Howell Cabin

When we left our heroes, the rafters were up, and light snowfall was drifting gently between them to land on the tarp laid out on the subfloor. Time to get some plywood on top so that, at a minimum, we can get through the winter with a tarp holding the snow out. On Saturday , we put the bottom 8-foot row of OSB in place. We really  appreciated the pneumatic nailer for this part of the job! It wasn't supposed to snow at all, but we picked up about half an inch. It wasn't too bad, and now there's only a couple foot slot letting snow into the interior. Good thing, because snow was forecast for Sunday, with sunny skies on Monday. We laid the tarp back out and went home. When we got back on Monday , several inches of snow had appeared, so we started the day by shoveling off the roof. Siggy enjoyed watching this video of his big brother using the nailer: On Tuesday , we finished sheathing the ends and gables.  Our neighbor R...

On Monday , we started building rafter assemblies and tipping them into place on the walls and around the ridge board. Siggy and Guinivere came for a visit. Kids love scaffolding and power tools and danger! Still pretty up here! We got about half of the rafters into place. Staying at the Timber Lodge, we parked near a Cle Elum Compact: Tuesday , we kept at it with rafters. Eliot kept finding creative ways to rearrange the scaffolding so we could work from the level floor rather than from outside. I don't think we had to lift a rafter to the outside until we got to the gable assembly, which was heavy. We hung the outriggers. We had to leave the outboard gable rafters to our next visit.

Saturday was a very satisfying day. Zack came and helped us build the remaining wall panel. Then we started hoisting and bracing the wall sections. Once they're all in place, we laid the double top plates in place, overlapping, to join the walls together. That was a lesson: I considered a single-plate design, since I didn't need to transmit roof load laterally: all of my rafters lined up directly over studs. But the double plates were nice because they're the standard technique, so we could use pre-cut 92 5/8" boards for all the studs. And they made securing the walls into a rigid structure mercifully easy. On Sunday , we put OSB sheathing up on the two long walls, to give the structure greater rigidity. We left diagonal braces on the end walls, because that sheathing was going to interact with the gable sheathing higher up. Then we installed some 14-foot vertical braces and positioned the ridge beam. Here is a fun little time-lapse s...

Boy, it going to be a gorgeous day! Today, we started framing the walls. This was a really satisfying process, because it went so fast. Christianna came along to help. As we completed wall sections, we braced them to keep them square, and stacked them up the hill. By the end of the day, we had four wall sections done, stacked up and ready to go. Each of the four is half of a long wall. Two have rough openings for windows.

Okay, they tell me it usually doesn't snow around here until Thanksgiving. Yesterday, the structure was all concrete and pressure treated lumber; it could easily weather the winter. Now we're going to close it up. Once we start raising walls, we'll be building a giant bathtub for snow, so we're kind of committed to at least getting the roof sheathed so we can cover it with a tarp. Let's do it! We start Monday by finishing up some fasteners in the floor framing, and added blocking to support the seams in the subfloor. Our lumber order shows up after lunch; better late than never. It's got the all the framing and sheathing materials. Glad I didn't try to bring all that up on the pickup truck. We screwed and nailed plywood to the bottom of the joists to support the insulation. On Tuesday, we cut insulation and dropped it into the cavities. Then we laid out six sheets of plywood and nailed them into place. I pounded my thumb pret...

Calvin and Christianna came over to help us hang joists across the floor beams.

On Wednesday we started mixing concrete and pouring it to fill our footing blocks and columns. Mom and Bri came for a visit ... and brought milkshakes! I had heard that you really  have to support concrete forms well, because the stuff is heavy and, well, liquid. But I didn't learn it well enough; our posts aren't exactly plumb. They're close enough that the column load should pass through them without trouble, but they look dumb. It took us two days to mix and pour all of the concrete. We had to bring another ten bags up the hill to be sure we didn't run out. I think we ended up using more than a ton.