Howell Cabin

On Monday , we started building rafter assemblies and tipping them into place on the walls and around the ridge board. Siggy and Guinivere came for a visit. Kids love scaffolding and power tools and danger! Still pretty up here! We got about half of the rafters into place. Staying at the Timber Lodge, we parked near a Cle Elum Compact: Tuesday , we kept at it with rafters. Eliot kept finding creative ways to rearrange the scaffolding so we could work from the level floor rather than from outside. I don't think we had to lift a rafter to the outside until we got to the gable assembly, which was heavy. We hung the outriggers. We had to leave the outboard gable rafters to our next visit.

Saturday was a very satisfying day. Zack came and helped us build the remaining wall panel. Then we started hoisting and bracing the wall sections. Once they're all in place, we laid the double top plates in place, overlapping, to join the walls together. That was a lesson: I considered a single-plate design, since I didn't need to transmit roof load laterally: all of my rafters lined up directly over studs. But the double plates were nice because they're the standard technique, so we could use pre-cut 92 5/8" boards for all the studs. And they made securing the walls into a rigid structure mercifully easy. On Sunday , we put OSB sheathing up on the two long walls, to give the structure greater rigidity. We left diagonal braces on the end walls, because that sheathing was going to interact with the gable sheathing higher up. Then we installed some 14-foot vertical braces and positioned the ridge beam. Here is a fun little time-lapse s...

Boy, it going to be a gorgeous day! Today, we started framing the walls. This was a really satisfying process, because it went so fast. Christianna came along to help. As we completed wall sections, we braced them to keep them square, and stacked them up the hill. By the end of the day, we had four wall sections done, stacked up and ready to go. Each of the four is half of a long wall. Two have rough openings for windows.

Okay, they tell me it usually doesn't snow around here until Thanksgiving. Yesterday, the structure was all concrete and pressure treated lumber; it could easily weather the winter. Now we're going to close it up. Once we start raising walls, we'll be building a giant bathtub for snow, so we're kind of committed to at least getting the roof sheathed so we can cover it with a tarp. Let's do it! We start Monday by finishing up some fasteners in the floor framing, and added blocking to support the seams in the subfloor. Our lumber order shows up after lunch; better late than never. It's got the all the framing and sheathing materials. Glad I didn't try to bring all that up on the pickup truck. We screwed and nailed plywood to the bottom of the joists to support the insulation. On Tuesday, we cut insulation and dropped it into the cavities. Then we laid out six sheets of plywood and nailed them into place. I pounded my thumb pret...

Calvin and Christianna came over to help us hang joists across the floor beams.