A sturdy porch for sittin'

One of my favorite projects so far, Piper began framing up the wrap around porch. With reclaimed oak planks he was able to salvage from another job he's working on, we were able to install about a third of the decking for the porch that will wrap on the North and West sides of the house.

We are using rough cut oak from a local sawyer for the framing and hope to salvage the rest of the oak planks for the remainder of the decking. The porch sits upon poured concrete pillars and will have oak posts and a shed roof that will match up with the East and South sides forming a skirt around the whole facade.

We hope to get this project done soon. Now all we need are some rocking chairs and a few tall glasses of lemonade!

movin dirt

We got our excavator Rusty out again this week to start moving around dirt, working on drainage and digging out trenches for running the electric. With the help of his backhoe, we were able to move the existing electric pole from the west side of the house to the east side of the driveway. Unfortunately with no auger, Piper dug the 5-1/2 foot post hole by hand. My back hurt just watching him. It was pretty cool watching Rusty chain the pole to his bucket and drop it into place.

It was also very exciting to get the front yard leveled out again. The gears in my brain are turning like mad imagining the garden we'll start on next spring. The concrete pillars for the wrap around front porch were dug and poured this week and Piper and I will start framing tomorrow.

We pulled the pine logs off the back hill from the tree we dropped in April and hauled them down to our local sawyer, who will mill them into some wide planks for use in making benches and other random projects.

Rusty will be back again tomorrow and in a few weeks to dig out a root cellar into the hill which will house our homebrew, wines, and canned food. We'll use the clay mined from the dig to add into the plaster mix that will cover the walls of the house.

Catching Up

Trying to get caught up on posting the progress -- sorry to all of you who have been bugging me for more pictures.

The skylights have been installed in both the kitchen and the living room. Three in each with opening ones in the kitchen for ventilation. All of the reclaimed styrofoam insulation has been installed in the stud walls which allows us to really see how the rooms will look.

The last of the shed walls have been framed up which means now we actually have to use the doorways to enter and exit the house. We've got a small crew working on the rest of the straw work. They'll be filling in the gaps with slip straw next week and hopefully will start plastering before the end of the month.