Today was the day when the big vigas went into the house.

We spent most of the day yesterday planning and preparing for this. In order to finish them, we are putting the vigas in at a lower height than they’ll eventually go (ultimately, they’ll be pressed against the top of the ceiling) . Then later we’ll jack them up to the top.

To get the vigas in, we planned to use a backhoe with forklifts to push the vigas into the side of the house. On the outside wall they’d go through, we’d built headers. We also built a box with rollers on top of it to help ease each viga in. (They are incredibly heavy.) The box was leveled on platforms we built for each of the five viga locations.

Once the ends of the vigas were pushed in, they’d sit on scaffolding in the middle of the house. We built a strong box on top of the scaffolding to hold the vigas.

Once the vigas were on the scaffolding, we’d push them to the other side, where they’d rest on top of the glulam.

So that was the plan.

And amazingly enough, it went pretty much according to plan. Our worst case was that it might take 6 hours (with four of us and a backhoe). In fact, the whole thing was done in under 2 hours.

More pictures here.  (slideshow version)

They look so beautiful. Next stop — a roof!

We went to two lumber yards in Albuquerque that supply vigas. (Vigas are the big wooden ceiling beams commonly used in southwestern adobe-style buildings.) We’ll have vigas in the large great room in our main house.

[Interesting sidenote: The one that had a beautiful web site and was the one I thought we’d use turned out not to be the one we liked. The other one was very service oriented, took a copy of our plans, and had a very reasonable quote emailed and faxed to us by the next day.]

It was interesting to see all the kinds of lumber and styles they do.

Vigas have been a budget item that I have worried about, but it turns out that they aren’t that expensive (about $4 or so a foot, depending on the size and style), even with delivery to our remote corner of the world. Now that I know the cost is reasonable, I am planning to use these as the vertical beams for our covered patio and carport as well.

We’re also going to be buying decking from this same source. These are planks of wood that are 1″ thick and 6″ side that form a plank-style ceiling. You can get them with a rough finish on one side and smooth on the other. We’ll get pine and stain them with a variety of effects for different rooms.

We also found out that the plans we have don’t have enough vigas spec’d to keep the decking from sagging. Glad we found that out beforehand. :) I’m actually happier with the look of more vigas anyway, and fortunately, it won’t add too much cost.