House in the Woods

10am at our apartment is the place to be, especially if you have a pick up truck and a strong back! We are moving! Lunch will be provided at the house. Should be a quick move if we get a bit of help. And, maybe once we live out there, I’ll actually update the web with all of the photos we have been taking. It is really coming along. Front door is in. Woohoo!

For those of you in the Keweenaw, save the date for November 12th. It is our move date, and, by having read this (I’m logging IPs…), you are hereby signed up to help us move. Woohoo! Thanks for volunteering!

I’ve been out of town for a bit, so, updates have languished again. But, the good news is, these at least look impressive! We’ve finished the porch (finally), and, done quite a bit interior done. All of the walls are painted and done. Kitchen/bath counters are in (tops went on today… no photos though). Some of the light fixtures are in. Wood flooring has started to go down (local black ash… it will get caulked with rope between the boards, for those of you who are wondering). Masonry behind the wood stove is pretty much done. Tile is going down. All in all, lots of visual progress. Lots left to do, but, that is OK, at this point… We are getting there!!!

This whole time, we have not had a set of stairs going up to the second floor, which has caused some confusion. Well, Mike has arrived with the stairs, and, he is putting them in place this week, and, we must admit, they look pretty good. Mix of green, white, and black ash (treads – some with copper wire imbedded into them… this is the Copper Country!), cherry risers, dovetailed to walnut stringers. Not quite finished, but, pretty impressive in its own right.

Jim (Weimer) came up for a few days to enjoy the fall colors and beautiful weather, and, we managed to get the front of the house sided, and the front/side of the garage. So, good progress is being made, that is for certain. On the lap siding, we are actually shimming it off the house 3/8″, so there is an air-gap behind it. This should make the siding (and paint) last for pretty much a lifetime. We “weathered” the siding near the bottom, by overlapping them slightly more. The goal is to make the siding more weatherproof (since there is more lap) near the ground where there is the most splash/etc. Copper flashing over the top of the windows is a nice little touch; we made the drip-edge exposure a little larger, just to we could show off the copper bling.

We are progressing!

So, just to throw you for a loop, we are updating a little ahead of our regularly delay.

De has spent the last week sanding and priming old doors that we are going to use for the upstairs. It has taken her a lot of work, but, once up, I think the doors will look great. Sorry, no photos. I’ve worked a bit more on the deck, got a bunch of window trim cut and painted, and, also have a large stack of wood cut into pieces and ready to get hauled off to the guy with a 4-sided planer. After planing all of the tamarack for the porches, I’ve decided I’m sick of it. That, and, we found a local guy who does it for really cheap.

So, onto photos and the like. The stairwell has been primed and painted, and, all we need to do is sand and oil the timbers, and, it is ready for the stairs (going in later this week). Most of the upstairs has been primed, and, is getting ready for a few coats of colorful paint. The walk-in shower in the master bedroom is on the works, and, should be a cool feature when all said and done.

A bit more grass is coming up (which really excites De, so, you will keep seeing photos of that).

Also got trailer load of wood for our floors. A bunch of black ash (yes, a different species to add to the list…!) A much darker wood than white ash (go figure). Grows in northern climes, and, is sometimes called “hoop ash.” Yes, that is a big stack of wood on the trailer. Yes, people looked at me weird when driving around with it. Yes, it is loaded too far forward on the trailer (but, that was so much easier than loading it by hand). Yes, the front tires of the truck weren’t on the ground when I was driving around. Yes, the trailer has brakes. No, I didn’t have them hooked up.

Anyway, about it for tonight. Our next installment should have more visual progress. *Should*

We have had our nose to the grind stone as of late, with the house and everything else, so, photos have been a little lax. Or rather, time in front of the computer to upload the photos, has been. And, tonight, right before we left, grabbing a few quick photos was almost an afterthought.

So here is what has been happening:
- We’ve worked a bit more on siding. The front entryway is all sided. We just had to sit the porch swing there, to see how it would “look”. We probably won’t hang it this fall since winter is almost here, but, it does seem to fit the space nicely. We set De up with a staple gun full of stainless steel staples, and, she made a big dent in the side of the garage, as far as siding goes. I made two “story poles” with a bunch of slats in them, so she could move strings around, to make sure she was keeping nice straight lines, even across the windows.
- Side/back porch is about half decked at this point. But, the real good news is all of the tamarack decking has been planed. The planer is happy, too. We got a few random hardwood boards from the local sawmill, to see what we might want to do for flooring, and tamarack, a “softwood” planes so much harder than hard maple, red oak, white oak, yellow birch, black (hoop) ash, and, everything else. I think the little piece of osage I ran through even planed easier.
- We used all of the sawdust from the planer as “mulch” in the yard. Grass is coming up, so, it seemed to have worked.
- Inside, the upstairs is all drywalled, mudded, and sanded. Final coat of sanding/mudding, and then primer/paint this week.
- The entryway is all framed in (we waited to do this until the stained concrete was done), and, about ready for drywall.
- Propane tank has been delivered, gas line trenched in, and, furnace even fired up. And guess what? It worked!
- De has started sanding and priming the old doors we are using for the upstairs. They will look good, I think.
- Mike Yaker comes next week to install the stairs. We haven’t a clue what they are going to look like; we are letting him have a free rein (other than where they are located).
- A lot of other punch-list stuff this week, I am sure. Hopefully more pictures, without the fortnight delay.

More progress is being made on the house; on the inside, the stained concrete entry is complete (but covered with cardboard during construction to keep the dust / junk off of it… so it doesn’t photo nice). Most of the drywall was is up on the interior. Hard to see much in photos though. Just looks like sheets of drywall. For photogenic progress, the outside is where it is at. De has cleaned up and seeding the yard, and added a lot of gravel along the drip-edge of the building. I worked on adding a little siding and framing the front porch. Porch decking ended up being tamarack, from a local saw mill (just a few miles away). It starts in the rough, but, cleans up quite nicely, I think.

I realize we have been a little lax on commentary as of late. That is because, of course, we have been busy. But so has our GC, who managed to get all of the T&G on the porch this week, along with the roofing. He painted the garage and entry doors, and, even put down the first layer of stain on the entry slab. (This gets two more coats of a “copper” color, and then sealer, so, it will look a bit different when complete). Drywall was delivered, and rest of the windows are in. In fact, a lot of the drywall is up in the upstairs. So, about 3 months after breaking ground, they are putting drywall up. That seems like pretty good progress, to me. Hydronic tubing is going in as well. We are using it everywhere (no forced air, no baseboards, etc), and, it will get foil insulation underneath before being buttoned up.