December in Review

Mick and I headed from Cortland to Ontario County when he had drill in early December. That same weekend, Marty headed from Ontario to Cortland County to hunt, and he returned not too many hours later with a beautiful buck!


Mick made brack in the chicken fryer on top of the stove -- so much quicker than making individual loaves, and it turned out great!


A spruce tree that Mick dug up on Thanksgiving and repotted became our Christmas tree.


I finally finished my woolen knee socks, and boy, are they warm!


I then turned my attention to Christmas-color potholders/hot pads.


Mick completed log rows K and L, finishing just as the sun disappeared behind the western hills.


We celebrated Christmas with the Cressmans in Andes. Mick made a beautiful and delicious rosemary roasted garlic dip in his own savory bread bowl. It was the most we have used our rosemary since we planted it two years ago, and it has really come into its own!


Mick is taking excellent care of his plants this winter. The top of the plant stand is lit by flourescent lights with a daylight-like color temperature, with foil situated so that it reflects as much light as possible to the plants. Contents include: 4 pots of sage, 2 pots of sweet leaf [stevia], 1 pot containing several peppermint plants, 1 pot of rosemary, 1 window box containing oregano, garlic, thyme, and rosemary, and another window box with chives, garlic, lemon balm, thyme, and mint.


He also set up a plant area in one half of the bottom of the plant stand with 4 CFL lights at appropriate color temperatures. It is quite bright (hence the shades)! He is nurturing several honey locust plants that he started from seeds collected at SUNY Cortland while I was "at work", as well as a couple of burr oak acorns collected by Marty and Heidi on their road trip from Arizona to New York.


Steve came down this past week, and we enjoyed our visit with him. He and Mick completed row M, the first row of logs to span the doorway and windows, so the first row to go completely around! Only two rows of logs remain.


A Christmas gift from my folks, imagined by Mom and executed by Dad. The little bit of log cabin is a lovely reminder that we won't be living in a trailer in a village forever!


I made pizza crust and sweet potato bread yesterday and, true to form, made a mess. :) Both turned out deliciously though!


Merry Christmas.

GREEN tea

This has nothing to do with the house, but it was really weird. :) We made tea this afternoon by boiling some stevia leaves, then steeping some mint leaves. The tea turned out REALLY GREEN. (It's also delicious.)

Back to Work!

Little progress has been made on the house since Thanksgiving, due to a diverse collection of uncooperative weather and schoolwork. However, the four hemlocks that we transplanted on Thanksgiving morning are doing great! (You can see three of them in this picture.)


On Saturday morning Mick headed up to the hill. Marty and John arrived soon after, and my parents [and sister] were in town so my dad spent most of the day up there too. By Saturday evening, the four of them had shoveled and chipped the ice and slush off the floor, braced the walls so they are no longer likely to be blown over, and completed a total of nine rows of logs. It really feels like a snow fort now! :)

Thanksgiving Progress

Mick was excited because we discovered a better way to stack the logs on the floor. They are now in piles, each row separated by stickers, sorted by letter, with the more advanced letters on the bottom. They are out of our way (mostly) when working on the walls, and it is easy to get to the ones that we need next. We think this will make it easier too when we have to cover the site up with tarps. We'll get to test that out later this morning, it looks like. It has also been exciting to see the piles shrinking and the walls rising!

That picture was taken at the beginning of the day yesterday, and by the end of the day it looked like the following picture, with six courses finished! It is really starting to feel like a fortress, and it is exciting to see the walls climb higher and higher (although it gets harder and harder to lift the logs into place, and Mick doesn't have the same leverage to push down when he is screwing in the log hogs.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Building Walls

Saturday we at last turned our attention from dimensional lumber to logs!


While Mick and Marty carried logs from their piles around the yard to lay out on the floor of the cabin, I retrieved the log hogs from where we had stashed them. The labels made me laugh. :)


We stacked many of the logs on the floor, until all of the A-row logs were accessible.


I was thrilled by what I saw when I got back from church Sunday morning!


By nightfall Sunday, they had successfully completed the first three courses of logs!


It's really starting to look like a house, dontcha think?

Floored!

Marty commented when he was here working last weekend that he checks the blog three times a day when he is home at work, hoping for new pictures... I have taken his rebuke to heart and will try to post more promptly! :)

The first task for Mick and Marty to accomplish after the excavators and masons did their piece was the 4-ply girder spanning the basement.


They started working on it Thursday afternoon, and I couldn't believe that they had finished it up by the time I got home from work that evening!


The next task was to fit the sill in place.


Marty did a lot of drilling...


...while Mick worked on plywood sheathing to reinforce the girder.


They laid down the sill seal and drilled the sill onto bolts anchored in the concrete. You can see in the background a couple of lally columns waiting to be transported to their positions of supporting the girder.


By Saturday morning, the sill and the inside box were all in place, ready to receive their joists.


My parents had come to visit and very graciously pitched in! The timing was great, because laying joists went significantly more quickly with three skilled carpenters than it would have with two skilled carpenters plus me. This picture shows portions of the three men at work.


Even Mom, uh, "helped." :)


This picture is posed because I couldn't snap the shot quickly enough, but she really did hand a drill to a man on a ladder!


This picture shows the nearly-finished joists. You can see the hole for the staircases in the front center of the picture.


The next task: subflooring. There were sooooo many screws. I don't know how Mick and Marty's arms weren't vibrating from all the drilling! Advantech is great, sturdy stuff.


We got to test Advantech's weathering ability when we woke up the next morning and found that we had to shovel our floor! Also, you can see that Tim had come to backfill, so the drop wasn't quite so steep anymore.


The floor did thaw and melt and dry, and the subflooring was completed.


This is our very first welcome mat -- Roscoe's car blanket transformed as a buffer zone between sloppy mud and a brand new floor.


The next task was to square and snap a chalk line for the sill seal and the walls.


I got out from behind the camera to unroll the sill seal along the chalk line. Mick caulked before me and nailed behind me.


With the sill seal secured, the cabin was ready to receive its walls.

Our basement has walls!

We went up to the hill the evening after the footers were completed and marveled at the amount of concrete and stone that will be keeping our cabin secure and dry!


Mick was especially excited (probably because he knows better than I do the consequences of a poor foundation and poor drainage).


As you can see, they had already laid out the forms they would use for the basement walls.


The forms went up in short order the next day. The walls were so tall! It was hard to see over them, and rather impossible to climb over. I'm afraid I spent a bit of time trying to figure out how the masons got in and out of the basement, until Mick pointed out the ladder. DUH! :)


The next day they put in the three windows, as well as the door frame for the bottom end of the bilco door. [You can see the door and one of the windows on the far wall in this picture.]


They added the forms for the interior of the basement walls and poured! (They also set up this handy plank for walking up to the top of the wall). :)


They had also poured concrete for the sono tubes, which will hold the posts for the porch.


We weren't quite in our house yet, but being on it is a pretty good start!


When we arrived to the hill Tuesday morning, they were loading the forms back onto the truck.


Which meant that our walls could stand on their own!!


When we were on our way home, Mick said, We stood in our house today. It hadn't sunk in for me until then.


We are pretty excited!