More Pictures of Our Durango Real Estate

July 14, 2009, Continued...

Okay, back to where we were in the Durango real estate tale:

What's the Next Step?

We've got block walls, and they're cemented for stability and strength.

Now...

Those floor trusses we had to move by hand to where they weren't blocking the driveway.

And at the same time, we framed out the bearing walls at our Durango real estate (oops, I mean Bayfield...). Bearing walls hold the main load of the roof. We have two floors (basement and main) and a loft level, so we'll have two levels of stacked bearing walls.

And on days we can't work on the house for any reason, there's finishing on the shop-
garage to do.




Like a deck to the back door so we don't have to climb the ladder to get into the loft anymore.

Then it's time for foundation "capping", which means topping the foundation with the trusses and the sub-
flooring for the next level.

Which means we can "stand" in our rooms to get a feel for what it'll be like...

Adding more trusses across the rest of the basement:

And adding steps to the garage deck so we can actually use it...



Then going back to finish the capping of the basement on the house. Randy put tape down to show where all the walls will go, as well as the kitchen cabinets and fireplace.


Makes it easier to get a feel for how it will be when it's done. Not as huge as I thought, from looking at it on paper.

While we were finishing that step, another important issue was being dealt with.


Water!

Of course after 300 feet of drilling, we were still only getting three gallons of water per minute, which won't run a household.



And we were getting a bonus: methane gas! Whee!

We live over coal seams, which create methane gases. Which seep into the water. The solution?



A large buried cistern that will hold enough water for better pressure and let the methane seep out before we use the water.



Don't know yet if it'll be drinkable... or how much more it'll cost...

Once the well was done and the foundation capped, we did the rest of the wall framing in the basement.

...which also houses "my" garage...











...then started backfilling around the house.

How nice! It's beginning to look like a yard.

Hey! Kevin! Don't drive in my back yard! The driveway's in the front!

Kids these days! (Randy had to be a smart aleck one day and drive all the way around, too. Boys never grow up, you know.)

Well, that's it as of July 14, 2009. I'll be back with more pictures and updates of our Durango real estate, hopefully every week now. No promises, though. I have to help build, too! And paint. And paint. And paint some more. I hear they were putting up siding on the shop-garage today... I think I'll have to go paint, for a change of pace.


Update as of July 28, 2009

Hi again. Two weeks have gone by at our Durango real estate. The SIPs (that stands for structural insulated panels, for our main walls) showed up four days later than we'd hoped, and in the pouring rain. They arrived on semis, which don't do so well on our driveway. Really fun to "bus" them up the hill in the rain. It took six hours.

Here you can see the piles of walls, hither and yon.











And Jessi standing in front of one of the stacks. I guess there's some assembly required, right?

We had spare hands the first couple of days, one from the company that makes the SIPs, to show us how to put them up correctly, and also a gentleman who is considering our contractor to help with his house. You can see from the pictures how quickly the walls go up this way!

These two pictures show how far we got on day one and day two.

This shows the "sky jack": the machine that helps us lift the large pieces into place. It will be especially handy for lifting the roof pieces (also SIPs) into place.

At the end of day three, we were this far.

Here's day four, and the east wall getting very tall.

The following four pictures show the guys lifting the tallest SIP into place.






You can see we have the sky jack with a pallet on its forks ready to keep the wall piece from tipping right off the deck of the main floor and out onto the ground.

And this is the end of day four. Almost all the way around with the first level of the main floor.

By the end of day five (one week after the SIPs were delivered), the entire first round of panels is up, as well as the high pieces on the east end.



Next we have to build the load-bearing walls on the main floor that help hold up the loft level and the roof. They got one started today, before they were done for the day. Wow, it's really starting to look like a house!

I'll be back soon with more pictures from our piece of Durango real estate!

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