Howell Cabin

 Saturday Eliot detailed the front wall to prepare for installing its 2x trim. We built a 12-1/2"-wide board from tounge-and-groove car decking. This took far longer than we'd hoped. The delivered materials were junk; we had to go back to the store to hand-select some decent boards. Then we doweled the butt joints and glued up to the full width. Then we ripped it down to the final width, cut to length. Sanded, added bondo wood filler, sanded some more. Then we ripped three features into the board to help it shed rain, and primed it. I'm telling you this to explain how we spent a whole Saturday and didn't actually attach anything to the house. You know what takes the edge off a long day? Barbecue at Smokey's at sunset. Sunday We realized midday that we were short a couple pieces of flashing. Eliot drove into town to buy some, but neither hardware store that's open Sundays stocked it, so he came back with an empty rack ... and a flat tire. Sigh. Well, we're d...

 Friday Drove the lift in and stopped at the bottom of the hill to take this glamour shot. We installed the second level window head casing on the north wall. Detailing in the plumbing vent. Time to take out the trash . Saturday Guinivere and Eliot finished up some detailing on the east wall. My mom came up; niece Bri went for a swing. Bri brought her dog Mozy. Second layer, east wall. These were all single-cut rectangles; no windows or other details. Hooray! Sunday It didn't take long to wrap up the east wall. We took a lunchtime break to shoot some senior portraits. ...and then back into grubby clothes to work on the third row of siding for the north wall. We're still missing a few details at the top of the north wall, plus the panels where the front door will go, and the panel on the corner that will get installed after the temporary ground wire is removed. But besides those omissions, that's three walls with siding! Next weekend: the big window wall on the south side.

Thursday We arrived Thursday evening so we could get an early start Friday. It was really warm out; maybe 78F at almost midnight. Good weather for sitting around taking pictures of the sky. An almost-full moon made an interesting contrast with the stars. Friday The rental place sent us a bigger lift than we asked for, but Eliot maneuvered it without destroying the house. (One of our sawhorses got sent to the sawglue factory, though.) On Friday we managed to finish up the east wall. It's not beautiful, but at least it's on the back of the house. Saturday Getting started on the north wall, measuring out & chalk-lining where the panels belong. Unfortunately, the stud pattern on the lower wall (that we built) starts on the left side, and on the upper wall (that the framers built) it starts on the right side. We added some vertical blocking inside so we could have all the exterior panels align top to bottom.   Our "lawn" (cheat grass and other mountain foliage) was get...