Howell Cabin

Today's business was to crank through interior partition walls. Here Eliot is tying together the two halves of the wall that separates the entry and stairwell areas from the bedroom/bathroom/laundry room areas. We would have made a lot more progress if Jon had counted up the lumber we needed and ordered everything that was missing. Instead we made three sprints for more materials, driving more miles back and forth to the lumberyard (90) than from home to the cabin (75). Sigh. But we got a lot of walls made. Eliot decided that the lift was too scary, and just scaled the column himself.   Tomorrow: we're totally  going to finish the first-floor walls. And not run out of materials, either.

Look, it's construction, but it's also dump runs.   Okay, back to the structure. Time to wrestle that column into place. A single fork on the forklift is crazy heavy. Eliot popped the column up and over the wall to set it on the living room floor. And then we lifted it up and placed it into the hole. But our forklift's centerline wasn't directly over the target, so once the column was snuggled in its slot, didn't hang straight up and down. I rode up the man lift to put a rope through the top, to pull the column towards vertical. The first 20 feet up were great: stable, sturdy, fast, much better than a ladder! After that, it was suddenly terrifying. What am I doing up this high!? Each puff of wind was terrifying. I used a stick to get the rope through, but it didn't fall down far enough for Eliot to reach. Eventually we got the rope through, and used it to right the column to almost plumb. We couldn't quite get ...

Daniel and Toby Lilja came along. The rental place was concerned they wouldn't be able to get a telehandler for us this weekend, but when we showed up, it was at the gate waiting for us. Daniel drove it in and picked up our personnel lift with it. Toby and Eliot sheathed the first interior wall segment that we built last week. Our Big Donkey Column was also waiting for us. Toby caught this great shot of Jon trimming off the end of the column square. The telehandler is here to help us install this 600 pound monstrosity. We tidied up the workspace, loading the truck up for a dump run in the morning. We came up to the shetlet to have microwave pizza and get into bed. While we're up here, we hung up Siggy's folding bunk. To bed, men! For tomorrow, we ride ... a big forklift.

Today began with Chase and Katie coming over and making us donuts! Right on our workbench! Mmmm. Then they rode our Construction Dragons. And then they got serious, helping us put up the last sections of first level wall. Behold! Walls everywhere! The open bit at the far end will have a big column in the center and otherwise be sliding doors. Eliot made these custom relief studs to clear the HDU brackets. We are done with HDUs finally. We had one more little section of wall to install, in place. This is where the stairs go; Eliot is hanging through the stair landing window opening. Jon installed Mister Boot Cleaner at the little cabin. So we had this forklift here yesterday for the wall section. Might as well use it to rearrange stacks of lumber! And our little tool kiosk. Let's put it over here. Eliot scooting around measuring out the first interior wall. Jon cut a notch in the floor to receive the Big ... column. T...