Construction Has Begun

The last few days have been very exciting! So much is going on, I can hardly keep up. I love it! I have much to do for my cabin, and at the same time, things were stalled for a few days while my mud-pit of a lot dried out. In the meantime, Burns Brothers Masonry has been seeing to it that I never commit the sin of idleness... It almost seems like work is a religion for Nathan, except that he's much more diligent than most parishioners. So I've been working hard helping out the cousins and I'm starting to get a tiny bit stronger. It's such great experience to get my body and mind conditioned for the hard work of constructing my cabin!

In the spirit of family helping family, Nathan drove me up to my lot on Saturday and constructed forms for my foundation footing. I got to showcase my skills as well; I must have brought Nathan a hammer five or six times AND I dug a ditch with a shovel. Man all that digging I learned to do as a firefighter is finally paying off... It went really well, except it was like a thousand degrees outside and humid too. We were able to complete all the things which required professional skill while Nathan was there, and there is (are? Aly, help me out?)a couple hours of manual labor I'll take care of in the morning tomorrow before the concrete truck arrives in the afternoon. With a little cooperation from the weather, I'll have my foundation footing complete tomorrow!


Below you can see a picture of my cabin site and some of the yard. To keep this G-rated, I will refrain from repeating any of the jokes perfectly respectable people have been making about my hole. Engaging verbal/written filter...


Randy the excavator was just leaving as Nathan and I arrived, but then he stayed to chat for a while. As Randy was trying to leave again, I asked Nathan if he wanted me to put a board down to the pit so we would have a ramp to get back out. Hearing this, Randy offered to dig us a ramp and it took him about 4 or 5 seconds with the excavator. It was really amazing seeing how much dirt he could move in such a short time! Now we have great access for getting equipment in and out during construction of the basement. In the picture below, you can see Randy digging the ramp as Nathan drives a stake which was used to level the form we built. The pit itself is six and a half feet deep on the high side, and a bit less on the other.



My new neighbor Dave came by to introduce himself while we were working. He's an older guy (older than what? no one knows, his age is secret), seemed as friendly as he was toothless, and told me all about his 9 mile hike in Itasca State Park the previous day. Everyone tells me he's kind of weird, so I assume we'll get along famously since they all say the same about me.

After I saw the excavation, I had a very paranoid moment where I thought I might have accidentally decided to put my house partially on the adjacent property. Surely the heat was getting to me. So Randy loaned me a 300 foot tape measure (I didn't even know such a thing existed) and Nathan was patient enough to measure out the 660 feet comprising my property boundary. He was slightly less patient when, during this task, someone stopped in the middle of the highway to inform me about the graveyard on my property. I of course loved it because I got to hear yet another different version of the legend. This time, there were two babies buried, and one 18 year old boy who, "lived on a different farm down the road thattaway." The number of arms each of them had was not specified. Pretty soon Nathan started tugging on the tape saying in Morse code, "Tell that guy to shut up." It was pretty easy to disregard the message from 300 feet away. We eventually got the lot measured, and thank goodness my cabin site is about 60 feet from any neighboring property.

Sunday was finally time for a day off to relax. I began by forgetting about church and sleeping in. Since he forgot how to take days off before he was born, Nathan worked the barbecue at his party while the rest of us visited with family. I felt tired all day, but stayed for a couple hours. Much of that time was spent discussing with Nathan how to build a gable dormer. This was a mystery that had stymied me for months and finally, with the aid of a search on Google Image for "gable dormer frame," Nathan was able to demystify the issue. It was a major design breakthrough for me, so I went back to Paul's house and worked on my floor plan for hours. I've really been stuck on where to put the stairs and how to fit them without ruining the layout of everything else. Much harder than I would imagine!

I worked on house plans all afternoon, and even took my drawings to the fireworks display as we had an hour or so to wait for the show. Isaac, Nathan, Uncle Ronnie, Aunt Lee, Grandma Henry (my cousins' grandma), Missy's folks, Joel, and I all went to celebrate the holiday in Hackensack, just one town north of all of us in Backus. The show was fantastic and it was fun to see everyone out enjoying themselves. By the time darkness fell, I still hadn't solved my stair problem.

Missy and Autumn watching fireworks


Aunt Lee and Uncle Ronnie enjoying the show


After the grand finale, we all headed home and everyone who wasn't going crazy trying to solve a stair layout problem presumably went to bed. With more determination than pragmatism, I stayed up till one AM drawing. Even though I rose 5 hours later to work all day, it was SO worth it. I totally found the solution I was after and work was hard, but the 13 hours we put in only felt like 11 and a half. I'm hoping I can post my floor plan once I complete it. Better hurry though, the floor will be in soon!

After work today, I caught the Burns bug and continued puttering in the yard for an hour before calling it a day. I was putting together all the things I'll need for tomorrow: boards, nails, wheelbarrow, hammer, re-bar, etc. While gathering supplies, I called Sid (neighbor in Becida with the half-built log cabin) to talk windows since he installs them for a living. I'm planning to put an egress window in the basement which makes it legal to have a bedroom down below if I choose. Sid offered to install my window for me and sell it to me at his cost on a work trade! I'm so excited about that, I love work trading. I'll peel some logs for him, he'll do a pro job on my window, everyone wins. I really love how helpful everyone is around here; it does my heart much good.

Now I'm off to bed, though I'd rather draw my floor some more. Among so many other tasks planned for tomorrow, I've got a morning appointment to mark out the route for my underground power lines...