June 11th: Strapping is done, half the
interior walls are up, and the stove area is about ready for
install. The white area in the
bathroom wall (photo below) is the cement board, parged smooth and
painted with high temperature paint. The masonry
wood stove will be built about 8 inches in front of it, so the
durock is screwed to metal studs, leaving no flammable materials
too close to the stove. As a side benefit, the bathroom should stay
warm too. Of course, now that we're ready for the stove, the
installer has postponed from next week to mid-July.
May 15th: Horizontal strapping is going up inside the house. This
gives a little extra space for insulation in the walls, and breaks
the continuous "thermal bridge" of the 2 x 6 framing from inside to
outside. It improves the insulation value of the wall enough
to be worth doing even on new construction. I'm also pushing to get
the wall behind the masonry stove in place. The stove will
be built on the concrete pad (low center of picture) which has it's
own foundation. It's scheduled to be installed about the third
week in June. So the walls around the stairs need to go up first,
and then the bathroom.
May 2nd: Actually, I've been working on the house for more than a
month now. A skiing day trip in February set my mind
at ease, the house came through winter just fine, no issues at all.
At the end of March I drove up with a shower basin and
some materials, thinking I might be able to drive in. Not a chance,
still a foot of snow on the driveway. I learned that a large
cardboard box (like, with a shower basin in it) makes a pretty good
sled.
So, two weeks later, 11th of April, the snow is pretty much gone in
the cities. Surely I could drive in over a scant snow cover
in Clam Falls. Well, no. Two feet of snow still covered the driveway
and more than three feet piled up at the entrance where the
snow plows go by. It took an hour to dig out a small spot for the
RAV4, and then a couple more to make multiple trips hauling
gear on a sled back the 3/8 of a mile to the house. The 2 x 4's were
kind of a pain. :)
And then we had a blizzard on April 14th. There is no heat in the
shop, so the temperature had been hanging just above 40
degrees (solar gain before the blizzard), which is reasonably
comfortable if you don't mind wearing a lot of clothes. Outside
was staying below freezing. This all worked out pretty well. I had
about 80 heavy retaining wall blocks to move 100 feet.
This would not be fun, three at a time in a wheelbarrow through the
mud. But dragging a sled through the snow was easy.
And warm. And clean. And it took an hour, instead of half a day.
Another trip on April 21st, still hauling gear on a sled up the
driveway, but finally warm enough to get some serious work done
inside the house. A couple of short basement walls went up around
the stairway area, and vent baffles started to appear in the
attic.
And finally, on the 28th of April, the miracle that is Spring
finally took hold. I was able to drive all the way up the driveway,
after some hasty repairs on the major washout near the road. Two
feet of snow melting in about a week makes for a lot of
water trying to cross the road. The great melt is all over now, and
I am seriously enjoying the dirt that isn't mud, all around the
site, since the weather has been gloriously dry and blizzard free.
Materials are starting to flow in faster than one sled at a time
and the interior of the house should start to evolve rapidly. And I
won't even care (much) if the weather turns wet again. :)
