Las Luces

Yesterday was a short work day, because I had apheresis at the Red Cross in the afternoon, and as much as I wanted to work on the cricket, it would have taken me too long to uncover then re-cover in the time I had. So I worked on the sheathing a bit.

Kat worked on some things, and when I got home I continued to direct her even if I couldn't do much (no heavy lifting after aphersis). She installed the rest of the subfloor for the loft, and some blocking underneath. To her surprise, she enjoyed herself. I don't know if it's because it's a mellower pace than Habitat, or if it's because she's working on our house, or what, but she enjoyed herself enough to ask for stuff to work on today, too. But it was a little weird for me to not be able to work because of apheresis, just some saw cuts and instruction.

Today I got a reasonably early start, and went to work on the cricket. I got it sheathed, some self-adhesive flashing added as a backup to everything else, and covered it in tar paper. I still need to add some valley flashing to the new valley (and figure out how to get it under the existing shingles without totally trashing them), and of course put shingles on the new roof, but at the moment it's pretty much weather tight.

Which is a good thing...as the afternoon progressed, it got cloudy, the wind picked up, and Kat saw rain on the local doppler radar. Ruh-oh, Shaggy! It only rained a few drops here, but I saw lightning off in the distance, so it was a relief to have the cricket in place, because there will be more rain, and sooner rather than later.

Given the end of daylight savings time and the winter angle of the sun, the worksite gets dark pretty early these days. So I put a work light in the addition, so I can work past 4:30pm without having to guess about pencil marks when cutting. I still work a relatively short day most days (doubtless to my neighbors' relief), but I'm satisified with my progress.

But the big news is that I got the roof trusses ordered! After not getting emails or phone calls returned from Bay Truss I gave up on them. But Anderson Truss (and what a great name) came through with a good bid, and in a reasonable time frame. And even though they're based in the Central Valley (Dixon near Sacramento, and Lathrop, near Manteca), the sales guy I talked with lives in Alameda, so he was able to stop by, look over the worksite, have me look over the drawings, and get a check to get things rolling. That's almost as big a relief as getting the cricket weather tight.

And no, I haven't forgotten about posting some pictures from up the hill, but I haven't had time to go up and take them. When it's light (and I have platelets), I'm working on the house!

Another Day...

...another trip to Home Depot. And another week, and another trip to Camron-Stanford House. But the good news with the latter is that I'm finally done with the artifacts insurance listing. The database is still a mess, but we agreed that dealing with that can wait for now. The database may be a mess, but I can at least get data from it now, and the insurance is OK for the next 12 months. Of course, there's still the membership listing...

Saturday was a short day because I had to prep the media for church on Sunday. I framed the cricket, but didn't have time to put sheathing or tar paper on it. But I arranged tarps and some temporary tar paper in the new valley, and figured it would be OK unless we had a big storm.

Today I worked a bit in the morning, then was off to CS House. And this evening...we're having a big storm. My tarps, et al, are working somewhat. Most of the dining room and kitchen is dry, but they seem to be funneling water to one spot in the kitchen. Fortunately that's above the sink, but it's still disconcerting to have rain outside and inside your house.

More Pictures

The rain has stopped and I'll head out to check the tarps again and start working on the addition, but I wanted to post some more pictures from the other day. One is Katarina enjoying a spectacular sunset. She's sitting on the railing of the deck, but that's the view from the addition, too. The other is one of our cats, Rosie, peering out through a hole in the wall where there used to be an outlet in the kitchen.Note: No animals were harmed in the making of this picture. The power was turned off when I let her do this, and the hole is now covered.

553 Years

That's about how much bad luck I'm in for, if you believe that breaking a mirror is seven years bad luck. The other day I opened up more of the existing wall, in order to install a big post to support the HBB (Hecka Big Beam). I knew our house had no insulation when it was built (I've added some in the attic, and the addition will be really well insulated, of course), but it seems like they skimped on some other things, too, like drywall or paneling. The section of wall I was working on is the other side of the dining room wall, where there are built-in cabinets and a large mirror between the counter and upper cabinets.

Well, when I started pulling stuff out of the wall, the mirror was right there against the studs. That's it -- siding, some building paper, the studs, and then the mirror. Almost might as well just leave the windows open with walls built like that. In any event, I didn't realize what it was at first, and I managed to smack the corner of the mirror with the hammer or the prybar, and crrraaack went the mirror. It's a really big mirror, so I figure it must be worth more years than a little mirror.

Last night certainly qualified. I've been keeping tarps over the addition and the opening in the existing roof because even without rain, we get a lot of fog which drips off the trees. But last night brought wind and rain, and the wind blew some of the tarps off the existing roof, and guess where some of the rain went? Uh-huh. Well, I'm going to be redoing the kitchen and dining room anyways...

Emmie Get Your (Nail) Gun

Today I made another Home Depot run for a couple more joist hangers, some lumber, and a few odds and ends. Then my sister-in-law Emmie (she's the worship leader at RLC that I've mentioned before, fearless* leader of Holy Ruckus) (*fearless except some fear of heights) came over and helped for a while. She runs her own software company, has three teenage girls, and Peter works full time, too, so she could only come for a few hours. But every bit helps, and it was fun to spend time with her in a setting besides helping make the worship service happen or a family gathering, i.e., chaos.

Emmie nailed up the new joist hangers and installed the joists I cut, while I was working on the last bit of external wall. The wall with the back door is at a 45' angle underneath the corner of the loft. The opening for a door is easy enough to frame, but the 45' angle and bit of QuadLock from the foundation sticking out made it a bit more challenging to figure out, and a lot more challenging to install.

Then Emmie used the nailgun (it belongs to her husband, Peter, so she's used it before so little training was required) to finish nailing some interior sheerwall. I measured and cut for the subfloor decking in the loft, put down some adhesive, and Emmie nailed that in with the nailgun, too.

She had to leave after that, but we had a good time talking about everything from her kids to (lack) of privacy on the WWW to the contemporary service at RLC to an interview on NPR with Jimmy Carter about his new book about America's (waning) moral values. I don't believe all the same things he does nor agree with all the things he said, but I definitely admire the guy and would take him as president over the current regime in a millisecond. And I believe he's truly Christian in his heart, not just saying he is but not behaving like one. How can a president let this happen on his watch while saying he supports human rights (never mind the Iraq war and the lies that lead to it) and call himself a Christian? (What part of "love your neighbor as yourself" does he not get?) And how can a democracy that says it supports human rights do this kind of stuff and ever hold its head high in the world community again? I...I could ramble on for pages about this and raise my blood pressure thinking about it, but it's been written before. I guess the difference is that the mainstream American media and more of the 51% are paying attention to what the 49% have known all along.