Some days progress on the house appears to be swift. Jobs like nailing on trusses or sheeting in the flatter roofs covers a lot of territory in a hurry and looks impressive. Other tasks like stick framing the eyebrows requires every piece be carefully measured, marked and cut to fit. Curved assemblies are often exponentially trickier and necessarily slower. Each step. cutting, and assembling the framing, sheeting, and eventually roofing of a project like this will take more care, time and effort. But the results are worth the extra work without a doubt. The eyebrow roofs are just such a task.
Out front on the porch the same type of endeavor is taking place. We've now cut and welded well over a mile and a half of steel rods in place (with another mile of steel to go) to form the trees and porch walls. We've cut more than fifty sheets of 3/4 plywood to all kinds of shapes for the understructure of the beams and eyebrows. Another eighty sheets or so of 1/2" and 3/8" plywood were cut and shaped to form the window bucks and backing for the trim. Hundreds of sheets of expanded lath will be painstakingly hand tied in place in preparation for the fiberglass reinforced concrete to follow.While there are certainly faster and easier ways to build a typical house this is what it takes to build a house full of imagination and whimsy.
Tomorrow we are hoping to do our work in the sunshine. That makes any task just a little more fun!
-grampa dan