It's Electrictrifying!

During the last week of September, Eli toiled in the frigid air, sawing stumps, clearing debris and digging a 120ft long trench from our shed to the new house.

After covereing the wire with a little dirt, a strip of flagging was laid over it, so that if someone should dig in the wrong place in the future, they would hit the flagging first and know that something is up.

Main panel wired up and ready to go. Sub panel, in the house, ready to go.

THE FIRST LIGHT SWITCH!

And.....IT WORKS!!!!!

It's official. We now have electricity!

A little bit of mud, a little bit of tape

We got some tape on the seams on the bedroom and stairwell. :-)

Sheetrocking upstairs lid

Hey there,

The days are shortening and there is starting to be a chill in the morn. In order to to stop the heat from the woodstove going straight to the peak we have sheetrocked the upstairs lid. We stapled up 6 mil vapor barrier first and then put acoustical sealent around the perimeter.

On Sunday we got the bedroom lid hung. And today on labor day we hung the stairwell.

Other additions of note

This summer, we have been doing various things to the house, none of which are as monumental as what we did last sumer but are none-the-less important. A lot of our energy has been put towards the bottom of the house where we've been working on better drainage and structural support. We had Lance from Bobcat Services up to look at the foundation. He had poured the 5ft deep concrete piers about 6 years ago and when we peeled the cardboard from the sonotubes we noticed there was rebar showing. He came up to discuss whether this was going to be a problem and calmed our nerves sufficiently. He also praised us on our "very professional" work. Its nice to hear that, especially from someone who has been in the business as long as he has.

We still want to tie in a few of the posts together near the ground on the highest side of the house and we still plan to fully skirt the house in with plywood. We haven't yet decided how we're going to run skirting right down to the gound. Whatever is touching the ground needs to be vertically mobile as we have a great deal of heaving here.

We have also been doing a lot of wiring. We do not yet have power TO the house but we have fully developed the scematics for the whole house including the crawl space and have most of the wiring done at this point. Its kind of fun actually planning these things out as its beginning to feel more like the aesthetics of a home and not just carpentry.

Also, I have been learning more about the plants here on our land and have discovered scads of blueberry bushes. The are small and tart but are wonderful in smoothies.

-Jane

Up on the roof one last time....hopefully...

We have had all the stovepipe up for a while now. Well; all of it except one large chunk with the cap and roof supports. We had done most of it from 4 tiers of scaffolding and then even had a ladder on the top of the scaffolding. But, we had to do this last piece in a different way.

So, Eli put the stovepipe and support arms in his big backpack and climbed out the upstairs window onto the pump jacks from where he climbed onto the roof; floppy backpack, toolbelt and all.

This is the knot that did a great job of preserving Eli's life.

In the photo below, you see the backpack with stovepipe in it, hanging from a rope on the roof while Eli has gone inside to get some more things.

After some scary hairy moments, the stovepipe was put into place. But something was wrong. It wasn't sliding into place like it was supposed to. Eli put the support arms on and temporarily secured it so that he could come down and reasses. From the large sliding glass door upstairs, this is what was seen. Everything looked perfect from there.

However, using binoculars from the ground (seen below), I could see that there was a rivet on the lower section of stovepipe that was holding the new section up and keeping it from where it needed to be. So, this time, Eli was armed with a screwdriver to pry the stovepipe out a touch and then he was able to jiggle it into place and then twist it to lock it it.

PHEW!!!!

And six months later.....

Wow, its been a while since we have posted anything but we survived a long dark, cold winter. The past couple of months got us moving on the hose again now the snow is melting and the days are getting oh so much longer.

The interior walls are now framed in thanks to Eli's hard work. These are the upstairs walls. You are looking toward the closet, stairway and between the two; a small office nook. This is a view from the closet into the bedroom upstairs.

Also, we rented some scaffolding today and got most of our stovepipe installed and actually had our first fire in the house.

It made a wonderful, warm and toasty fire and man that griddle sure does get hot!

Roof and Woodstove

Last weekend, we were preparing to buy a SCAN woodstove from our local heating store. Due to prior negative experiences with this store owner, however, Jane would rather not buy from them. So, we also kept our eye on Craigslist. Suddenly, a Vermont Castings Resoulte II 0042 showed up for sale in Anchorage for $400. Jane convinced her dad to drive 1 hour from Wasilla to Anchorage to check it out. We offered the seller $250 for the woodstove and it was accepted. This woodstove was gifted to us by Jane's dad. THANKS DAD!!!
Being that it is a 26 year old woodstove, there are a couple of little issues that need to be addressed. Primarily, we have a problem with the flue damper in that its a bit loose and kinda falls apart when opened and closed. Jane is workin on it though.

Eli worked on the roof this weekend with the help from some neighbors (Pete and Jospeph). All the metal sheathing was successfully installed!!! Just a little more work left to do up there. And then, we can focus on the interior stuff and installing the woodstove!