The weather cleared up, so the carpentry crew (Steve, Mike, Eric and Dave) got busy with the Arbor. Hoping to avoid ugly visible brackets, we took the suggestion of the building inspector to glue pins into the post footing. The male side is a chomped lag bolt centered in the 6x6 locust post:
and the female side:
doing the deed:
Posts erect, the 6x6 beam is laid (they were bears to get up there - locust is really heavy wood)
Then a 4x6 second layer was staggered on that beam, followed by the arbor rafters which are 3x6. It was interesting how big the wood was on the ground, but when you elevate it 12' in the air, it doesn't look quite as chunky anymore.
Rich shared some of his stash of patio door glass which was installed at a small incline to keep the rain off the front doors.
Dave and Eric said the arbor's best and highest use may be as a sundeck, accessed from the upstairs windows.
and the female side:
doing the deed:
Posts erect, the 6x6 beam is laid (they were bears to get up there - locust is really heavy wood)
Then a 4x6 second layer was staggered on that beam, followed by the arbor rafters which are 3x6. It was interesting how big the wood was on the ground, but when you elevate it 12' in the air, it doesn't look quite as chunky anymore.
Rich shared some of his stash of patio door glass which was installed at a small incline to keep the rain off the front doors.
Dave and Eric said the arbor's best and highest use may be as a sundeck, accessed from the upstairs windows.Rolling back the clock a bit, the clear weather also allowed Earl Norton to start on the final grading. I worked with Dave to get as much as possible of the gravel-against-the-house work done in front of them.
A shot for future reference - eventually we'd like it to look like a yard outside this window...
Earl had to open an access road to the lower field...
in order to fetch some boulders ...
which he placed into the trench so that the retaining wall we are planning behind the awning window will have something solid to sit on.
Earl teamed up with Troy on the bulldozer (AKA in these parts as a "bullnoser" which, I think you'll agree, makes sense). It turns out we have quite a bit more dirt than we need in the back of the house.
The fruit trees are going all out this spring since there was a late freeze last year and no fruit set.
We pulled the bank behind the porch way down, which makes that work better, at the cost of having a steep rise in the back to get to the second floor door.
Then Earl and Troy went home for a week or two, and I got back in to finish the gravel against the house.
We also took advantage of their absence to pour a small retaining wall for the back deck. This will allow the road to come right up to the level of the deck - a zero-step transition into the "upstairs".
More dirty work - getting the propane tank in. Earl dug a big hole before he took off, and I did some trenching around the front of the house. The propane company was scheduled to bring the tank on Thursday morning so I was up until 10:30 Wednesday night doing this ditch.
Come Thursday, Mike took over ditching for the run on the other side of the house. Then the propane guys came, offloaded the tank on the side of the driveway and left without saying a word to anyone!
After a few phone calls, it was determined that the office lady told the propane guys that all we wanted was to buy a tank. So the rush was for nothing. They came back Friday afternoon and put the tank where it belonged:
And ran the "yard lines" - one for the kitchen stove and one on the north side for the boiler:
They made another trip out the following week to run the lines into the house:
At this point they just have the pipes there, sealed with air pressure on them for inspection. When we are ready for final connection, they hook everything together with regulators on the outside of the wall.
The tank in its final resting place, filled with 450 gallons of liquid propane to keep it from "floating" up through the dirt.
Another project we got started on last week was the water line to the tank on the ridge. I backed my Kuboto up the hill as far as possible. I rigged up some ropes and chain to pull myself up the steepest part with the backhoe arm.
The sequence of photos below trace the ditch from its lower teminus in back of the house (look right above Mike's head)
past the Apple tree...
on up past a large double Poplar tree...
Then veering sharply up the hill toward the ridge. You can see (roughly in the center of the picture) where the tractor left off and the hand digging started by the more delicate gauge of the ditch.
I guess it should be obvious from this one why we had to do it by hand:
Almost there...
The goal. Dave and Eric got that stretch dug in one day which was very impressive.
Moving to the inside activities, the fancier (rustic-style) tile which we special ordered arrived, so our tile guy Kim Downer & his helper/wife Julie returned to do the downstairs bath/shower:
Downstairs bath floor:
And upstairs east-side bath floor:
Next day they were back to grout
The finished downstairs bath
As promised in my last post, the baseboard work got started. Sometimes the sheetrock is just in the way, so Eric demonstrates how you deal with that:
And another "erasing" activity: hollowing out behind the living room baseboard to create a outside-air inlet for the wood stove which will eventually go in here..
The way Dave is crowded up against that wall reminded me that I almost forgot to mention that we took delivery on our appliances. We'd been hearing on the radio about appliance places going bankrupt from the housing downturn, and we'd paid down 80% last November in order to lock in last year's prices. We were sweating when our dealer said that their supplier wouldn't deliver any more stuff without them bringing their account current. Thankfully in the end it all got delivered and we happily wrote a check for the balance.
Here's a long shot showing the baseboards in hall and music room
Baseboard in the music room
and downstairs bath. We have enough wood to use full height in the closets too.
The back-ordered doors finally arrived
including this one of a different style which I requested because of its resemblence to the front door of 47 Edison.
The Sunroom with doors installed:
Here are same doors from other side, also showing progress trimming out the shelves. I need to get a local cabinet maker up here to make some doors for these cabinets.
And then the White Oak flooring was delivered!
Steve and Mike work efficiently together to lay the floor. The wood is 4" wide (that's the max width for wood over radiant heat tubes) and quartersawn. Very nice stuff, it will only take minor sanding to finish it. We wanted to get that Sweedish finish done - you see it all over the place in Seattle - but nobody but nobody has even heard of it around here. Actually I did find one old guy who has heard of it, but he doesn't do it. So I guess we'll be finishing it with oil-based Verithane.
And in the "don't try this at home" category:
No harm done to the operator - I was wearing the seat belt and it seemed to work as designed. Luckily Earl's trackhoe was right up the hill and he was nice enough to come up and help it back onto its wheels. This happened Thursday at dusk, and normally Friday nobody is here, but for some reason, the painters, the propane guys, Steve & his son, and Clifton from down the road all dropped by Friday morning so I got plenty of notoriety.
A shot for future reference - eventually we'd like it to look like a yard outside this window...
Earl had to open an access road to the lower field...
in order to fetch some boulders ...
which he placed into the trench so that the retaining wall we are planning behind the awning window will have something solid to sit on.
Earl teamed up with Troy on the bulldozer (AKA in these parts as a "bullnoser" which, I think you'll agree, makes sense). It turns out we have quite a bit more dirt than we need in the back of the house.
The fruit trees are going all out this spring since there was a late freeze last year and no fruit set.
We pulled the bank behind the porch way down, which makes that work better, at the cost of having a steep rise in the back to get to the second floor door.
Then Earl and Troy went home for a week or two, and I got back in to finish the gravel against the house.
We also took advantage of their absence to pour a small retaining wall for the back deck. This will allow the road to come right up to the level of the deck - a zero-step transition into the "upstairs".
More dirty work - getting the propane tank in. Earl dug a big hole before he took off, and I did some trenching around the front of the house. The propane company was scheduled to bring the tank on Thursday morning so I was up until 10:30 Wednesday night doing this ditch.
Come Thursday, Mike took over ditching for the run on the other side of the house. Then the propane guys came, offloaded the tank on the side of the driveway and left without saying a word to anyone!
After a few phone calls, it was determined that the office lady told the propane guys that all we wanted was to buy a tank. So the rush was for nothing. They came back Friday afternoon and put the tank where it belonged:
And ran the "yard lines" - one for the kitchen stove and one on the north side for the boiler:
They made another trip out the following week to run the lines into the house:
At this point they just have the pipes there, sealed with air pressure on them for inspection. When we are ready for final connection, they hook everything together with regulators on the outside of the wall.
The tank in its final resting place, filled with 450 gallons of liquid propane to keep it from "floating" up through the dirt.
Another project we got started on last week was the water line to the tank on the ridge. I backed my Kuboto up the hill as far as possible. I rigged up some ropes and chain to pull myself up the steepest part with the backhoe arm.
The sequence of photos below trace the ditch from its lower teminus in back of the house (look right above Mike's head)
past the Apple tree...
on up past a large double Poplar tree...
Then veering sharply up the hill toward the ridge. You can see (roughly in the center of the picture) where the tractor left off and the hand digging started by the more delicate gauge of the ditch.
I guess it should be obvious from this one why we had to do it by hand:
Almost there...
The goal. Dave and Eric got that stretch dug in one day which was very impressive.
Moving to the inside activities, the fancier (rustic-style) tile which we special ordered arrived, so our tile guy Kim Downer & his helper/wife Julie returned to do the downstairs bath/shower:
Downstairs bath floor:
And upstairs east-side bath floor:
Next day they were back to grout
The finished downstairs bath
As promised in my last post, the baseboard work got started. Sometimes the sheetrock is just in the way, so Eric demonstrates how you deal with that:
And another "erasing" activity: hollowing out behind the living room baseboard to create a outside-air inlet for the wood stove which will eventually go in here..
The way Dave is crowded up against that wall reminded me that I almost forgot to mention that we took delivery on our appliances. We'd been hearing on the radio about appliance places going bankrupt from the housing downturn, and we'd paid down 80% last November in order to lock in last year's prices. We were sweating when our dealer said that their supplier wouldn't deliver any more stuff without them bringing their account current. Thankfully in the end it all got delivered and we happily wrote a check for the balance.
Here's a long shot showing the baseboards in hall and music room
Baseboard in the music room
and downstairs bath. We have enough wood to use full height in the closets too.
The back-ordered doors finally arrived
including this one of a different style which I requested because of its resemblence to the front door of 47 Edison.
The Sunroom with doors installed:
Here are same doors from other side, also showing progress trimming out the shelves. I need to get a local cabinet maker up here to make some doors for these cabinets.
And then the White Oak flooring was delivered!
Steve and Mike work efficiently together to lay the floor. The wood is 4" wide (that's the max width for wood over radiant heat tubes) and quartersawn. Very nice stuff, it will only take minor sanding to finish it. We wanted to get that Sweedish finish done - you see it all over the place in Seattle - but nobody but nobody has even heard of it around here. Actually I did find one old guy who has heard of it, but he doesn't do it. So I guess we'll be finishing it with oil-based Verithane.
And in the "don't try this at home" category:
No harm done to the operator - I was wearing the seat belt and it seemed to work as designed. Luckily Earl's trackhoe was right up the hill and he was nice enough to come up and help it back onto its wheels. This happened Thursday at dusk, and normally Friday nobody is here, but for some reason, the painters, the propane guys, Steve & his son, and Clifton from down the road all dropped by Friday morning so I got plenty of notoriety.