My dog thinks I'm awesome.....

Happy summer, longest day has been and gone and now the nights are drawing in... soon be Christmas!

So before Christmas arrives the work must continue, the week started with Mr M finishing up his first upper wall, he has framed the windows...

Notch in the top is where the ridge beam will sit...

Next job he had to install a glulam beam across the end wall so that the other upper wall can sit on it.  Its a 26 foot long beam and will be visible inside the house when it is finished. 

From wikipedia: Glued laminated timber, also called glulam, is a type of structural engineered wood product comprising a number of layers of dimensioned lumber bonded together with durable, moisture-resistant structural adhesives. In North America the material providing the laminations is termed laminating stock or lamstock.

It got delivered....

And then put into position....

Action stations wall jacks....

And up she goes....

Into place....

Lubbly jubbly......

Next he built the other end wall that will sit on the top of the beam.....

Piece by piece....

There is a going to be a big window above the other big window, lots of light or windows for peeping toms...

 

This wall also has the notch out of the top for the ridge beam to sit in...

Next job he installed another Port Orford cedar post, this is also holding up the upper floor, there will also be a third post which sits in the middle of these two but up on the upper floor... still following?....

This post is just sitting on the floor, so in order to make sure the weight is distributed down through to the foundations Mr M had to go down into "the crawl space".... UGH.... once down there he installed another post that sits directly under the post above and then sits on the magic concrete pad that was part of the foundation laying - I wondered what that was for...

 

And so we are really getting up there now, you may have noticed that all the upper end walls are still on the lower ground floor... so next job is to get them up and get our ridge beam installed for the top of the roof.  This is giving Mr M lots of pause for thought so who knows what this week will bring!

My garden is really growing well now, I have started picking courgettes (zucchini's) as you have probably all seen one of these before it doesn't matter that I didn't take any photos before eating! nomnomnom....

I did get a photo of my second round of garlic harvest, this is another early red/hot variety "China Dawn", lots & lots of bulbs, we will be having garlic in and on everything and I still have two more varieties to harvest.

Look at me in my fully color coordinated gardening clothes, even my shoelaces match!

Yes you are awesome......

Safety First!

Where to start...

Wayne came back and finished up the back filling, he laid the rest of the drainage pipe and filled with rock and we have finally gotten rid of one of our piles of dirt....

We also had him lay rock right up to the house, much easier for unloading stuff into the house.  Plus with 3 dogs I am all about getting up and out of the mud...

Mr M seems to be getting the hang of this stair making malarkey, we now have a set of "temporary" stairs up to our front door.....

Whilst all that was going on Mr M was laying his top plates and has begun one of the end walls in the upper floor.

This is the end wall of our loft bedroom, bathroom and storage area, he has also framed the windows in the wall but I forgot to take a photo - next week!

We had a few days of rain at the end of the week (what a surprise) so Mr M headed into the garage and worked on the 3 dormer windows that will be going into the roof....

A pile of dormers...

He did have his first work related accident - hammer and finger *ouch* as he made the effort to take the photo I had better share it with you....

Here is a much nicer photo for you to look at - the view from my future office....

So the BIG job of the roof is fast approaching and it's quite high up there, so as it is safety first on this worksite Mr M has brought a bucket....

What is in your bucket? a hole? No not a hole..

But all the safety kit you could need for high roof work... or maybe he is going into the bungee jump business...

 

I'll keep you posted on that!
So this weekend I harvested the first of my "early" Garlic, this variety is known as "Red Janice", I haven't grown it before and am excited to try it as it is a hot/red variety, the yield wasn't brilliant so I am not sure if I will replant for next year, we will decide once we have done the taste test....

 

I still have 3 more varieties to harvest, so expect lots of photos of garlic *boring*
I have started putting in some beds along my fence line, I brought these shrubs quite a while back, poor things were very root bound, but now they have lots of lovely fresh compost plus some magic tree feed and so they can stretch out and grow, this is just one of the beds...

The other two will be on the other side of the fence, so some more digging to do....

Finally a pretty picture of my Sweet Williams, see you next week....

And she's climbing the stairway to heaven....

This week has been a busy busy week trying to catch the dry breaks in amongst the rain! it all started off ok but by Thursday we were dodging the wet stuff again!

First job was to get the other half of the floor joists put in.  You start with the joists hangers...

Including some double hangers for .... *drumroll*..... double joists....

Then you put the joists up....

So once all the joists are in place...

You can start laying the floor...

So we are up even higher and depending on how tall you are you could be the highest.  This is our bedroom....

Yep, reckon we will sleep well here, its got good feng shui...

So putting the floor on upstairs has given us our first proper room downstairs.  Mum your bedroom is ready whenever you fancy a visit.....

Knowing that there was rain coming, Wayne came back to complete some of the backfilling, he laid the drain pipe.  This is perforated pipe that the water running down the property drains down the rock into the pipe and then is drained out away from the footings.  Weirdly backfilling has made the house seem smaller, more manageable...

We certainly had enough rain to prove that the drain is working, he will be back in the next week or so to finish it up and landscape up at the front, then we hopefully can get rid of the remaining piles of dirt!

We have an upstairs but no way up... so today Mr M whipped up a set of temporary stairs, much easier than clambering up the scaffolding and ladder.  So he brought some 2 x 10 wood and sawed out some stringers with his manly saw!

What are stringers? these are stringers....

What do you do with stringers? you do this.....

Then you add the steps and voila, up you go....

Climbing the stairway to heaven - do we have a sea view? Not even if you squint really really hard!

Tonight Matthew I am going to be......

.... a Super Hero!

So we are 10 inches higher than we were last week! a whole 10 inches, slowly, slowly catchee monkey - or buildee housey!

First job this week was to install the beams for the upper floor.  Well actually before that he built a temporary A-Frame for the beams to sit on, then he got them all lined up and ready to be lifted with the wall jacks. (Good old wall jacks)

From this.....

To this..... (note temporary A-Frame)..

 

With some of this....



So we have two beams for the upper floor, both of which are supported on a center post - 8x8 10 foot Port Orford Cedar post....



 

Let me tell you about Port Orford cedar, it is native to  Oregon and northwestern California, and grows from sea level up to 1,500 m (4,900 ft).  It was first discovered (by Euro-Americans) near Port Orford in Oregon and introduced into cultivation in 1854, by collectors working for Charles Lawson FRSE^[4] of the Lawson & Son nursery in Edinburgh, Scotland, after whom it was named as Lawson Cypress by the describing botanist Andrew Murray. The USDA officially calls it by the name Port Orford cedar,^[5] as do most people in its native area, but some botanists prefer to use the name Lawson cypress (or in very rare instances Port Orford cypress) instead. The name "Lawson's cypress" is widely used in horticulture.

 

The wood is light yet has great strength and rot resistance, and is particularly highly valued in east Asia, with large amounts being exported to Japan where it is in high demand for making coffins, and for shrines and temples.^[7] Its lumber is also known for its highly fragrant ginger aroma. Due to the straightness of its grain, it is also one of the preferred woods for the manufacture of arrow shafts. It is also considered an acceptable, though not ideal, wood for construction of aircraft.^[8]

However, it is considered more than acceptable for use in stringed instruments. Its fine grain, good strength and tonal quality are highly regarded for soundboards in guitar making.

AND it is also an excellent choice for our internal posts, what better wood to use than a local wood from a mill less than 15 miles from our house!  And it smells delicious.

So once the beams were installed Mr M then moved up 10 inches, he added the rim joists for the upper floor...

 

Then he attached the floor joists on the internal beam..

 

And then taadaaaaaaaaaaaa he hung the floor joists. A fairly laborious job (apparently)..

But look, its a ceiling, the guest bathroom, laundry room, and part of the kitchen will be under this...

So this week he will be putting the joists on the other side for the rest of the upper floor, then next stop is the floor itself! Then we will be able to get up there and at that point the big mystery will solved - we will discover if we have a sea view?

Right, garden update - yippee, my favorite thing to talk about! I like keeping a record of it on our blog so I can compare year on year! so far this year is about a month behind last year which isn't surprising after our cold, wet Spring.  Although it is sunny and dry it is still pretty cold at night!

This time last year I had already pulled turnips and picked my first zucchini (courgette), this year I have only harvested lettuce mix and radishes, whilst I have zucchini's on my plants they have a little way to go yet.

But everything is coming along, there is lots of green, garlic is looking splendid and seems to have survived the wet winter/spring, should be harvesting my early garlic in about a month....

Peas...

 

 

Beans, starting their way up the poles....

Potatoes are all up to the top of their bins...

We do have some colour, my Sweet Williams are flowering as are my nasturtium baskets...

 



Looking good, can't wait for harvest time...

And finally an update on our bird houses, we still have our two families of Black Capped Chickadees, but we also have a family of Violet Green Swallows moved in to the house that is up under the eaves of the carport.... and yes, I did take this photo :)

And here is another one of my masterpieces... we have had quiet a few hummingbirds visiting our feeder..... if you look closely you can see him/her/it...