2015
The year the tarped timber piles in the driveway disappear?
Dan bought a bigger more powerful (Arrh! Arrh!) 6 1/2" hand held power planer! It cuts the time of dressing the timbers way down but is heavier and harder to handle. Mike came up and got some timbers ready to go for Dan.
1-25-15
Mike and Brandon came up and moved and dressed timbers today.
Dan using his new sawhorses to work a beautiful rafter. It's exciting to be onto the next stage of the project.
Dan is just getting rolling on the timber frames but now it is time to stop for tax season.
Project time is getting near
Time for tools and time for cheer
We've been good, but we can't last
Hurry tax season, hurry past
Oh, We can't hardly stand the wait
Please, April 15th don't be late!
4-18-15
This weekend is usually our tax season recoup weekend, but our neighbor Paul had a machine at his place for the weekend. Bruce was doing the operating of it and offered us a little time. An offer we couldn't refuse! We marked out the holes we needed for our deck pier pads.
Unfortunately part of the rock wall is in the way. With the south yard all ripped up again it kinda of feels like a "two steps forward, one step back" weekend.
Sunday he dug our trench for the water line. I don't like tearing the place all up again, but I DO want water in the house.
4-25-15
Cousins from Iowa here for a visit. We took a hike to enjoy the view from the "nob". A little new late April snow in the foothills.
5-2-15 Dan starting clearing obstacles out of the waterline ditch.
Some rocks were bigger than others.
A giant subterranean turtle maybe?
5-3-15
Mike came up and helped Dan finish the ditch. Buck really loves the coolness of the fresh ditch. He will be disappointed when we fill it back in.
5-10-15
Dan made some adjustments to the ditch and we poured a concrete water line valve box.
Meanwhile Dan is working on timbers on weekday evenings back home in the shop.
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The conduit is in the ditch going from the basement to the underground tank.
A load of rafters delivered to the shop.
6-20-15
We needed more machine time to get our holes ready for forms. We rented a small excavator and Dan G came up and ran it for two days for us.
He filled in the water line ditch and dug holes for the pier pads.
Then he dug the trench for the footing for the generator/pump house.
Mike assembling the form boxes for the pier pads.
Dan and Bob used three tapes and a laser level to find the location where the boxes should go.
The generator/pump house footings and stem walls ready to be poured.
Dan built this jig to use to set the plinths in the right place on top of the pier pad boxes.
He moves the jig from box to box around the dome attaching the plinths to the boxes.
After the plinths are set, J bolts are hung using cleats and rebar is installed.
Finally finished all the boxes!
Well almost. We have one more box but right now there is no dirt where it goes because we had to move some of the rock wall to install the pads on the lower level.
8-18-15
Concrete day. Three trucks brought up 22 yards of concrete. They started over at Bruce and Joy's delivering 3 yards and brought us the rest.
Dan hired Cascade Concrete Pumping to bring up a line pump truck. Jeff and his assistant Craig worked hard to help us.
Brandon was a life saver. He came up and ran the nozzle of the hose for the whole pour. Ethan packed the motor end of the vibrator. We still could have used more help but we got it done!
Not our neatest concrete job but the sloppy part will be covered and won't show.
8-22-15
Mike and Brandon came up and helped strip some of the forms off.
With the forms stripped off the pier boxes and out of the way we started a retaining wall to build up the area for our last box.
We finished the retaining wall. Later we will rebuild the rock wall to join the retaining wall and the retaining wall will be under the deck and not really show.
Now that the retaining wall is in place we installed the last box.
The generator/pump house is almost ready to have the floor poured.
9-4-15
Friday we poured a slab over at Bruce's and then poured our slab for the pump/generator shed and the last pier pad. It started out clear skies but with a prediction of rain later.
The rain came as predicted and we built a tent to shelter the concrete. Bob worked under the tent smoothing out pock marks while Dan secured the tarp.
The cabin at Northwoods needed a roof bad. So with a little bit of season left Robbie came up and helped with tear off. We were pouring concrete on Friday and roofing on Saturday. The cabin has a 12-12 pitch and went slow. We had a little rain in the cabin a few times, but by hunting season we had a new roof.
11-21-15
We had our end of the season fire to be rid of this years' brush and scraps.
12-9-15
We came close to flooding at home. With still having timbers in the driveway, I was having nightmares of them all just floating away.
12-23-15
The snow has arrived. Bruce is using his tractor with snow blower to clear some of the snow off the road.