Big Cedar Beam

Today's big project  is the placement of a large cedar beam that will support the outer side of the roof over the covered patio. Our contractor, Joel has rented a Superlift machine to raise this super heavy beam into place. With the help of Felix and Steve, the process goes smoothly!

Success!!

Roofs and Beams

 This Monday morning started out with an early  delivery of lumber including roof beams for the garage and house.

Several of the big beams for the house roof weigh up to 400 pounds apiece.

The lower  photos show Felix and Steve placing the beams for the garage roof and then attaching the plywood.

The side bar shows a schematic of the garage interior showing car/bike parking area, bathroom and laundry/mancave. (note hot tub beside garage...yes!)

Unloading the heavy and long roof beams.
 
The garage roof beams being placed.         

Framed!

Now that the garage and house are framed in, we have a much better sense of our interior space.  With just 800 square feet of living space, ever little inch counts!  Of course, after living in our RV for the past three years, 800 square feet will feel palatial! 

The large opening is the front entrance which will have sliding glass doors. The smaller opening to the right of the entrance is another sliding door into the bedroom.
All the framing has been done by a crew of three men...Joel, our awesome contractor and his two crew guys, Felix and Steve.

Joel, on the ladder, and Steve.

Felix on the saw

First Wall Up!

An eventful week culminated in the raising of the first wall!  So gratifying to see this progress!

Here is a video of  this benchmark in our home, sweet home construction (although the wall is actually for the garage).

Foundation Day

Today is the perfect day for pouring the foundation for our new home.  Sunny, warm and dry! Setting the foundation is quite a benchmark in our building process!  The number of workmen on the site is up to 15 with one woman working the cement truck.  The big orange cement truck is spinning and spewing out yards of concrete.  Each truck carries about 9 yards of material.  Since our foundation requires  30 yards, we shall see nearly four truckloads on the site today.  Noisy, crowded, smelly (stinky exhaust of the operating cement truck)!

Men at Work













Woman at Work

Back to Building

Our two week hiatus away from building our home, sweet home,  was a study in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  Those weeks included ten days on Maui...Bo passing a kidney stone...and a vigorous bout of 24 hour stomach flu.  So good to be back to building!

This morning Bo and I woke up to the arrival of 8 workmen, a large flatbed truck delivering rebar and lumber, and a dump truck with several loads of gravel, plus the ubiquitous bulldozer/back hoe. The day progresses with dust and noise...mainly the sounds of hammering and shoveling, but also the high pitched whine of power saws cutting lumber. When any of the above noises are not cutting the silence, there is still the continuous chirpy melody of the Mexican tunes on the radio. Ay ya ya yai!!

Front Door Delivery

Overview of the building site.

Living on the Edge

Living on the edge of a building site provides an education in many areas.  Learning about construction machinery is one of those areas.  The machines that have visited our job site so far have been uniformly noisy, dirty and smelly.  I have recognized the ubiquitous bull dozer, back hoe, wood chipper and today a new one,  the compactor.  This machine is used to compact the soil before the foundation is dug.

Unloading the compactor.
Of course it takes big trucks and trailers to take these machines to and from our site daily.  It all adds up to a lot of commotion.  I'm not complaining... just saying!
So how close are we to the job site.  Take a gander.

Living on the edge!!