Do It Yourself Home Building Continued

Chip and Peg continue to plug away at building their new home themselves. With the help of their two children, Dan and Katie, they have managed to get “dried in” before the Wyoming skies turn gray and snowy for the winter. This post will include photos and letters as they work on the interior of their new house and greenhouse/garage.

-What a wild weekend! -We had high winds Friday and Saturday preventing us from starting on the install of the standing seam metal roof. So Friday and Saturday we switched gears and installed windows on the house. Most windows are in – except the West wall (prevailing winds), and the kids second floor bedrooms. Sunday the weather cooperated, consequently we were able to start roofing. About 1/3 of the South face of the house roof is done.

-Cheers! -Chip

-This weekend we rented a Squirt Boom, thus allowing us to place the 600lb green 8 x 16 green Spruce beam at the ridge of the porch peak. Next comes the framing for the porch roof. We made good use of this wonderful machine to finish up the Tyvek Stucco Wrap, install all of the west wall windows, start the scary installation of the gable end metal roof pieces on the house and garage. The lifting rig we used was certainly quite a bit safer than our last contraption.

The wind blew pretty good (out of the West) on Sat. so installing the windows on the West wall was akin to having magnets stick to metal. -Hold up the windows…..and whoosh……they stuck right to the wall!

After a busy day Sat. Peggy and I found the opportunity to make it to a Halloween Party dressed as our favorite movie characters – James Bond and the Bond Girl “Camile” from “A Quantum of Solstice”. I think that Peggy made quite a remarkable transition from construction grubbies to glam for this event. I sure am a lucky guy to be able to pal around with such a beautiful gal!

We are just about weathered in. Coming up we have a three day weekend, that we may extend to four days. All of the roof metal is delivered, so we may make a big push to install all the roofing on both buildings as well as the skylights.

Best to all.

-Chip

We are destined to have Wind Power in our future. Seems like that greater Yellowstone Plateau just West of us, keeps throwing high winds our way. We had a three day weekend, and planned to put the roof on the house. Friday saw gust up to 60 mph. Saturday we did a half day and about 40′ of metal roof before the winds kicked in. Sunday brought turbulent winds all day.

Not to loose any time, we switched gears and installed two skylights over the loft area that will become Pegs botanical painting area, and put a skylight in each of the kids bedrooms. The two skylights in the loft painting are have a sweet view of Carter Mountain. We also just about licked the second floor framing of two kids bedrooms, two walk in closets and a large second floor bathroom.

The second floor now appears to be a labyrinth of wood. The photo with Dan shows the partially completed bathroom with the ladder in it. Next in line other than the roof – second floor rail partition, stair cutout, fire blocking, fireplace chase, then finally rough electrical and plumbing. We anticipate the garage doors and exterior doors arriving this week.

A great week to all!

-Chip