Week 9: Down to the Wire

Hi Friend,

We're picking up momentum now that the end of our summer building camp is drawing near - just 6 more work days left!

First, the most exciting development: we have a roof! Well, almost. Judah and Dolan did a great job installing the roofing on the south side of the house. And then Judah and Henrick did a great job installing the roofing on the north side of the house ... until they ran out of panels, and we realized that we used up too much material by overlapping the panels too much. Arg! Only the end panels were supposed to be overlapped by two ridges. The penalty isn't too bad: we should be getting our final 4 panels by next Thursday. But it serves as a reminder to me that I need to keep reading through all the instructions regularly. There are a lot of details to remember.

Time to put on the roof!

Uh-oh. Three to four panels short.

We have a roof! Very exciting.

We had a couple of rainy days this week, which meant that it was a good time to start on sheathing the interior walls (only one side of the wall, though, since we still need our framing inspection and electrical and plumbing work). The challenge here is keeping the new boards in line with the old boards that were already installed - made worse by the fact that the new shipment of 1x8 boards were 1/8" less wide than the original shipment. Once the guys realized this, we made the decision to use the new, narrower boards for the upstairs walls.

Isaac worked on enclosing the kitchen space

Judah and Henrick line up boards to install

Isaac closes up master bedroom (a friend suggested we get rid of the door leading into the den)

Judah and Henrick keep working up the wall

The middle room upstairs is losing light - we need electrical soon!

Tait and Dolan are now on paint duty. They just had a few more boards to prime before moving to the final color. We're really hoping that the house can have all the siding installed before their departure date. (As a side note, a paint guy at a different paint counter said that he likes to use gray primer for any darker color. I'll log that away for next time.)

Dolan and Tait spray siding boards

I chose a cooler, grayer green (left) since we'll have such warm, bright light on the south and west sides of the house that face the road

In other news, we found a snake trapped in the net that the septic guys placed over the grass seed and hay that they scattered. So Mickey cut it out of the net. I wasn't going to mention snakes, but now that it's come up, Leah has a pet ball python that she acquired from some Lifeonaire friends when we were in Wisconsin this past May. I really don't like snakes, and I really didn't like that we lost the snake in our rental car on the 16-hour drive home. Thank God we found him before returning the rental car - yikes! He was curled up in the frame of the car for those couple of days. Oy! This was not in the vision for my life!

Mickey frees the snake - and who knew they can emit a stinky musk when scared??

I did not appreciate having Leah's pet ball python around my neck - others in my family say it feels like a neck massage

Okay, I have stuff to order before plumber gets here next week.

Until next time!

xo

P.S. Oooh, I came across the idea of lime washing concrete to get a chalky, aged look. Have you seen this before? I'm thinking about adding black iron oxide pigment to a lime wash to get a darker gray, stone-like finish (to be sealed with a matte sealer). Have any thoughts on this?

Judah and his buddy, Henrick, take a quick break

Next post: Week 10: Catching Up