Here’s a picture that shows the clerestory windows….
And this shows the whole height of the room (main entry in bottom right corner)…
Two more to go!
And then there were three
Written by karen on January 10th, 2013Upward
Written by karen on January 6th, 2013#2 accomplishment for this week: we got the first viga up!
It’s always hard to imagine exactly how this stuff will look when it’s finally done.
You might remember that these large timbers have been sitting about five feet or so below the ceiling for the past 5 months. Now with the ceiling getting finished, it’s time to put them up. (And all of this needed to happen before adobe brick could go much higher, since the brick will sit under one end of the viga.)
We’ve both been worrying about this step quite a lot, me especially. The vigas are quite heavy — too heavy even for both of us to lift one end. Brad devised a way to jack these up into place, but I was wary. As it turns out, the whole thing was really quite easy. There were no scarey, death-threatening parts. (I mostly try not to write here about the scarier stuff we try, but there is some. :)
What we did is jack each side up a bit (e.g. 10 inches or so) and then put a header and trimmers (side studs) under it to secure it. Then we repeated on the other side, etc. etc. until the vigas were all the way up.
Of course, the vigas are quite high so we had to put the jack on the scaffolding at one end and on one of those big timbers at the other. Then we used a series of gradually taller 4x4s to reach the beam.
Quite clever. Good thinking, Brad.
Doors!
Written by karen on January 5th, 2013We have had an eventful couple of days, construction-wise.
First, after months of work, we have the first set of doors complete and up!
It was a lot of work to build these, but I couldn’t be happier with the results!
All the steps to put these together are already fading into memory, but here are some pictures and notes from the process.
The Ponderosa pine was sourced locally through a sawmill up in the Gila Forest near Silver City. They let let us handpick all these boards and centerlined the boards to make the widths precise and the edges square.
After we cut the boards, we routed a groove out of each edge. Into this groove would be glued a piece of plywood to add strength to the joints. (This sounds easier than it was. It took a lot of testing and fiddling.) These are the smaller sections that go above and below the glass.
Then we glued in the plywood and put the parts together with pipe clamps. More weeks worth of work.
This is a door after it was glued (but not yet trimmed to size).
After this, Brad did a rough trim on the doors and then began hanging them. This involved many rounds of putting them up, trimming them, putting them back up, etc.
When they were finally perfect, I finished them. This involved the same 10 rounds of stain, sealer, and finish that we did on other timbers. There are many other details I’m leaving out like cutting the stop, but you get the idea.
There is one more set of doors to do, but they are already built and assembled so they just need to be hung and finished.
I think I’ll leave the other major feat of the week for another post. Until then.
Weird…and cold
Written by karen on January 4th, 2013Every once in a while, the whole thing we’re doing here seems surreal. Like today, when I was standing out at mid-day in a driving snow shower cutting boards.
It’s been very cold here. Low 20s at night, and not much out of the 40s during the day. New Years Day saw a lot of snow around us, but none to speak of here. We had pretty good snow showers today but no accumulation.
We have begun putting up ceiling boards in the house. They’re pretty much like in Tumbleweed, except we’re doing a slanting pattern between where the big vigas will eventually go.
December brick work
Written by karen on December 28th, 2012We have been putting the time this month to use, laying lots and lots of adobe brick. We’ve also got a couple lintels (big wood beams over the windows) up now. And we have the fireplace done (and working). We designed the brick arrangement ourselves and I’m really happy with how it turned out.
We put in a new half stepped wall in the main entryway. Here is a picture with that with the wall into which we incorporated some wine rack spaces.
And here are Brad and I, demonstrating that the lintel is indeed quite strong. (It will be holding up brick to the ceiling.)
These bricks weigh close to 40 pounds each. By now, we have moved several thousand pounds of brick each. (And the higher we get up the wall, the more exercise this provides.)
The holidays
Written by karen on December 24th, 2012It’s times like these that make me aware of how increasingly different our lives are from many other folks.
While others seem to be rushing around doing last minute shopping, worrying about whether the last Fed Ex packages will arrive, and taking trips to be somewhere else (I know because I read this on social media…and of course, I remember doing these things myself, though it seems a long way away from where I am now), we are having a leisurely breakfast and then going out to lay more bricks. We’ve never been much into the holidays, but this year, they are noticed even less than usual.
In small nod to tradition, I did make a big pot of tamales yesterday. They were ok, but I’m not sure they were worth the trouble. (Brad might disagree; he liked them more than I did.)
At any rate, we wish everyone peace this holiday season.
New woodworking tool
Written by karen on December 20th, 2012I’ve been doing a lot of woodworking with rough finish wood. It’s nice to work with because it’s rough and meant to be “imperfect,” but you can’t really sand out any problems that you don’t want to show in the final piece. I found a great new tool to use on rough lumber though. It’s basically a hard nylon brush that goes on a drill. It works great for getting out black marks and smoothing out (in a rough way) other things.
In other news, we got the ceiling board lumber so I have lots of staining work to do. (Dad, we miss you!)
Battens
Written by karen on December 14th, 2012After yesterday’s post, I went to do a little work on our dictionary and learned something new. Battens are long strips of wood or metal used to fasten something down, so yesterday battening our hatches was exactly what we did.
Last night, we got about 1/2 inch of rain, and there is snow in the canyon. The wind is blowing something fierce.
December 13
Written by karen on December 13th, 2012For the gardening record, today was the day I finally brought in the last of the green tomatoes.
Just enough for a pint or so of green tomato salsa.
We spent most of the morning here battening down the hatches in preparation for a big storm that is approaching. The winds are blowing fiercely, and ominous clouds are amassing on the horizon.
Working…
Written by karen on December 7th, 2012We’ve been getting some good work done on the house this week, both on the exterior doors and adobe in the front room.
This little curved part will be where the corner fireplace will go. Lots of cutting of bricks and fussing with mortar joints on this part. (Mortar is still wet in this picture, which is why it’s darker.)
The weather here has been nice, in the 70s during the day and close to, but not quite, freezing at night. (We’re supposed to dip down into the 20s this week. I wonder if that will be the end of my tomatoes.)