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Another week of refreshing progress. But not without frustrations.
I flip flopped on the wood stove for the basement. Is it just me, or do most wood stoves pretty much look the same? i wanted a fully clad soapstone unit, but not only was it expensive; the shipping added $1,500 to the total. So I bought a different brand from a dealer in Oregon. Also from the Netherlands, but less expensive and no shipping. Oh and no sales tax. Looks like Katie will get some practice with her driver’s permit over Spring break. See, www.scanstoves.com for some wood stoves that can be viewed as art.
Problem being, the flue size is bigger. And the concrete formed hole through the middle floor needed to be enlarged 2”. It took a full day of drilling and chipping, with one $65 broken drill bit, but we got it done.
Meanwhile the top floor is coming together with a streamlined bracing system. No 3/4” plywood! Hopefully it will hold the wet concrete.
The excavator guy returned to extend the septic line. Yes, sh*t will flow uphill.
The rock photo? Look closely and you can see three mountain goats that frequent the rocky hillside in full view of our house.
Steve
Our materials for laying out the top floor were supposed to arrive last week. With that delayed until next week, we focused on the stairs. And it took a lot of focus!
The crew from last Fall measured cut and formed accordingly. Unfortunately, one oops and lots of stuff gets out of whack. The new crew made a template out of plywood and put it in place. This revealed things needing to be changed. The standby time for the crane is $250/hr and one of the fixes took almost two days. Thank goodness for templates!
Even so, a slight twitch of a finger from the crane operator could have turned the 7000 pound stair sets into an instant battering ram poised to tear down a wall for rupture a floor. Or worse, to pin a worker. A very, very stressful day. But ultimately a success!
Now that we have the stairs going up, we will return to building the top floor.
Steve
March 10th and we are off and running.
Removing the shoring that supported the middle level floor and walls took two full days, and recycled thousands of screws.
Looking at the basement ceiling for the first time, the most amazing thing are the lines of exposed concrete. The wide lines are the primary beams. The zigzag lines are actually a continuation of the exterior walls above. The amazing part is the absence of supporting posts. Either my engineer is a genius, or . . .
The basement floor will get mucked out and then buffed. It will be our first opportunity to evaluate the coloring process.
The new crew seems to be doing great. The dead battery in the contractor’s van being the only hiccup so far.
Steve
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