Deck Railing Up

I've gotten the railing up on the deck, Was a bit of a process as extra posts were involved instead of using the main support posts for the deck. Since this is from a kit I went with the layed out plan, but am not sure the necessity for extra posts. Was a lot of work as most of the center posts ended up butting into the center joist spacing of the deck itself. Still need to put a rail cap on, but will wait till the weather clears up, then I can stain the entire railing at once.
Here are a few pictures of the railing finished.




We also placed a deck stove for the winter, it's getting a bit chilly, not the best implementation, but it keeps the smoke off the deck.

Starting on interior lighting

I'm finally getting to work on the inside of the building. Now that it's cold and dark outside seems like good timing. First off I wanted to set up some interior ambient light to fill the room. I hate canned lighting and I didn't want to set up those cheap looking string lights. I was also thinking that LED lighting is almost ready for prime time. I've been using the flashlights for years, so I was happy to give it a try.
The other thing I've read about is that they are dimmable, wether this is true or not seemed questionable, but after putting them up, the dimmer did work great. Much like Fluorescent lighting, it can only dim to a certain point and then goes dead. Unlike the CFLs though, the lite doesn't flicker beforehand. Here's a picture of the install, lights up the room quite nicely, even when dimmed to half strength. Unfortunately, the image doesn't quite show it off as well as it could.

A couple pictures of the Soffit Trim I put up

More Trim Work and FInally the Deck

Finally got the deck done. Well mostly, the decking is in, need to get the last of the trim and the railing up. Hopefully finish with the exterior next time. Took two full days, and by full I mean into the dark. Of course it get's dark at 5 now, so that's not saying much. The pitcures don't look so good as they were all with a flash right before I left. More When I get back up there.

More Trim work

Work is moving forward, I'm down to once every two weeks or so. Spent a couple of days working on trim and getting the front door in. I've got wiring started, but it's all tempted in. Needed to focus directly on the electricity one of these weekends. Here are some pictures of the skylight trim. It's a couple small details, but much like the outside, I had to move the ladder around about twenty times to get it all installed.



And a couple pictures with the front door on. Looks like I still need to clean the place up a bit before the storms really hit.

Final photos of the weekend

Here's the last photos I took , the roofer was still finishing up the ridge pieces and the final flashing on the skylight. Plus it's starting to look a bit messy even after we did a couple rounds of cleaning.
Next time a couple more dump runs.

Roof on just in time for the storm.

I also got the roof on this weekend. The roofer had put the ice shield up earlier in the week, but he got the shingles up and the flashing set for the skylight. Now that we have the skylight set in place eveything's starting to look like a real house.




Here's a couple pictures of the skylight from the inside. Hard to tell it's there, it's actually a shadded double pane glass with an electric lift. Hard to get a good photo with or without the flash, so I kept both.




I tried taking a picture looking into the cabin from above the skylight, but it created this artsy mirror image instead.

Powered Up

PG&E hooked up electrical while I was gone. When I got there the meter was set and ready to go. It seems to be some new fangled meter, I think actually calls up the electric company to tell them how much I'm using. Here's the initial meter reading. Starting from scratch.
The Economist had an interesting article on Silver Springs Networks and how these meters will be used in the future.

Last Weekend Work

Went back up to the cabin for a three day workathon. Made a good dent in getting the thing weather tight. Should be ready for the roofer now. Just in time as rain is expected in the next week or so, and the season appears to be changing. Hoping to at least get the bitchathane on and sealed.


Got the fascia boards up and most of the vertical trim up. The walls are sealed together with a piece of styrofoam and then the two yellow flaps are taped together. From inside this seemed to create an extremely airtight seal. Then the siding is nailed up. We had to hold off on the deck trim till we get the deck up.



Finally some pictures of the fascia boards, took a while to dial all of these in with the details on the barge sections. We left the boards proud since I'm not positive if I will be putting in gutters and how the end fascia would work with or without these.

Here's a summary of how things went.

First off, thanks to the crew, David Finucane, his dad Ray Finucane, Marty Farrell, Steve Weatherall and Scott Lawler. And also to my Neighbor Juan Villanueva and my in town helpers Mick and Melanie Long. Off and on I think I always had five people helping out and we couldn't have gotten it done without everyone pitching in.
Here's a short run down of the week.
Days 1 and 2
Wednesday-The truck arrived around 1PM. It took about three hours to get things unloaded and then realize we had no good solution on getting the pallets to the house. The truck I had was much smaller than what they told me, and I had to send him home. We ended up the next day looking for a larger flat bed truck, but it was harvest time and they were all gone. Ray showed up with a car trailer, it turned out to be an ok solution, though it took us the whole day to haul the pallets down, follow with the forklift, unload and then return. We took some pictures of the stacks, David posing to show how big they were.
By Thursday night, we had all but the largest roof pallet loaded at the site.

Day Three

The first two days were spent setting things up, luckily while we were hauling things out, David and Steve were unpacking. Doing a good job of it for the most part. I believe Steve was throwing the floor panels down by himself at one point.
On Friday, we were finally able to get started with the setup. The floors went down pretty quickly once we got the hang of it. Marty and Steve put the final touch on the floor moving the entire thing an inch with just two crowbars. By lunch time we were ready for the walls. It took a while to get the system down, but by the time Steve had to leave we had a couple pieces up. Here's the crew posing for Steve's exit.



By the end of the day, we had 2/3 of the walls up and we were pretty beat.
Scott and David early the next morning I guess, as we finished pretty much in the dark.


Saturday, day four, we spent working on the decks. We had to have the deck frames up to support the post and rafters for the deck roof. Without all that we couldn't get the entire roof up. The deck sections set up rather quickly, unfortunately, I think we were overanalizing both the setup and the plans. We couldn't quite get the posts to lineup correctly with our sections. In the end we had everything up and figured on resolving things when we started with the rafters. While we were working on the deck we also set up the final wall segments. Here's some intermediate deck setups and the final wall up, so Scott could get home to his family.

Day FIve

Sunday, got the final deck pieces set up and all caught up on a lot of small things finished. Got the center ring support up. This holds all of the rafters together as well as the frame for the skylight. Once the entire structure is in place, the support is removed. We had to use the forklift to get the thing up straight.

Day Six

Got the rafters up and started blocking. Tightened the turbuckle for the walls.
Blocking was probably the hardest part. A compound cut on both sides. Eventually we got the hang of it, but since this was a finished piece we had to take our time. And with twenty of them to cut it took me the whole evening. Sadly everyone except Ray left today, so we're pretty much on our own.
However, Coretta showed up with our dog so I'll have company at night.