It turns out that, even going back into the hill that much, there are still 3 distinct sources, one of which is shown below (if you double click to view this shot in full size, you can make out the flow which is really quite impressive!) I plan to do a wall across the hillside that will capture all three. Its amazing how much life there is around a spring like this - especially salamanders and crawdads.
Meanwhile our neighbor Clifton brought his tractor (a very nice 52HP John Deere w/fork lift front end and winch back end) and pulled some fallen and standing dead locust trees off our hillside. We'll use this locust for the arbor on the front of the house. He also brought up his portable "Wood Miser" sawmill
which converts logs to lumber.
While the mill was up here, Charla somewhat reluctantly advocated taking down the two cedar trees in front of the old house. They are nice trees, but they won't fit into the landscaping and we can put the wood to use as anti-moth panelling for the closets.Clifton (who on this day celebrated his 72nd birthday) put his winch on one of the cedars to get it to fall away from other trees and the grapevines:
With the cable taut, Clifton starts in with his trusty "husky" (Husqvarna chain saw)
But the cut gets a bit too far through, and the tree falls on the grapevines despite the winch.
I trust they'll survive. Now the old house is out in the open, and a lot more pleasant inside with the light and view. You can imagine how the house was when first built in the mid 1930's - perched up on the hillside with a view of the valley.
Clifton milled the cedar into 1/2 inch slats for the closet panelling. (The bigger beams on top are apple wood from some other ugly old trees we took down).
Siding continues around to the North side.
We could only go so far before getting the back door installed:
And in a rare instance of Just-In-Time delivery, the door arrived just about the time that everything that could be done without it was completed.
Mike, Steve and Dave get the door in. You can see the nailer under the door for the deck that will ultimately allow a no-step entrance to the upper floor.
Now the siding wraps the door area. That umbilical-cord looking thing on the near side of the door is the cable to the electric panel - the meter will be mounted between the door and the window.
Next we moved on to siding the lower east side porch.
With the downstairs floor done, Marty got started on the paint. Here is the music room color being cut in
And the finished room. The computer room behind is a greenish shade
I think that music room lavender shade is pretty closely related to the winter forest floor:
Finish carpentry gets underway, putting the Douglas Fir trim around the upstairs windows. The pattern of the trim is based on our Vashon craftsman-style house.
Finish carpentry includes hanging the interior doors and trimming them
Installing the doors is where the rubber hits the road ---we found out that we made a mistake when ordering some of the interior doors. The rough openings in our plan were the "standard" 2 inches over. But the double french doors we ordered specify 3.5 inch extra space, which frustratingly is only revealed when you go to put them into the hole. We should have ordered slightly smaller doors to fit the openings we already had. So there will be some extra time spent making the rough openings a bit more open to fit those puppies in.
Now the siding wraps the door area. That umbilical-cord looking thing on the near side of the door is the cable to the electric panel - the meter will be mounted between the door and the window.
Next we moved on to siding the lower east side porch.
With the downstairs floor done, Marty got started on the paint. Here is the music room color being cut in
And the finished room. The computer room behind is a greenish shade
I think that music room lavender shade is pretty closely related to the winter forest floor:
Finish carpentry gets underway, putting the Douglas Fir trim around the upstairs windows. The pattern of the trim is based on our Vashon craftsman-style house.
Finish carpentry includes hanging the interior doors and trimming them
Installing the doors is where the rubber hits the road ---we found out that we made a mistake when ordering some of the interior doors. The rough openings in our plan were the "standard" 2 inches over. But the double french doors we ordered specify 3.5 inch extra space, which frustratingly is only revealed when you go to put them into the hole. We should have ordered slightly smaller doors to fit the openings we already had. So there will be some extra time spent making the rough openings a bit more open to fit those puppies in. Even the solid wood double doors are very picky when it comes to having the rough opening sides parallel since if they aren't it shows when the doors come together - you can see that in the picture above - the bottom of the right-hand door is sticking out about 3/4 inch while the top is dead on. Luckily our lead carpenter Steve is well experienced at making after-the-fact adjustments to the framing.
Below is the west bedroom closet fully trimmed and with a coat of finish on it - I think the tall closet trim came out nice. We plan on getting a local guy to make matching doors for the upper opening.
Below is the west bedroom closet fully trimmed and with a coat of finish on it - I think the tall closet trim came out nice. We plan on getting a local guy to make matching doors for the upper opening.
