The house seems to be coming together faster and faster these days, partly because the size of the crews is increasing and also because the workers are finishing the roof and starting to work on the lower sections of the house once more. The reality is that when you work off a scaffold or ladder things take a whole lot longer than they do on the ground. Harold's contracting crew has now finished the main roof of the house with only the front gable left to be done. They will be up on that part of the house tomorrow ti take care of that section. The Penfold's Roofing folks arrive early next week to begin putting the recycled rubber roof in place. Their quality control fellow came by this week to make sure everything was up to their exacting standards and he gave our construction crew high praise.
I've been keeping our MultiCam CNC router working hard cutting curved bits and pieces from 3/4" plywood that are being used to form the structure for the curved and vaulted ceilings inside the house. We've chewed through more than twenty sheets of plywood so far. Each time the computerized router finished a batch I loaded the trailer attached to the garden tractor and transported them to the house.
Our crew are also working on the facia boards and backing for the soffits. The MultiCam router was pressed into service to cut the curved backing boards for the eyebrows. The CNC machine does in minutes what used to take mme hours. Better yet it does it perfectly accurate every time - while I do something else!
With the warm sunny weather, the ground had at long last dried up enough that I could backfill the east side of the house. Tomorrow the gravel begins to be hauled in again to fill the area behind the house. The boards are against the house to protect the rockwork until we paint it. That will happen after the finish the top of the wall and then paint our way to the bottom. The final grading and backfilling against the rockwork will be done at that time.
Inside the inground plumbing is now all buried. Harold's crew worked hard to perfectly level and pack the floor. Now they are beginning to lay down the 3" thick rigid foam. Some heavy plastic and then some 6"x6" steel mesh will be next. The infloor heating crew arrives next to lay in the infloor heating pipe that will snake over the entire floor to give us the comfortable radiant heat we are looking forward to this coming winter. Their job will take two days with an inspection scheduled for Tuesday. The concrete will follow on Wednesday. By Thursday we'll be dancing on the brand new floor!
Tomorrow, I'll be posting pictures of the upstairs vaulted ceilings as well as some shots of other things that are quickly coming together. Stay tuned...
-grampa dan