Wood and Stone

A site to track our progress as we build our FirstDay Cottage Canadian house kit. Come on in, get a cup of coffee, set a spell and follow along on our journey or join in if you like. Check back for the weekly update (usually by Wednesday when things are going right) to see what we are currently up to!

Sunday, September 23, 2007

The Return of the Hammer Brothers

This morning we got up there pretty early, and had to clean up a little bit of water. After we left Saturday, it rained like the dickens as we drove to eat. As soon as the Hammer Brothers and Asten arrived, they got straight to work finishing up the East wall to within one board width of the top. Wendy and Pop worked on putting in the top and bottom of the rough opening for the windows, while I cut the 2x8s for the first peak and put them up on top of the second flor bents, along with a bunch of scaffold boards to make a work platform. Well before lunch, Justin, Asten and Jason moved to working on the west side.

The east wall from the outside.
At one point, after putting in an additional header for the windows in the front from a ladder, I decided to move from the ladder to the scaffold directly instead of going down one and up the other. Of course, that is where things went wrong - I got partway across, and the ladder tipped over, so I had to grab on to the scaffold to keep from falling. I didn't fall, and Wendy recovered the ladder, but I think I bruised a rib while clinging to the scaffold, since it is tender when lifting things now. It doesn't hurt to press the ribs, so I don't think I cracked one though. That was the end of the peaks for the weekend though, since it takes some hauling to get myself up on the collar ties and scaffold planks.

I get by with a little help from my friends
I spent the rest of the day helping Pop with the framing again. We put together half of the framing on the the other cathedraled front of the house (away from the road) and raised it with some help. It went up really nicely and made things much simpler than building it in place like we did on the other end (which is a pain with a long post like we have in the middle).

You can see Pop calulating where everything should land in his head
Once we got that half in place, Pop and I put up the other side of the frame before he decided to head home and rest up.

Wendy sheathing the West wall
meanwhile, Justin and Asten kept working through lunch, as they had to leave and figured they would catch some food on the road. When they left, Wendy took over and worked with Jason on bringing the West wall up to the top. They got pretty close to finishing it before Jay had to go too. At that point we cleaned up and headed home since we were pretty beat and Grandma Lana had Uncle John and Aunt Sandra visiting today and they were thinking of going out to dinner; We didn't want them to get started too late.

The east wall from the inside.
it's really cool having 2 of the outside walls pretty much done, and it makes me torn on whether to work on the peaks next or keep framing so we can close in the rest of the walls. I think the peaks are next though, so we can sheathe the roof and keep the darn rain off - once it rains the water starts dripping and everything ends up in the basement. That isn't too bad, as we have a sump down there that is tied into the footing drains, but there are a couple of dips that collect water, which can be annoying.

The whole enchilada
The shot of everything we accomplished for the weekend.

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