Four more deck boards installed

Sunday

Despite my attempts to plan the deck frame exactly right, it ended up just a bit too wide for a series of uncut boards to land in the right place at the outer edge. That means I need to adjust the widths of the boards.

On the entrance deck, I did this by ripping (almost) every board down a little bit. It was a giant pain and added a bunch more sanding. The back deck boards are much longer, so this would be even harder. Instead, I decided to only rip down three boards, so the deck has a repeating and symmetric pattern of wide-wide-narrow boards. It's more visible, but a lot less work.

Even still, ripping the boards was a real pain. There's no way I'm going to maneuver 18' long ipe boards (which are ridiculously dense) through a table saw; even if I tried, they'd surely wander and end up with a kerf cutting inside the desired width.

I fiddled around making a jig for the circular saw instead. The first jig failed. The second jig, the fence shown below, sorta worked, but was a constant battle because the scrap lumber I used was warped. Sigh. Oh well, only a few boards need to be cut this way.

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Appliances and mirrors

In pursuit of being ready for final, I came up and installed the fridge and dishwasher with Jeff. We hung mirrors in the bathrooms.

It is DONE!

The final inspection was today. This guy is Levi, the county inspector, and as you can see, we passed! He only had two questions for me. One was about the energy efficiency credits and the blower door test, for which I had the compensating paperwork for the low-flow faucets already prepared. The second was asking for a smoke detector outside the bedroom; I pointed up and he saw that we already had one tucked into the alcove. And that was that! I got up at 5am to be certain I'd be here before the inspector, and I was ... by about five hours. In that time, I took another truckload of tool buckets down to the storage container, then picked up all the floor protection in the great room and vacuumed and mopped. It's glowing! Then I went back down to the storage container to get a hammer so I could glue in 32 wood plugs to cover the screws for the french doors. I fought with installing the screens, but the frames are too big! The manufacturer said "yeah we don't even make th...

First tile

Saturday Tile! Christina got some tile installed this weekend! Jon was racing ahead trying to get backer board down. I had to finish a couple pieces in the main bathroom before anything could be done. Then I got the laundry room filled in. Hector and his son Robert came over from Yakima to provide initial tile instruction. The first step was to get all the tile for the floor laid out and edges cut. Jon had purchased most of the rest of the Ipe deck surface boards in Seattle this week and hauled them up on the trailer. Each 18 foot board weights fifty pounds! Siobhan helped me unload them and stack them under the eaves. Sunday We came back for another morning of work. Christina got almost done thinsetting the first bathroom floor. Jon finished tuning up the subfloor in the upstairs bathroom and getting the backer rock board installed. Siggy and Jon took another little bite out of the deck, cutting the first five joists.

Howell Cabin

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