Family Matters

I love it when family visits me, especially when they want to help. One family member even traveled from NYC! Thanks for everything, we couldn't have had that much fun without you guys.
We worked on getting 4x6 peices set into the wall for our floor to rest on and just plain building up the walls. We are building up to 10 feet and we are soooo close.
Here they are working away. The youngest cordwood builders on our place so far!









Sunday I got sick and had stay home. Luckily a friend rescued us and took my place. Thanks MT! While I was at home sick Cory finished the last of the corners. Now all we need to do is build up the walls to them. Yeah!!!!! One maybe two weekends of cordwood left. Can you believe it.

Log Jammin

Weekends come and go so quickly. We took one big step over the past couple of weeks and put the loft floor joists in the wall. Of course with a little help.

The crane isn't even fully extended yet!

Joists waiting to be put in the wall.

Joist number one. Cory and I stood on ladders to guide the joists into the sweet spot. We screwed on some 2x material to prevent the straps from slipping. This process went really quick. I am really glad we hired him. It sure saved us a lot of sweat and tears.



We were battling off and on rain that day. Somehow it stopped raining at just the right time.










The rest of the weekend was spent building up the walls around the floor joists and working on the well. My father was around to work on the water situation. He thinks that we collapsed a pipe, broke a coupling, broke the sand point, or everything is fine. Either way we need to take the pipe out and take a look. Something just doesn't seem right. If we would have been thinking we would have had the crane guy yank it out. But we weren't. A number of attempts at getting the pipe out failed. Now we are at a stand still again with the water.






Another addition to the land happened. A chicken coop! Someone was looking to get rid of it and I was willing to take it off their hands. Free is a tough price to beat. Now I am set for next summer's chickens.
Here are the weekend end pictures from two weekends ago.

Everybody's Working for the Weekend

Another weekend has come and gone. Thanks to my cousin and her friend we reached our goal and then some this past weekend!! Yeah These ladies were the quickest cordwood builders yet. They even put us to shame. We really couldn't have done it without them

Between mixing mortar batches every 20 minutes, Cory found time to work on our tamarack floor joists. They got all cleaned up with the log wizard and milled flat on one side.
The logs are ready to be set in the wall. We hired a local guy to bring his boom truck with a crane to set them in the wall. It's going to be well worth it.

























We worked on filling in above the window frames.











I thought it was going to be slower with no windows to work around. But boy was I wrong. My cousin and her friend flew through it. This picture is from Saturday night!

On Sunday Cory and I set in the 2x6 pieces that the floor joists are going to sit on. It was raining off and on all day. That is always unfortunate because if it were pouring all day we would just take the day off. But nooo, we worked under the big tarp until dark.

Hopefully the weather holds out for this weekend.

Coming up next week....floor joists in the wall!

Moving on up

The walls are really starting to take shape. Lots of help again this weekend, thank guys!! There is a lot of ladder work.









Our goal was to get the walls just under the window frames. We accomplished that and got a little done above the window frame! That is really exciting.
































Here are some interior shots















This maple leaf bottle came from maple syrup. I butted it up against mason jars. It should let in some light.



















The metal pipe in the wall is for the back up propane heater.

Looks like the door frame is holding up:)
















Coming soon, we will talk about those huge tamarack floor joists!

Hammer Time

Rain...argh. We got a little rained out this past weekend. Tarps on, tarps off, tarps on, tarps off. Then we were even working under tarps. By the way that is not fun. Mosquitoes love it under the tarp! I am itching like crazy this week.

















When it wasn't raining my mom and I were working away at the walls. Cory and my dad were working on getting water. My dad built a cribbing to work in the hole. It looks like were are mining for gold.

























First they dug as far as they could. Then we rented a jack hammer in town and they went to work on driving the sand point. We all took a turn on the hammer. It'll rattle your brains out. I had never tried it before.. now I can put that on my resume.



























































After a lot of hard work here is what we got at about 15 feet. Listen carefully.








Water!!! It was a very exciting moment. Then that moment ended, we broke a pipe and another piece we needed and it starting raining again. To be continued.... Keep your fingers crossed.

My dad also brought up some arrowheads to put in the wall.









Hopefully this weekend the weather will corporate with us.
Till next time