third and forth week

The camera died, a new one appeared after the fact. My friend and neighbor Mike came by and we powered through tons of stuff - we laid in the first course of T1-11 (the siding), laid in the second floor and heaved the plywood up to it, and installed the double window, one of which shattered during storage - bummer.
I have since fully set in the floor (I hate installing tongue and groove from a swaying height!) tacked in the T1-11 and generally tweaked around - the wood is upstairs waiting for the framing gun, the summer solstice has come and gone, MJ (my wife) came to visit, and it sure was nice working a little less and relaxing. The weather in general has been perfect.
Like I said in the last post - there is a big difference between designing on a desktop and doing the actual building - the second floor will look markedly different from the original design. Good-bye double pane glass door that led to nowhere and weighs a ton, so long shed roof - do I really want work with 16' 2" by 12"'s (that is 16 feet long, 2 inches deep and 12 inches wide) 25 feet over the ground at it's highest? Switching to a gable roof that will use 8' rafters will be much easier!


Some wanted to see where I stay during the construction - its a gigantic two room tent with room to stand up in - totally deluxe!

second week

Well, the camera broke, but everything else is going fantastic - just not a lot of time to say what's going on; here are some pics.
The floor was insulated with 4" of foam core, then covered with 3/4" tongue and groove ply.
First wall was the hardest, second piece begins to fall in place, then you get the idea... all done in one day,plus a little grooming of the land.
For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to build each frame on top of each other and simply lean the first one over to land directly in place.
Yeah, right.
# one big lesson so far is that sitting in front of a computer designing my baby dream cabin and building one are two VERY different things!
I ended up having to pull each nailed frame off the platform and gingerly slide them into place.

the cabin begins

The first week has gone by, and everything is almost as successful as expected.
The lumber was delivered:


There is nothing cooler than bitchin' machinery. The truck from GNH lumber with a crane made this a super simple job.
The lumber was all stacked neatly at the end of my 700' driveway; now I just have to walk everything in another 100 yards or so.
By the end of the week, the 50 plus sheets of plywood are still waiting for movement - almost the only thing I didn't get done.

The lumber was moved to the work site

which turned out to be 140 steps away from where the delivery came in - I carried it all in so had time to count!
I hired some guys to dig in the posts about a month ago, so the cement has cured. I cut the posts down to the proper height with a chain saw. In case you don't know - the cabin will only be 12' by 12'.
I did all the work this week by myself; some of it required a couple of tricks. The posts weren't put in exactly on square, so I used my 16' boards resting on top of the posts to act as guides when I built the frame. In order to make sure it was square, I knew the frame would need some jiggle room, so the 16'ers allowed for this. Once the frame was square, I screwed it in to the boards so it would retain it's squareness.
After the frame was built, I added the cantilevered joists. Because the frame was square, I lined up the joists to it.
I'm a gee-nee-us.
I hope.
This is as far as I got - after five days the frame is done, the joists are hung, each post is wrapped with flashing (to prevent mice entry, maybe) and the 2" by 2"'s are in to hold the 4" of foam core, which will give me R26 insulation factor on the floor.
Summer has arrived - it has been in the 80's most of the time, but cooler in the woods.
I'll add the next dispatch when I get close to a computer.