Wide Pine Floors

Pulling the boards in through the second floor bedroom window

The expertly stickered stack of floor boards on the first floor

From the archives: This picture shows the delivery truck that brought a big lumber order, including our floor wood back in September 2009.

Today our friends Sally, Jeremy, Anda and Silas came up to help move the pine floor boards from the basement to the first and second floors. We've been storing them for over a year now since we received them along with the massive lumber delivery for the roof framing in the fall of last year.

To move the lumber to the upper floors we each had our jobs: Nancy and Sally and Silas pulled the 16' long boards up through a window on the second floor as Jeremy and I carted them up from the basement and positioned them at the window. Meanwhile Anda stickered each board as they came in. At some point I broke off and started churning out more 3/4" square stickers to keep up with demand while Jeremy continued moving the boards. It was a big effort but felt effortless with the help of such great folks. I had pleasure imagining Anda telling friends at school tomorrow that she stickered wood and her friends saying "What's that mean?" and her being able to tell them.

Beyond this, Nance and I have been quite busy painting, prepping and such. I've been working steadily on lowering the floor of the first floor bathroom shower floor by three inches. Its turned into quite a project. But more about that later.

Tomorrow I go pick up our bathroom tile order.

Windows go in

The supervisor wondering why I'm taking a photo and not working

Prepping the window openings

A window in

Jeremy and Sally holding the big window just before installation

The big window in place

Yesterday and today we've been installing windows and its going very well. As if on cue, the weather seems to suddenly feel raw and cold, with a persistent wind--a fine motivation to get those windows in! Its snowing this evening as I write this.

We started in the back of the house, on the first floor, with some of the smaller windows and have been steadily moving around to the front of the house.

Even the smallest of these windows are pretty heavy, so it takes some concerted planing to move them and get them into the openings. Each window opening requires a careful flashing detail before installation.

In our living room portion of the house we have a window that is something of a picture window that measures 6' x 6'. This creature weighs a ton and we knew we'd need some help. A phone call to Jeremy resulted in Sally, Jeremy, Anda, and Silas showing up to give us a hand. With all of them plus Nancy, Joe, and myself, we were able to carefully manoeuvre the massive unit into place. Getting that window in was a big hurdle and the rest are manageable by comparison. We'll polish off the the rest of the first floor tomorrow and maybe make a stab at the doors.

Every new aspect of the house brings a moment of anticipation and curiosity. Will we like it? Does it look like I thought it would? I have to say I'm really pleased with the windows; they look really good. Joe said they looked "old fashioned", which I took as a positive indicator of what I was hoping for.

Big thanks to Sally, Jeremy, Anda and Silas for showing up to help when we needed a few extra hands!

The roof is done!

After a long effort we finally finished the roof on Wednesday!

This means that the house is dried in, which is a major milestone in the house building process. Before we can completely be done on the roof we have to cut holes for the various vents that come through with what are called boots, which are the sleeves that the vent pipes pass up through. To celebrate, Nancy, Joe, and I went out for dinner at the Den and raised our glasses "to the roof!"

Sally and Silas dropped by to say hi and it turns out that although the roof is cool, Silas is really what everybody wanted to check out. Even Motion.

Yesterday we worked most of the day on the rafter ties. This started off with a little consultation amongst the future homeowners about the height they should be placed at. I designed them to be installed at 7 feet off the floor. Joe and I put a few in at this height and we all had this feeling that it was just a little low, so yesterday morning Nancy and I discussed it and decided that it was worth pulling out the ones we'd already installed and moving them up about three inches. Joe and I spent the rest of the day putting them in and at the end of the day it was clear that moving them up that 3 inches made all the difference. It was worth it to back up a little and re-adjust.