Howell Cabin

Today's job was finishing the subfloor for the upstairs bedrooms. Today's guest carpenter was Analilia, whom Eliot knows as a coworker from Rain City Burgers. Meanwhile my mom drove the bracket on the left to Marysville, where a welding shop turned it into the bracket on the right.  Wow that's an amazing job! And the sticker isn't even peeled off! We got the subfloor wrapped up around dusk. Jon got the 4x10 blocking cut and partially installed. Eliot & Ana slapped a little varnish on them to protect the wood. Putting away tools in the newly covered space. Traditional IHOP post-construction meal. Saturday On the drive home last night, we passed through forty miles of torrential rain. On the drive up this morning, what's that white stuff? Winter is here! Today's work is the "car decking" (2x6 tongue-and-groove) floor that goes over the entry way and the balcony. First we had to finish fastening the...

On Saturday we tidied up the joist surfaces to prepare for installing flooring. We had some narrow gaps that had to get insulated. The drive up was pretty. and we had a hawk soaring at tree-top level again. We had to clean some varnish off the big joists that didn't set correctly (because it was drizzling last weekend), so Eliot sanded a few off and we re-applied varnish. When we finally got to floorintg, we discovered that our stack of plywood had sucked water in with capillary action and molded a bunch. We salvaged enough pieces for one of three rows, which we wrapped up around dusk.   So, kind of disappointing progress, and rain forecast for Sunday. Sunday The rest of the family slept at the hotel, and then joined us for Sunday morning. Siobhan picked some flowers. Siggy tried out his bed. After the other folks departed, we used the rainy day to finish up some loose ends in the shedlet. Jon trimmed up the spare chain on the folding bed....

On Saturday, we assembled the second half of the balcony framing. We stitched together two 13' pieces to make a long rim board. That thing weighed about 200 pounds, which took a little muscle and creative routing for two of us to get up to the second floor. Eliot marked the beam for brackets. We tipped it down, installed brackets, and then tipped it back up onto the cantilevered beams we put in last weekend. Here Eliot's using a 6" screw to suck the rim board tight against the beam. Once the rim was in place, we could hang the short beams off of it. Left side in the photo below; they're short because they stop at the stairwell opening. In glorious VR:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/hxnFhJQKRvcH7jZV9 Sunday We finished up a couple rims for the 2x10 section of the floor framing. Oh, I forgot to show off my fancy joinery last weekend. The 4x10s and 2x10s land on the same wall. I wanted them to both bear full width, which, wit...