2007_11_05 Nothing new so the pine trees suffered

Although Steve had thought he would be up there on Saturday they apparently were not. I went up there today expecting to see them today, but the place doesn't look like there has been any change since I was there last week and they were not there today either.

I managed to get a shovel out of our storage facility last week and I took it up there today. Since there wasn't anything to take pictures of or to watch (since they were not there doing anything) I picked up trash for a couple of hours and then took out my disappointment on the pine trees!

I used the shovel to dig up about 18 of the little rascals! That wasn't as easy as I'd hoped since there are so many rocks in the ground down there (on the slope down the hill) it was hard to do the digging at all. Also, since I didn't have any hatchet or axe I had to dig deep enough to allow me to use the shovel to pry the roots with the shovel and pull them out. The roots of those darn things go way down and they're tough.

Anyway, I got out about 18 of them, but I have a lot to go. I wish I had my chain saw so I could cut down the large ones, but it's so far back in the storage facility I can't even see where it is and climbing over the stuff is not really an option for me since I'd kill myself and probably break some of the things in there.

I don't know when Steve and his crew is coming back. :-(

More reports later....

2007_10_31 Dormers almost done, view from down the hill, and fall colors

After the dormer rafters were put up on my last trip to the house they were getting them covered up today (Thursday). They put on the 4x6 inch tongue and groove ceiling and all the other roof 'layers' on them today.

Below is a view of them working on the one over the west bedroom. Steve is up on top.



Here Roberto and Randy work on the vents.

Below I was standing near the window in the dormer and looking back toward the bedroom and up to the ceiling of the dormer. The area that is in the very back where the roof of the dormer is above the regular roof will be behind a wall that Steve says goes straight up from the bottom edge of the dormer in this picture to the top of the dormer ceiling.

Down behind the house there are a few little trees that are getting pretty now that fall has begun to arrive. These are in the area just slightly below where the septic tank drain field (the infiltrator) is located. Kathy really likes this picture. The rock is one of the larger ones we have in this part of the property. There are some that are 6 or 7 feet across further east, but right where the house is there are just millions of them that are an inch to 6 or 8 inches, but few larger ones. This one is an exception.

The last picture is one I took standing down the hill (just in front of the little red leafed trees) looking back up toward the house so you can see how it looks from the south side now that the dormers are done.

I had called Steve yesterday to tell him that the front wall of the storage areas in each upstairs bedroom really did have to be moved back to 5 feet away from the dormer windows (sticking out into the room only 5 feet) instead of the 6 feet he had made them. He had misunderstood when I told him before that they needed to be only 5 feet out. Steve had thought that I meant that the head room height needed to be 5 feet so he put them where the head height would be 5 feet and that made them stick out 6 feet. That cut the distance from the wall to the window that next to the door out to the balcony down to only 7 feet and from the wall to the bedroom door down to just over 10 feet. With the bed, night stand, and chest of drawers that we need to put in bedrooms that was not going to allow room for them as we want them. So, by moving the walls back to the 5 feet that I had told him that will give us 8 feet and 11 feet for those two distances. That will be much better. Steve said he'd move them.

Steve asked where I wanted the walls in the basement. I showed him where to put walls and where to put doors so we could have some open area, an area that can be used for a workshop, and a separate area to store things in that won't get dust in it from the workshop.

Steve says that we probably will need to have at least one wall down there that separates the garage area from the rest of the house that is a firewall. Wood can't be used for that so he wondered whether we wanted the sheet rock (dry wall) on the side of the wall that faced the outside or the inside. I told him that if we have to have it at all I think we'd want it facing outside (toward the garage doors) as opposed to toward the inside. That way it can be wood siding facing the 'inside' where the elevator, bathroom, and stairway will be so that it will still look log-like in there. I told him that we'd probably want to know whether we were making a big mistake monetarily though in case one way is way more expensive than the other.

However, Kathy Pearson had said that log siding was no more costly upstairs than dry wall because the labor to put it up was less than the labor to put up the dry wall. I'm assuming that the same will hold true down in the basement too, but maybe not. Steve said that we may not even have to have either side be dry wall depending on the insurance and/or fire inspector requirements. He doesn't know. Maybe I should ask Mike Toungette, our insurance agent!