Part of the roof in on!

I'm a little nervous here! Up until now I thought I was just "talking to myself", but this past weekend, I found out that lots of people are actually reading my blog! Oh well, I'll just continue as before!

Last week we got to see the final look of the roof line of the house and this week they started filling in some of the empty spots. They got the roof rafters for the screen porch up and if you notice the back half of the roof was put on.

Rick HATES sitting in traffic and since this was a long weekend, we had hoped to go up on Thursday night, but I had to work and we couldn't go up until Friday. We left at 7:30 and the traffic wasn't bad, but we still didn't get there until 10:15. We've done this so many times, it only takes a few minutes to unpack. So from the time we pull into the driveway till our heads hit the pillow is only about 15 minutes. So since our regular bedtime is about 9:30, we didn't miss that much sleep! Especially since we don't get up at our usual time (5:30), but instead sleep pretty late!







The roof is made from panels that come pre-made from the factory. They start with 1x4 tongue and groove pine boards, next is 6 inches of foam insulation, followed by a 2 inch air gap, topped by 1" OSB. To get then up on the roof, Tim uses his crane to lift the panels. Since we aren't up there when Tim is working, I asked him to take some pictures when they are working. I don't know who that guy is, but I bet he isn't afraid of heights.


Remember this when it was sitting on the ground, here is the front dormer being lifted into place. It's kind of a small picture, but you get the idea.


The first layer of the roof panels are actually the ceiling that is seen in the house. Aren't they pretty!!





Tim send us an email telling us not to expect great things this week. He is in the slowest part of the whole building process. They have to custom cut every rafter and build the roof system in the valleys piece by piece. A lot of people can't make it go fast so there will just be two of them working on all of the compound angle cuts.

The dormer is up!

The last delivery was last weekend, so there was pallets of things all over the place. Well, not all over, they site is very clean and I think organized. Although there are piles of stuff everywhere, I think they are placed so they will be close to where they are needed.

This week, they got several things done. First they finished all of the headers and supports for the two porches. You can see the two porches in this picture, it shows the cabin from the driveway, the view you would see when you drive up to the house.


One of the big things they did was to put up two of the three header beams for the screen room. It is really a long way up to that header! You can see the second header in the next picture, it goes from the left side of the gable end up to the intersection of the two main beams. The third header will go from the other side of the gable.

That structure on the ground in the front is the small dormer for the front of the house. That long board on the right is the other header for the screen porch.


The other big thing they got done was to get the dormer wall and roof rafters installed. This shows the side view and the back door. This is what you would see from the garage.


This is the back of the dormer with Rick looking out of the spare bedroom window. In the back is the boom from Tim's truck. That's what he uses to lift all those beams and rafters is place. I'm going to have to ask him to take a picture when they are lifting a beam.


When they first started, the pace of the work lead me to think they would be finished way before the end of June, but the work they are doing now is more detailed and the changes from week-to-week isn't quite so dramatic and now I can see that it will take all of the time Tim scheduled.

It's starting to look like a cabin

We knew there would be a lot of work done this week, because two truck loads of stuff were delivered. And this is what we saw when we got there!

It's really starting to look like something. Do you notice that the gable ends look like they are made of logs on the outside, but like normal 2x6 construction on the inside? A lot of log construction companies offer this option. It saves a lot of time and you can't tell the difference. If you do all log walls, you have to limit the windows in the end and I wanted lots of windows and light.

They also finished the farmers porch on the side of the house. The decking is some of that new composite material, it's a dark color that matches the bark on the logs. It gets plenty of sun and Rick & I spent lots of time there this week. (The bugs aren't very bad yet, so we can sit outside). The temperature on both Saturday and Sunday was in the upper 60's and sitting in the sun was plenty hot enough. We don't have much work that we have to do around the place right now, so we can relax. The picture above is the screen porch and the side of the house closest to the garage.

This picture if the front of the house from the other side.


This is the side of the house.


This is the view from the second floor looking back at the garage.


This is the view out the front of the house (that is our dog Cannon running across the yard).