Howell Cabin

We ended up having to rearrange the order of the walls on the entry side of the house, such that there was no sane way to just tip the last section into place. So we rented a reach forklift to lift it out of the house and lower it back into position. Eliot and I were joined by Siggy and Toby & Daniel Lilja. My friend Mark, from Texas, came by for a midday visit. Here he's tightening down an HDU bracket. And here he's cutting some jack studs to length. Toby and Siggy did some Dolly Derby. Then they went machete-ing in the woods. At one point they found a really soft stump to attack with their machetes. Siggy had observed a couple weeks ago that this stump had a big wasp nest in it, but apparently he forgot. Ow! They each ended up with a few bites. Daniel takes a turn at an HDU. Eliot practicing his backing-up skills ... on the forklift. Daniel drove the forklift down the driveway to put it away. Toby added some panel ...

Now that the little shed has a floor, we can add a fridge. Here's the delivery guy. Cold water! Burritos! Yogurt! Mmm. Okay, back to work. This wall segment is W2: among other things, the plywood gets nails every two inches! That's a lot of nails. Eliot took the mover dollies for a stroll. Jon installed two crawlspace vents. The gathering room side wall is up. Here's the front door! Hey, it works! Installing the front door section.

Another milestone today: we stood up one of the walls (in two sections). We began with two sections, built flat on the floor. We moved them around with castered dollies. Normally you can just tip a wall into place, but we have to lift ours up six inches and lower them down over the threaded hold-down rods. The short sections of wall shown above (each 13 feet long) weigh ... a lot. We built these "sippy bird" jacks to be able to lower the wall sections slowly. First, we set the bottom edge of the wall up on 6" blocks. Then we tilt the wall to vertical (using brute force). Then we tack in a diagonal brace so it doesn't fall over on us. Then we attach a sippy-bird jack at each end. We lift one end, replace the 6" block with a 4-1/2" block, and lower it back down, guiding it over the threaded rods. We alternate sides until the wall is in place on the floor, then whack it with a sledgehammer until it's in the right place.  Wildlife break....

First order of business today was a dump run. Siggy took care of recycling the Gatorade bottles. Gramma came up to enjoy the woods. Our made-from-garbage picnic benches were such a hit that we decided we needed to make a made-from-garbage picnic table. 23 minutes total completion time. And here we are enjoying our lunch at our new table! Siggy sacked out on grandma. Then they headed to her place for a sleepover. Eliot and I got a second wall segment built. This one has a particular twist: due to a typo on line 6 of a spreadsheet, we drilled one of our threaded rods into the concrete an inch off from where it needed to be. We corrected the situation by mortising a slot in a post to install the hold-down hardware. The night sky tonight is amazing. A crescent moon has already set, but the sky is so full of stars and the Milky Way that you can see well enough to walk around! We saw a couple falling stars from the Perseids, and Jupiter, and the dipp...

Today begins with our completed subfloor. Eliot cleaned it off. We measured and squared a datum for the inside of the exterior wall framing. Then we snapped chalk lines and locked it in place with clear paint. Lunch break at our picnic spot. During lunch, we heard from Jeremy, who is flying home from the east coast in his Cardinal. We did the Siobhan Hi maneuver. You can't see the whole shape here because the photographer isn't lying down. There he is, circling above! And here's the aerial photo he sent down to us a minute later. Back to work! Christina finished installing the trim in the shedlet. All that's left are the light fixtures. Woo! Jon ordered a mini-fridge on the drive home. Eliot took a little break to help Siggy construct an airplane out of junk wood. The thing actually flew! Mostly. Back up the hill, Christina shows off the completed trim. Yay! She and the kids headed home to avoid a late evening. J...