'll be ready for roofing.
This picture shows a good shot of that interior beam that we had to put up (see the "Dancing in the Dark" post) - it sure does look pretty. The spaciousness of the loft continues to surprise me ... no wonder The Boy is so excited about having all that space to himself! Even with the roof on, there's still a lot of headroom and floor space in general.
I spent the day pulling nails out of boards. I cleared up a lot of the lumber around the house, since we'll be getting backfill in early next week and that all has to be out of the way. I also pulled out the interior braces, knocked the nails out of those boards, and piled the lumber up for reuse on another project or somewhere else in the house. The inside looks a lot bigger now that the indoor obstacle course has been removed! The Boy spent much of the day feeding wood scraps to a fire. :) Oh yes, Solar Dude (that's what The Boy calls him) came out and confirmed that we've got a good location scoped out for our solar panels, they won't be shaded by the trees or the house. Tomorrow, Solar Neighbour and I are going to start wiring ... it's getting closer and closer to being a house we can live in!