Leaves

Winter’s late, this has a silver lining in that we have extra time to wrap up the previous season. It’s a lot of work going from Fall to Winter. I finished building both additions, roofing took far longer than expected, it was really 3 small roofs with many angles, and I used the nice weather to go through a backlog of fascia & soffit detail work. The angles on the bay window were very hard to make work. I didn’t do a great job at making things look perfect, but I know they’re solid and weather tight so I don’t feel too bad.

I love being up there

Nicole dug up the potatoes, the onions, a little more of everything every year. Garlic was planted, all routine like construction now.

No apples this year either, the wild trees seem to produce a decent crop only every other year. I scored several dump trailer loads of horse manure from the horse property next door. They don’t want it and I help them with backhoe projects in exchange, total win-win. With the mountain of wood chips we got last Winter, we’re feeling wealthy with resources. We go fetch leaves from the forest to add green matter to the manure.

Esther’s surprisingly efficient bunny hop technique

It all gets added and mixed into the manure, along with some ash, and some chips why not?

Robin’s building another treehouse, they get a little better every time. I let him use screws for this one. I hope I’ll have time enough to build a real nice one with him before he looses that little boy energy. I unfortunately cannot do all the things I want to do.

All routine, all perfect, may they never grow up, and may we never grow old.

Been Building #2

The angles were very hard to get right, it’s not perfect but I did pretty good.

Trashed construction clothes are practical while rigging the double pulley to hoist subflooring.

This will be a quirky tiny room with a great view, both kids claimed it as their own.

Been Building

I started early in the season with the usual piers, beams, leveling, subfloor combination. Now I get to frame which is immensely more satisfying. Tearing the shingles was heartbreaking, I will never do shingles again. This poor early choice is likely why our house isn’t fully sided yet. I estimate it’s about 20 times the amount of work as doing boards. And I really don’t have time to side 20 houses. They’re also impossible to remove or replace. Bleh all around.

I’ve involved Robin more in the construction, he’s eager to learn for his own house. Music to my ears. We built a small covered thingy to hold all the things that might blow up. I didn’t like having them closer to buildings. This project had him use all the tools and techniques on a small scale, but he’s helped me on the subfloors since.