Howell Cabin

Today begins with our completed subfloor. Eliot cleaned it off. We measured and squared a datum for the inside of the exterior wall framing. Then we snapped chalk lines and locked it in place with clear paint. Lunch break at our picnic spot. During lunch, we heard from Jeremy, who is flying home from the east coast in his Cardinal. We did the Siobhan Hi maneuver. You can't see the whole shape here because the photographer isn't lying down. There he is, circling above! And here's the aerial photo he sent down to us a minute later. Back to work! Christina finished installing the trim in the shedlet. All that's left are the light fixtures. Woo! Jon ordered a mini-fridge on the drive home. Eliot took a little break to help Siggy construct an airplane out of junk wood. The thing actually flew! Mostly. Back up the hill, Christina shows off the completed trim. Yay! She and the kids headed home to avoid a late evening. J...

Second half of the subfloor, here we go! Today's wildlife has an exoskeleton. Christina worked on the window and baseboard trim for the shedlet. Siobhan and Siggy made a snail park. Eliot helped Siobhan and Siggy run the glue gun. Last panel! Here's Eliot fitting the support rails for the crawlspace door. He's easier to see once we take the door off. Subfloor done! Tomorrow we start on the walls.

We thought we were basically done preparing the joists, but it took all day Saturday to install vertical blocking (to support posts above), ladder blocking (to support walls that teeter on the rim board), and A35 shear wall connectors: Here's Eliot nailing in the last A35 an hour after sunset. Meanwhile, Christina painted the shedlet, and Guinivere read a book. Sunday Siggy and Eliot re-measured and re-squared the top surface of the joists. We finally got the joists leveled off and began learning how to install the plywood subfloor. Siobhan and Siggy turned a few screws. Eliot turned a lot more screws. We glued and screwed all the plywood to make a solid, squeak-resistant floor. It was hot. As the floor materialized, the foundation hole is starting to look like a proper eerie crawlspace! We got more than half of the plywood installed. Meanwhile, in the shedlet: Last year, Jon bought supplies for a finish floor based on $1/sq...

We came up Wednesday night to spend Thursday trying to get far enough to pass the subfloor inspection. Shims  blocking  Joists  Joists  Additional joists in a more interesting shape...  Dusk falls, more joists... Six joists left for tomorrow, plus a whole lotta blocking and some special fasteners. Friday Sunrise over ... joists. We got all the joists in. We had to pack up at noon to get back for Eliot's work. We still had at least an hour's worth of blocking to install, plus a dozen metal brackets that we needed to replace with galvanized versions. Rats! We left a note for the inspector explaining what we knew was missing, and hit the road. The view at the pass was great. ...and during the ride, we got a call from the inspector. We have permission to continue! He'll inspect the missing bits when they come back for the next inspection. Hooray!

The joist factory was in production today. It was a short day. Siggy left about 2pm for a family dinner. Our wildlife guest today was a soaring vulture. We had to put our tools away before 3, but we got halfway through the third course of joists. We'll be back later this week; hoping to finish joists and blocking for the next inspection.

Saturday morning. The goal is to install about 75 rim and common joists. First stop, bagels for breakfast. Eliot helped Siggy learn to tear duct tape. We only got started about 11am, so lunch happened pretty soon. But not pretty spoon; we left those at home in the cooler. Oops. So, fingers in the yogurt, obviously. Before we could work on the joists, we had to add a little blocking to the pony walls, and bring our nailing up to to snuff with the engineer's nailing details. Siggy helped Eliot hammer. We ran into town to return a couple hundred bucks of extra lumber we didn't need, and to pick up some more nails. On the way back, we stopped for a quick burst of nutritional enhancement. Siggy made this helpful warning sign. You know what we need to do before we install all the joists? We need to get these four stupid 400 pound blocks of concrete out of our crawlspace. While I installed the first five joists (hey, we're 8% of the way there!)...