My Mommy. (Oh, and some house stuff, too!)

It's been a while, I know- but I have a good excuse! My mother was visiting us last week, and work on the house slowed down a bit. But not completely. Before she arrived I spent the weekend cleaning, trying to tidy up our construction zone. Sam did some finishing touches, like hanging the door to the downstairs coat closet. That's the door on the right, here. The door on the left wasn't actually hung, because frustratingly it's a couple of inches shorter than the coat-closet door, and would look weird. So we'll have to use it somewhere else, and buy a new one for the bathroom downstairs. (We're trying to re-use as much as we can!)


He also put up the OSB in the bathroom, so that you can no longer see straight into the bedroom from the kitchen. It was nice that he did this, because my mom slept there while she was here, and it gave her a smidgin more privacy!


The Saturday before my my mom arrived, our friend Jerrod came down to hang out in Sam's cool garage. We thought it'd be nice if he could park in the garage. So Sam pulled his truck up, and Jerrod pulled his in. Sam was pretty pleased that with no effort at all our garage could accommodate 1 Toyota truck, 1 Land Cruiser, 1 1968 Dodge Charger, 1 VW, and 2 quads + camping gear (on lift). Nifty!



Then they got down to some serious fun, and put the Charger up on the lift. They thought it was fun, anyway! I went to cook dinner. :)


Then my mom arrived! We did all kinds of fun things (like going to the zoo and seeing the spectacular polar bear exhibit), and all kinds of normal things that were fun just because I was doing them with her (like going grocery shopping). She got to meet some friends and see some family, and Karen & David, some dear friends of my family from way back, came down to help us celebrate her birthday in style. It was a good time.


Because my mom wasn't interested in jumping the chasm from one landing to another to go see the cupola, Sam kindly finished the stairs. So now the fantastic stairwell is complete!




Looking up from the bottom...


... and looking down from the top!


Then, since he was on a stair- roll, while my mom was staying with us he built the steps up to where the bedrooms are.


These steps were a particular kind of pain in the neck, since he had to work around all kinds of pipes. (The ones in the foreground are obvious, but waaay in the back there are more. This picture was taken through the steps from inside the laundry room, on the right side of them.)


It came in very handy to have those steps to the bedrooms, given that while mom was sleeping in our old room, we were sleeping in our new room:


I know it might look a tad spartan (albeit huge!) in the picture, but it feels luxurious. There is a lovely cool breeze coming up off the canyon, and when we wake up in the morning we're greeted by a gorgeous view:


Since my mom left on Sunday, Sam has been very busy with all kinds of small annoying details. But the inspector passed us on our last inspection!

The plumber has been working on finishing up, including a bunch of pipes (which don't make for terribly interesting pictures, as we've seen!), and installing the shower in the downstairs bathroom...


Sam also built the step to connect the two levels of the cupola... I think that might be the last stair he needs to build!


He also is learning electrical. (Is there anything that boy can't do??) He phones the electrician from time to time if he has a question, but he's wired up the lights in the laundry room...


... and is working on doing the ones above the stairs. Sometimes, though, it's just nice to sit on the stairs and rest.


Today Sam the plasterer should be stopping by to get started on stucco-ing the last bit of the house! And although we should've had the windows last week, we don't. It's a long sob story. But we hope to have at least the frames for them this week, so stay tuned!

A stairway to...

Sam has been building stairs. These are some mighty thick pieces of wood he has to cut. His saw doesn't go all the way through, so he has to make each cut twice: once on each side.


Apparently when you build stairs, you have to first make a "map".


That picture was kind of hard to see, so here's a detail. It's complicated! It's a good thing Sam's a whiz at math.


One added bonus of doing all this work is that he has picked up quite a few toys tools along the way. The other day he got to use his new saw to cut some metal hangars down to size...



And the following day he hung some stringers in them!


Sam has been very meticulous about getting each step perfectly even and level. I think they're very sculptural.


When I got home at the end of the day, I could walk up the stairs to... well, to nowhere, yet!


I also got to admire the canned lights in cupola.

The next day Sam worked on a longer stringer... he's got plenty of eye protection, but I wasn't thrilled about the feet situation!



He still had 10 toes when he was done!


Maneuvering it into place...


Planing it...


I love the way the sawdust looks like snow... at least, I love it until it snows all the way down to the living room floor (and chairs, and table)! We have sawdust-drifts! I'm not complaining though...


Especially when I came home the next day and saw this! These will be the stairs up to the second floor.


Sam removed the temporary/faux-floor, so you can see all the way down now.


And then yesterday, when I got home, I first saw this: another delivery of lumber, to be used to build the laundry-room wall.


And then I noticed, at the back of the living room...


There was this: Sam had finished the stairs to the second floor! Sioux took to them immediately. They work for going up...


... and coming down!


While Sioux and I skipped up and down those stairs (neither of us is very helpful!), Sam was hard at work on the ones that will lead from the landing to the cupola...


So that is where things stand! I can't wait to see what surprises await me when I get home tonight!


All in all, I think things are coming along amazingly quickly. A year ago yesterday we were just beginning to pour the foundation, and today we're skipping up steps to the second floor! Wheeeee! Neat, neat, neat.

And tomorrow, the huge windows for the stairwell are getting delivered. That'll be pretty exciting, too. Stay tuned!

Getting Closer

It really is beginning to look very big. It kinda makes us giggle.


See what I mean? It's huge. Beautiful, but huge. And it's getting closer to being completely framed!! There are all kinds of cool angles that play off each other. We like how it looks more and more.


They had to finish sheathing the cupola, which required a bit of ingenuity. Kevin sat in the window...



... waaaay up in the window...


And Sam took a ladder to the roof so that he could get to the roof of cupola. He needed a bit of help reaching the ladder! :)


Once Sam was in place on top of the cupola, he and Kevin maneuvered the sheathing into place...


... and Sam held it while Kevin nailed.


Then Sam nailed the parts that Kevin couldn't reach.



It's looking very cool in there. In this next picture you can see the door that leads from the cupola to the roof. What I really like are the temporary cross-beams, though: all those Xes. They help to keep the whole stairwell structure square until all the sheathing is in.



Next, they had to put another huge beam up.




You see that metal hangar waaaay at the tippy-top of this next picture? That's where they needed to get that huge beam!


So Kevin got into place (a place, by the way, that you could never convince me to get into!)



Here you can see the distance between the two hangars that the beam needs to span...


Then Sam got into place on top of the cupola, having tied a strap to the edge of the beam. The plan was that Sam would lift one end of the beam by the strap until it was more or less parallel at Kevin's feet, at which point Kevin would lift his end into place, while Sam maneuvered his end into place with the strap.



It worked amazingly well.




So then they got that beam all nailed into place... (you can just see Sam's hat on the far right- he's standing on the platform that they built.)


The view 'up' is pretty cool from the living room, now! (Part of that will be closed, soon)


Sam admired the view and checked the weather the following morning!

And then they built the last wall for the cupola. It's got a nifty little 'window' in it so you can look aaaaall the way down.


It's hard to tell in this picture, but this wall was hard to build because since the roof angles slightly (so rain will drip down the back of the house) each stud in the wall had to be cut to a slightly different length. It is perfect. Sam keeps tugging on it and saying "this is solid!"



Next, a mini "floor" had to be built at a right angle to the huge beam they'd just lifted into place. This will look like a shelf under the last cupola window... it's needed for crazy housing code reasons. Sam has explained to me several times why it's needed, but I can never remember. So Sam held a temporary supporting board in place with a beam, while Kevin nailed it in.


Here you can see the supporting board better.


The next day, Sam went to work preparing the sides of the 'floor'...


I helped him get one board attached under the window...


Then Sam checked that everything was still looking right...

... and then he took a break and admired the view!


When I got home the next day, they'd gotten all the platforms for the stairwell in! Now all we're missing is stairs to connect them!


They'd also put in the remaining cupola windows on one side.


And they'd sheathed the wall in the cupola...


It looks so cool!


Then, the following day, they built the mini wall above the stairwell, and sheathed that, and the ceiling, too. If you compare this next picture to the last one, it gives you an idea of where this ceiling and wall are, above your head as you go up the stairs ...


They also finished the 'floor'/shelf under that window in the cupola (that wall perpendicular to it is the one they just sheathed).


So now you can really get a sense of what it'll be like to stand in the living room and look up. All those levels! You can see the mini 'window' in the cupola wall..


Besides the stairs, framing is pretty much done! The huge windows for the stairwell should be delivered any day now, and then we'll get them installed. Sam (the plasterer) is going to stop by and let us know when he can get started to finish this last piece of the house-puzzle! Sam (the husband) is going to start working on stairs! Stay tuned...