Sunday, November 11, 2007

Monster House on the Hill

If you don't have a lot of time, you can either just look at the pictures, or come back later to do some reading. This entry is a chronicle of the past two weeks, as I did not have access to the Internet (much) during this period of time, so it is pretty long. Actually, this entry covers quite a bit more than the past two weeks, but everything you see starting from the photo showing the floor joists for the first floor, onward, are from the past two weeks.

I hope you enjoy it!

It has been a long road so far, but now things are moving rather quickly. We learned not to use Craig's List to find someone to draw up our house plans. I won't even get into that story, as it is long and frustrating (and might make for an interesting book), but I consider it outside the scope of this blog and I just don't want to recall the experience.

It was bad.

But to shorten an incredibly long and painful story, we now have a set of house plans that are approved by the county, and we are furiously building away!

You saw when we first got our land. The deal closed in early February of 2007, when the grass was still green.

You saw when we got our travel trailer and plopped it down on the property (it was actually there a day or two before the deal closed), and when we built a 12x12 shed and when we got a little 1981 Toyota Pickup (that I replaced a few things on to get it working better).

And did you see when we got irrigation water and let it run day after day to soften up the rock hard soil to make it easier to cut the driveway and the foundation for the house? The grass was quite dead by then (and around this time you saw me mow my ass off to get rid of a couple acres of brush with a silly little freebie gas push mower).

And maybe you saw that we moved our trailer down the hill a bit to be out of the way of construction.

And perhaps you even saw a perspective from midway down our property of where our house will sit up on the hill. The grass was starting to turn green again from running the irrigation water. However, one story you have not heard is about how the water does not soak down into the soil. Instead, it just goes down a few inches, then works its way down the hill. We wound up having a bit of a mud bog just down around the base of the steep part of the hill (below the tree line), within which a truck got stuck and really tore up the land in the process of getting it out. Argh!
Here are the ugly tire tracks.
And here is one of them showing the water that pools just below the surface. The morning after I took this picture, the water level had risen clear up to the grass line!

And you have not yet seen the heavy equipment move in! We hired a guy (Chris Roach, who also happens to be a world renowned snowboarding champion) to cut our driveway and install our septic system. He enjoys that sort of thing, which is cool - I have always wanted to operate a tractor, myself. You can see his tractor and one of his trucks here, getting ready to do some dirty work near the end of August.

He went right to work and cut in our driveway. He did a nice job, too. This picture really shows very little of it, but you can see the sprinklers running to soften the land where the house will sit, and you can see where the grass has turned green from weeks of watering. Some of the trees have already been removed, and you can kind of see them piled up in the distance on the left. I hated seeing the trees go (I'm a softie when it comes to killing anything), but they happened to be in the way of our floor plan. It seems unfair, but then life is like that.

We have already faced a few challenges beyond getting some usable house plans (which are still giving us a few headaches here and there). Not the least of which is the soil. Apparently, our land is little more than a rock garden. There is no dirt - only rocks. Rocks, rocks and more rocks. Here is a small sample.

Despite the rocks (the endless rocks) the grade was cut for the foundation. The cut was not clean (because of the rocks), but here you can kind of see a very rocky ridge, in front of which will stand a retaining wall that will eventually support the back wall to a basement that we hope to actually turn into a living space sometime in the future (when we have some money again and want to deal with the whole permit process with the county - this crazy county - again).

Gravel was poured onto the driveway (like we need more rock!) and the shed, which was moved out of the way during the process, was moved back and levelled (yes, it is actually level). You can see the irrigation sprinklers still running in the distance. This was to soften the soil so a hole could be dug to bury the septic tank.

And a hole was dug in the muddy, rocky soil, to bury the septic tank. But there were too many rocks - big rocks - and a nearly solid rock layer - so it was impossible to dig a hole deep enough for the tank. So another hole was dug. And another. And another. In the end, five unsuccessful attempts were made. We had to go to the guy who designed our septic system and see if we could install it further down the hill, near the tree line. We got a green light and FINALLY, a good hole was dug.

But there were a lot of rocks. We have piles of rocks now, everywhere.

We have a special pressure dose septic system (oh joy) that requires a phone line (which we do not have) for the central office to monitor its status (or receive alert calls from the system). It is a special system, designed by a company up here, just for soil like ours that doesn't deal well with water dispersal.

The leech field was installed and it all looked good (to me), but when the inspector came out to inspect it, the guy said it was all wrong and needed to be rotated 90 degrees to the lines ran the other way. So, it all had to be dug up, new trenches dug, and the lines re-installed. Fortunately, the rest of the system was good and everything checked out. I have a 10,000 Watt generator that I got for a good deal before this all began, so that was used to power up the system for a test run. Apparently, it all worked, so now we just need a house to connect it to...and a power line...and a phone line...and a water line. Man, there is a lot to building a house!

Speaking of building a house... We know a guy up here who is a great builder. He grew up Amish, but now he's just a great guy with a lot of building experience and knowledge. So he is helping us build our house. He is doing most of the actual building, but he is also directing me, and my wife, and other friends and helpers to do a lot of work as well. You'll see a lot of that in pictures to come. But first came the foundation. Another one of our biggest challenges is the weather. In the process of forming up the foundation, it rained. More than once.

Also in the process of digging the trenches for the foundation walls, a lot of big rocks came up. I'm talking like 4 and 5 ton rocks.

More rocks!

Needless to say, between the rain and the rocks, the trenches were a challenge. They were not clean cut by any means, and they were wider and deeper (mostly from shoveling out rain water that absolutely does not seep into the soil) and from the removal of very large rocks. But in the end, we prevailed, and the foundation walls were formed up and ready to pour. I helped cut a number of the form boards and helped bend and install rebar over a weekend, but then I had to return to life so that I could go to my job (that is paying for a lot of this), so I was not around when the walls were actually poured. But they came out pretty well. My builder friend says it is the straightest and squarest he has built so far - however, he miscalculated the distance on the slopes with all the steps, etc., and came up three inches off! But he was able to compensate to make things work, so it is still a viable foundation wall. Whew!

I returned the next weekend to see the foundation wall in place. All the form boards had been removed, and the pressure treated base boards were all cut and ready to be put down.
I went around and secured them all in place with big washers and nuts that come down over big bolts that are embedded in the cement walls.

Then we worked on building up the foundation walls. I spent most of my time that weekend just cutting boards. Cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting. We were able to build the entire structure using the 2x6 boards that were used to form up the foundation walls! It takes a lot of wood to form up foundation walls, I guess. I was surprised. And we even had some cement-encrusted wood left over that we can use here and there as we continue to build. Keep in mind that this is just the frame that holds up the first floor! The slope on this hill was very deceiving, and it turns out that the basement area actually will have almost an 8-foot ceiling!

Again, I had to return to work for the week, but I came back the following Friday for an extended stay (I am taking some time off work so that I can help with the building process so things keep moving along). When I returned on Friday, this is what I discovered. The floor joists were all in place, with blocking and everything, just waiting for the sub floor to be installed. As I said, this hill is deceiving. In this picture, it kind of looks like a normal house, just sitting on a foundation on the ground.

But then you come around the corner and look at the house from a different angle, and you see this! OMG! And look at that basement area! By the way, my wife had our builder friend move the door from the left side to the right side without consulting me. I didn't notice until I was called over to help stand up the wall. After some discussion, we will be moving the door back to the left side as originally planned.

And here is a shot of (about half of) the basement area. This is going to be a nice room. Now we wish we could finish it off right away. The one thing my wife wanted most was a music room where she could walk right out onto the land. This is perfect for her (and she vigorously explored ways to design this house so that a basement could be easily added on later - looks like her hard work paid off).

We promptly went to work and by the end of the day that Friday, we had the sub floor down. Now we had a nice place to sit and eat and look at the view.

On Saturday, we built some walls. The first wall was the big wall of windows. We still have some final decisions to make about the windows, so they were not completely framed in. But we slammed the headers all the way up and left the bottoms open until we know our final window dimensions. There are two big windows (obviously) on either side of a sliding glass door that will lead out to a deck. We tried to stand this wall up all at once, but between the three of us who were lifting it, it turned out to be too much. At one point, my leg became trapped underneath it, but fortunately I was extracted without injury. We split the wall into two sections and lifted them upright, individually. We may have been able to do it all at once if it was an 8-foot wall, but we have a 9-foot ceiling on the first floor, so the wall was a bit too heavy to lift.

The second wall to go up was the rear wall that borders the guest bedroom and the kitchen. The kitchen will have a small sliding glass door that opens to a small deck in the back, and there is a door into the kitchen that we will likely use most often. The area outside that has no walls around it yet is the laundry and storage room, which also will have a door, either with a ramp or steps coming up along the back leading up to it.

The third wall to go up was the "North East" wall, bordering our great room and the kitchen. Only part of it is visible here, again with a window of undecided (vertical) dimension. We are trying to decide a final height that will minimize our view of the neighboring home on the propery across the way. Barely visible here is a tiny window that will open to a small nook where we anticipate the telephone to be and possibly a small (very small) desk. Not visible is the kitchen window.

Sunday, we took a break (well, our builder friend did. I built a ramp and my wife went shopping for supplies). But then Monday happened. The forecast on Monday called for possible rain that day, thunderstorms that night and possibly rain Tuesday morning. Argh! We worked fast. Fortunately, my wife picked up a few tarps from the hardware store on Sunday (she never stops working...or thinking) so we were prepared. We were concerned since we didn't want the sub floor to get wet. It rained on us a little bit while we were building, but then it dried up pretty quickly (it was more of a drizzle). We managed to get the fourth wall up, which will have our "front" (i.e. main) entry door in it (which we already have) - it will be a bit of a climb to get to it, but it will be there nonetheless. You can also see a small window into the guest bathroom, and the window into the guest bedroom. After we stood up the wall, we put down the tarps and called it a day (and I enjoyed a good thunderstorm that night).

Picture taking was precluded by the laying out of tarps to keep the floor dry overnight, so I didn't take any more pictures until the next morning. It was a foggy day, and you can see we also managed to frame up the stairwell the day before, as well as hang the monster big boy beam that splits the great room from the kitchen. You can also see some water on the floor in the one area where we had no tarps to cover it. Most of the floor actually stayed rather amazingly dry through the rain that came in the night. A few areas bubbled up just from the moisture - the worst of which was under the stairs where it couldn't have been better placed. (Although, the next day was clear and dry and almost all the bubbling flattened back out as the wood dried out).

I do have a picture of the stairwell that I took at night, with the tarps down, etc., but it is pretty dark, so it didn't make it into this blog.

Here you can see we were preparing to roll out the second-floor floor joists. We had lifted several of them up on top of the walls, ready to be placed.

And by the end of the day, the fog was gone and the floor joists were in place - blocking and all!

The next day was Halloween. It was a short day, as my builder friend wanted to take off early to be with his family. But we got most of the sub floor down for the second floor. It is kind of hard to see in this image, but it is there. We were short of some building material, so the rest of the floor will have to wait until the lumber yard fills our order.

Meanwhile, the following day, we framed up the laundry and storage room. We are currently using the window as a doorway, since this has been our main access route while building. That's a good shot of the ramp I built. I built it out of necessity, as my wife and I simultaneously took a spill coming off the edge on Saturday night. There was a ladder leaned up near the corner (on a point that was really too low for the ladder), and my wife is not very sure-footed, so she was trying to get on the ladder to come down carefully. I was down below ready to help her off the ladder as she descended. But she got on the ladder, and the footing slipped out from under her, bowling me down to the ground, and toppling her down on the floor. She smacked her right shin on the corner of the floor and the ladder tore up my left shin, and we were both rolling around, moaning, and going, "are you OK?" If it wasn't potentially serious, it would have been great fodder for America's Funniest Home Videos (which should be renamed to Shadenfreude in America, by the way). Anyway, I built the ramp on Sunday - the day everyone "took a break" - while my wife was out buying things, like tarps, which you can see piled up in this image.

Friday came along and we finished off the sub-floor for the second floor (the lumber that was on order arrived), and I shot off the remaining floor panels with the wrong nails, so I was rather pissed. I just kept putting the same kind of nails into the gun that were in there when my builder friend handed it to me, and it wasn't until I was done that he noticed they were the wrong nails. So, hopefully, I won't wind up with a squeaky floor!

Anyway, we also got a couple of walls up, so now the house is turning into a monster house. Look at this thing! We're worried about how we are going to get the shingles on the roof and also how to get the facia on the front (the high side), since the roof has a six-foot cantilever overhang there! But I guess we'll cross that bridge (or fall off of it) when we get there. Hopefully, when the trusses come, the crane will be high enough to get the trusses up there.

Here is a small sample of the view that we will have from the second floor (which is really more like the third floor).

On a clear day, we can see the Marysville Buttes - the world's smallest mountain range.

We also finished off the back wall on the second floor on Friday. Well, almost. We left a couple of studs out so that we could still get up and down from the ladder since the stairs are not in, yet. The far window is the window to the master bedroom. The near window is the big window by the bathtub that my wife wanted. Apparently, this is her house. I get a sink in the bathroom (and I assume I get to use the toilet and the shower) and a small closet. She gets everything else - including the walk-in closet. THE FREAKIN' BATHROOM IS BIGGER THAN THE MASTER BEDROOM!

Oh, and the big windows in the front are hers, too.

Women! ;)

Speaking of stairs, the stairwell is quite prominately in place, but it is currently just a well with no stairs (it is a fast and painful way down if one is not careful).

Saturday, my builder friend did not show up. He needed a break, I guess. So, I basically wandered around and cleaned up the building site a bit, and sorted some of the scrap lumber that we might be able to use here and there. And I also decided to haul a bunch of 2x6 studs up to the second floor. I did all that with no problem, and with less exertion than I experience in a typical day when we're actually building. But then I made a big mistake of trying to measure a window. In the process, I dropped the measuring tape. In response, I jumped back (dropping the tape was unexpected), and in the process, somehow threw my back out. Now I can't stand up straight.

Nevertheless, I took a bunch more measurements to figure out how my builder friend built some of the walls, and I took it upon myself to lay out the next wall to be built. I made a few mistakes in the process, and had to move a window (the plans are still wrong), but I managed to get it all laid out just as it got too dark to see another line. My builder friend should be impressed when he returns (tomorrow?). Either that, or he's going to have to re-do it all. But I'm pretty sure I got it right. I just can't stand up straight, and my neck and back are killing me!

Stupid tape measure!

If only I had a chiropractor.

My wife arrived Saturday night and showed me some window literature while I lay on my back. Daylight Saving Time switched back that night (I think it was that night), so we had an extra hour to sleep in the next morning. Not that we slept all that well. On Sunday, our builder friend showed up and was surprised to see the wall I laid out. He commented, "you've been watching me, haven't you?" We didn't do any actual building, but he and my wife walked through the house, noting changes, etc., that my wife wanted to make. Nothing like building a house in real time. We're still sizing and positioning windows, which we need to finalize on by EOD Monday.

I was in no shape to be building, but it was nice to have some down time with my wife - she has been running a million miles a minute for far too long. If she ever starts writing a blog - and I wish she would - her tales would be far more interesting to tell than mine.

Anyway, we all talked about next steps, etc., and even got on the speaker phone with my mom for a bit, which is always entertaining. She's a character. Then, later, we were irritated by how it now gets dark an hour earlier, and my wife and I crashed early to get some good sleep. She got better sleep than I did, though 400mg of Ibuprophen helped me a bit.

After two days of no real building, building resumed. It was a bit of a busy day. In the morning, my wife and our builder friend went out to talk to the guy who is building our trusses to make sure of all the dimensions. I managed to get out of bed and go find a laundromat so I could wash all my dirty clothes and sheets. After all, I have been living in a trailer for over a week.

I found a place, put my clothes in the washer, and realized I forgot my laptop (I wanted to see if there was any Internet connectivity). I thought while my clothes were washing, I might be able to get online and do some blogging. But I left my computer at the trailer. So, I figured I would drive back to get it. By the time I returned, my clothes were done! And as soon as I put the clothes into the dryer, my wife called and said she had the plans that our builder needed and wondered if I could come get them (she was at an Internet cafe by this time, doing some work, and my builder friend was either back at the home site, or on his way).

So, I hopped in my car and drove the 20-some miles to get the stupid plans and drive the 20-some miles back to the laundromat to put another quarter into the dryer. I got online just long enough to check my email, and that was it. I folded my clothes and headed back to the trailer.

By this time, my back was aching again, but I managed to walk up to the house and climb the ladder to the second floor where my builder and his assistant were busily hammering together the wall that I laid out on Saturday. He had re-marked it, as I had pulled from the wrong wall for my measurements, and moved a window as we discussed on the previous day. But overall, the wall was pretty much as I laid it out. Seen here is the opposite wall, which is the "front" of the house as you approach it from the driveway. To me, the front of the house is the face that overlooks the land (i.e. the view).

But here you can see (from left to right) a window to the "music room" (which I told my wife is my new office), a window over the stairwell landing, a small window into the bathroom, and a door which will lead out to a small "sunning deck" where my wife can bathe in sunlight.

Here you can see a tiny portion of the wall that I laid out (on the right). What this really shows is the view we have from our living room (the "great room" we call it). Somewhere along that side wall will be a fireplace. She also wants that window to be taller to match the windows in the front upstairs. [I must have been tired when I wrote this - the striken text applies to downstairs] But, my god, this house is nothing but windows! And she is complaining about the heating bill in our apartment. Wait until we get the cooling bill in our new house.

Geesh!

Me? All I need is four walls, a place to pee and poop, a place to sleep, a place to eat, and a room for all of my stuff and I'm happy. My wife on the other hand, is running around like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to make a thousand decisions, wanting everything to look just right. She is a very asthetic person. As for me, my four walls are usually blank. I'm the practical one. ;)

Anyway, the guy that fixed our house plans (and who is also going to do our electrical and plumbing) came by and was wowed by the view, plus he helped answer a few questions for us. He was on vacation the previous week (the absolute worst time for us for him to be gone), but now he is back.

My builder friend's wife came by and brought his two kids and some food from Taco Bell for him and his assistant (his sister-in-law) to eat. And not long afterward, my wife returned to meet with a woman from PG&E who came by to survey the site, and my wife brought more Taco Bell food for everyone (unannounced). I ate a couple tacos and the rest of the food went to waste, since everyone else had eaten.

We talked to the PG&E person and were absolutely floored to find out how much the fucking power is going to cost to get it installed. I don't event want to disclose the estimate, but it is not within our budget (not even in our imagination), so who knows when we will ever get power. It would be cheaper to buy a few solar panels.

A friend of mine called me on my cell phone and during the course of our conversation, my cell phone died. Permanently. Well, everything works except for the earpiece. My friend was talking and he just sort of fizzled out and faded away - now I can't hear anything.

My wife had to flee to get back home to the Bay area, so now I am living in a trailer with a sore back and absolutely no means of communication. But at least we got two more walls standing up today. Although, we are out of 2x6 boards, so it's time for another trip to the lumber yard to charge more supplies to our overdrawn account.

I will be heading back to the Bay area probably Wednesday night. Rain is expected at the building site on Thursday and Friday. We were hoping to get a roof up by then, but the trusses don't come until Monday. I'll probably be back on Saturday for the weekend - maybe stay through Monday so I can help stand the trusses (what fun!). But once that is done, I'll be pretty much going back to my regular life (oh God - back to work!) and coming up pretty much every weekend to help with the electrical and the plumbing and setting the windows and doors, hanging siding, etc.

Building a house is a lot of freakin' work!

It better be worth it in the end. We're saving a lot of money by putting in a lot of sweat equity (not to mention learning a lot!), and we're building at a good time, since the housing market is down and people are looking for business. The truss guy is banging out our trusses in a week! Typically, they're like five weeks out.

Now we just need to get the windows ordered...and find someone who will build the huge windows we (er, my wife) wants in the front room on the first floor. That's OK. If she wants them bad enough, she can wash them.

Tuesday came and went. I am standing again, but still working at minimal capacity. I helped carry a bunch of 2x4s up to the house and handed them up to my friend on the second floor, trying to bend as little as possible. My cell phone died on Monday, so after helping with the wood, I got in my truck and drove into town to the Cingular store to see about getting a new phone. But the place was all closed up, with paper on the windows, and signs indicating that it is becoming the new AT&T service center. Lot of help that was. So I looked in the phone book to see if there was another place. All it had was a toll-free phone number for Cingular. No help there - it is kind of hard to call with a dead phone!

So I got some gasoline for the generator and then drove out to the Habitat for Humanities Re-store to see if they had anything useful. I drove around for a long time just trying to find the place - nothing looked familiar (my wife always drove up there with me as a passenger, previously). I finally found the place and it was closed. Apparently, they are only open Thursday through Saturday.

Crap.

I drove the 20+ miles back to the plot, unloaded the gasoline, and then down to the trailer to fix myself a couple tunafish sandwiches. Then I emerged to see the progress on the house. My builder friend and his assistant had put up a few of the walls on the second floor. Then I helped him apply some of the sheathing around the first floor. We'll attempt the second floor tomorrow. Whoo boy! We're going to have to get creative about how to actually do it - the house is tall!

Every evening around dusk, several geese fly (usually) right over the house. I was hoping to catch a shot of them yesterday, but I didn't get the camera out in time. Too bad, as it would have been an absolutely beautiful shot, as the geese flew right past the house and I was on the second floor. I got a rather distant shot of them tonight, as they swung out a little further around the house and I was on the ground. Too bad. Maybe I will get a shot of them tomorrow before I hit the road. One more night in the trailer and I'm going home. I'll probably be back up again for Sunday and Monday, but we'll see how things go. It might rain on the weekend - yuck! Hopefully it won't rain much. It sure would be nice to get the roof up, first!

Wednesday was a day of sheathing. OSB board and more OSB board. The house is beginning to look like a box. Or some kind of fortress. Many of the windows got either covered or partially covered and will be cut out later. But three sides of the house are now covered. The trusses were due to arrive on Monday, but now we are told they will arrive on Friday. Therefore, instead of returning home this evening (like I WANTED to), I am sticking around for a few more days. My back is feeling much better today - still quite sore, but something has shifted back into place...or something. I can't figure out the back. It makes no sense. Anyway, I am going to try to put in a day of work tomorrow as my realtors (who have become friends of ours) will let me use their office. We used to be able to piggy back off someone's wireless router out here in the boonies, but after a big drug bust a few weeks ago (apparently, a neighbor was growing some weed) the connection disappeared. So, I have been out here with no phone and no Internet for a while. It has been really nice in a way, but really sucks in other ways. But then again - I'M BUILDING A HOUSE! How cool is that?

Thursday I worked for the day doing job things. Earning money things. Fortunately, I have a job that allows me to telecommute. But they are working on the highway up here - as they have been for months now - and the traffic is horrible, because they have one lane and block traffic to allow one stream of cars through at a time. And they do a horrible job about it. I got kicked out of my realtor's office at 4:30 when they closed (must be nice to get out so early) and didn't make the 3.7-mile trip back to my trailer for over an hour!

That was partially my fault, though. I got on Google and tried to find an alternate route around the construction zone. One way looked like it might work, but the satellite map showed an unnamed road that looked like a private drive that was the only road that provided a link to the back way to my property, but it turned out to be exactly that - a private drive (complete with NO TRESPASSING signs all around the property), so access was denied and I had to turn back. Back to Google again to look for another route. I found one that should have worked - even looked like it would on the satellite map - but some jerk had a gate across the road, blocking access. What is it with people around here? I had to turn back yet again (and it is NOT easy to turn my little truck around - no power steering). I had to relent and take the highway. It took me ten minutes just to get ON the damn thing. Then I got behind someone who insisted on going slower than the traffic in front of him (which kept getting further and further ahead of him) the whole freaking way. Jerk. Fortunately, I got in line just as the traffic in that direction was being let through, so I didn't have to wait the 25 minutes for the other direction of traffic to clear.

I made it back in time to eat something (I'm scrounging for food by now, as I was ready to go home yesterday, so was not stocked for three more days). It was dark by then, but I took a venture up to see what was done on the house today. The front got sheeted. And it looks like they shot a few thousand nails into the sheathing that was put up yesterday. Yep - it's a box. Then I got back in my car (well, my other car this time - driving the truck, with the clutch and no power steering, was a bit much on my back) and went to the annual road association meeting and learned all about what is going on with the road maintenance in the area. Aside from the highway work, the main road leading into Big Oak Valley is getting pretty rutty. Hopefully, people will wise up, the association will become a legal entity, and we'll all contribute to getting things back up to par.

Anyway, I've lost my patience with being up here and am anxious to get back home, where I can take a shower standing up, get on the Internet when I want (or need) to, get a new phone and sleep in a real bed. I was ready to go home yesterday. But, now I won't be going home until Saturday. AND, to add salt to the wound, I will be coming BACK up on Sunday, probably not to return home until Monday night.

ARGH!

I wouldn't mind staying up here if I had some amenities. I must say, the weather has been absolutely fantastic. I wish it would stay this way, but it is supposed to rain on Saturday. And I would rather stick it out all the way through Monday, since I'm here, but I am going to a play Saturday night - the last showing - that a fellow student from my acting class is in - so I can't miss that.

Friday was the big day. The trusses arrived! I spent the morning cutting out windows and doors through the sheathing that was placed over them, and knocking out "shiners" (nails that missed the studs from all the nailing that was done yesterday in my absense). The generator ran out of gas just after the guy called to say the trusses were on their way, so I quickly ran down to buy some more (10 gallons was like $35!), hoping to beat the trusses back to the plot. I didn't have to wait long for the highway construction (which looks like it will be done soon), and not long after I returned, the trusses arrived.

The trusses were stacked in the wrong order (the guy thought they were going on the other way on the house), but fortunately they were all built correctly. But they had to break the bands on the stacks (there were three stacks) and shuffle them around a bit with the crane to get them on the roof in the right order (actually, they are the roof, so I don't know what you call it when it is not there, yet). But we got them all up there without incident.

We spent the rest of the day standing the trusses. What a dangerous job that is! My builder friend did most of the high altitude climbing (it's like 40+ feet to the top!), but we got the last truss standing just as it was getting too dark to see. There was actually some light in the sky when this picture was taken, but not enough to show up in the picture (and my builder friend was still up above, out of the picture, hammering in the last nail of the day).

I was going to head home tonight, but I am just too tired, so I am going to head home in the morning. I will be returning Sunday, then going back home again Monday night, after which I will be resuming my regular life.

Yuck.

It is supposed to rain tomorrow, but the weather forcast has changed so much on a daily basis, so who knows if and when it will actually rain. It got cold last night thought, and was a bit chilly today (my carrots nearly froze in the refrigerator), so I had the heater on in the trailer for a few minutes to warm things up before going to bed. I didn't feel like making food, either, so I drove like nine miles to the only Taco Bell in the area to get my burrito and taco fix. Now I am ready to collapse for about nine hours.

And here I am sitting in the trailer, writing this blog entry. I can't wait to get home, even for one day, just to take a decent shower and sleep in my bed!

And there is the house with all the trusses standing. I took this shot Saturday morning before heading back home. It looks like I may not be coming back for Sunday and Monday afterall, as we have many other pressing things to take care of at home. But it was SO NICE to come home and actually take a real shower (in a shower stall where I could actually stand up straight, and not have to worry about running out of water). Not to mention sleep on a real bed! Trailer living is for the birds, and I have been a trailer bird for two full weeks. That's long enough. I can't wait to move into my new home!

Here is a shot from upstairs, looking toward the bathroom. You can see the stairwell in front of it. The master bedroom is out of the picture on the left. These rooms are going to look great. There are three different truss designs in here, as the ceilings are vaulted across the front rooms and over the bedroom, but are flat over the bathroom, and the little corridor between the bedroom and the bathroom required an extra little jog in the design. The truss builders came up with a solution that made my builder friend happy, so that makes me happy, because I know it will save some money in the end. And money is something we are running out of very quickly. Yikes!

I love this shot. This was taken from downstairs, looking up through the stairwell. You can see how the ceiling will come flat over the stairs, then angle down toward the face of the house (what I call the front). This house will have a very spacious feeling. I just hope we have enough places to put things, but I guess that is what the storage room and shed are for. ;)

And that's it for this tremendously long blog entry! There will certainly be more updates into the future, although I will only be around to take pictures on the weekends. Selecting pictures for this blog entry was difficult, as there are literally hundreds to choose from (actually, 1081 images and counting). I cannot imagine what 1081 pictures would have cost if I used real film! These digital cameras are great.