It's a house

It's starting to look like a house.

Well, it's really starting to look like a house now.  Sam and his crew are done with the framing.  Tomorrow they will come back for a day or so to put the roof on.  It's already been delivered, we're going with a dark green, metal roof.

Les and I spent a good portion of Saturday going out to Monte Vista, Colorado, to pick up the straw.  It was an adventure.  We left early in the morning, and got out there about 3 hours later.  Fred, our straw guy, loaded us up with 90 bales and we came on home.  Straw chaff flying everywhere.  We still need another 300 bales for the house.

Les and Fred loading the bales.

Our trip was uneventful, but we enjoyed the beauty of the drive.  Colorado is just such a pretty state.  The aspens are starting to don their fall regalia.  The mountains were bright white with the recent snows.  It's still in the high 70's or low 80's during the day, but night time has been getting down to the 30's.  I have our bedroom windows cracked open only about an inch at night now.  Soon, it will be time to close them altogether until spring.

Nails to hold the base layer of bales.

I've spent a few hours pounding nails to hold the bales on their perches.  Les took this morning to cut the foam that will insulate these perches... 2 pressure treated 4x4's lined with foam and rock.  This keeps the bales dry and off of the concrete. 

We had our first material snafu, we ordered all of our windows and doors from Lowe's.  But the big windows on the south side needed to be tempered glass.  Sam pointed that out last week, so we went to check and sure enough, they're standard glass, not tempered.  Several calls later, we have a rush order on 2 - 7-1/2 foot and 2-10 foot windows.  These windows are HUGE!  The better to see our beautiful view, but mainly they're for the passive solar heat gain. 

Our new front door... almost finished!

I also talked to the guy building our front door.  Les will be thrilled... it's gorgeous.  I'm thinking of having our kitchen cabinets made out of the same beetle-kill wood.  The beetles cause a fungus to get into the wood, turning it a beautiful blue-gray.  The only good thing about this epidemic is the wood... it's stunning!  And since the tree is dead anyway, I don't feel bad about cutting it down.  Tree-hugger Mary.

Trusses

I don't have much time to write tonight, but though I'd put some pictures up of the progress made today.  Sam and his crew are absolutely amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Walls!

Sam working on the framing

We have walls!  (Kind-of) 

We hired an amazing framer.  He's an Amish man who has a crew consisting of his 13 year old son, and 3 other men.  They came from Alamosa, a little over 100 miles away.  They knocked out the framing from slab to this in 2 days.  They are amazing.  And precise!  He's out there with his level and a square putting the wood exactly where it needs to go. 

We went by there this morning and he told us that he's gone as far as he can go without having the trusses there.  I ordered the trusses 6 weeks ago or so, Heaven knows why they're not there yet, but they should be delivered tomorrow morning.

Once the trusses are in place, he will measure and order the roof material.  We should be going to pick up the metal next Wednesday.  He should have the roof on by Friday.  Then we'll be ready for the bales.  We should be driving up to Salida on the 27th to pick those up.  Then it's baling time! 

Tomorrow, Chuck will be meeting with a stucco crew.  I wouldn't mind meeting them, too.  One thing that I've learned in this process, if a man isn't treating me with respect for my intellect, then I'm not interested in doing business with him.  So many times I've gotten the feeling of, "You're just a woman, what do you know?"  Well I happen to know a lot.  I'm not going to put up with that crap any more.  (Not that I really ever did.)

The other day I was driving Les's pickup up our road.  Some idiot in an old beat-up Blazer was riding right on my bumper.  Finally, after turning onto our private road, he decided he wanted to pass me.  On a curve -- on a dirt road!  I said, "Oh No You're NOT!" and swerved to cut him off.  Then stopped to confront the jerk.  He claimed that he was late for work.  Well who works up there??  Except if it's on my property?  I asked him where he was working and he got belligerent.  So I told him in no uncertain terms that if he's working on my property, he's fired!  Well he turned off before we got to our place, so I didn't have the pleasure of making him sweat.  But what a jerk!

Anyway, on to more pleasant things.  The wedding was wonderful.  Absolutely magical and perfect... with the exception of drama from some family members.  You just have to sigh, and then love them anyway.

I have pictures up on my FaceBook page.  But I will post a few here, too.

So Many Things

M'Lucy

M'Les -- Goofy guy.

Chuck working on the cisterns.

I don't know where to start.  The slab was poured.  The holes have been dug for the cisterns and the septic. The tanks were delivered today.  The framer is going to start his work on the 16th this month.  Then he will complete the roof.  Should be done by the beginning of October.  Then it's time to stack bales!  We need to find a guy to do the stucco.  The guy who stucco'd this house did an absolutely horrible job, don't want to uses him again!  The windows and doors will be delivered on the 17th.

We found a guy on CraigsList to custom make a front door for us.  He uses the beetle kill pine.  It will be gorgeous!  We looked and looked for an arched door to fit Les's request on the house.  He has basically said, "You take care of everything else.  I just want to pick out the front door."  So there we go.  I will send pics when we get it.

We leave on Sunday for DJ's wedding.  I finally got the invitations last Thursday and got them out in the mail.  Nancy, I'm sorry but I have no idea what your current address is!  I know that not many people will be able to make it, but the invites are very cute, and I wanted you to get them anyway.  And if you can make it, the more the merrier!

The weekend before last was the "Garage Sale Twilight Zone."  We went way out of town for 3 different garage sales, and not one was taking place.  I have no idea what happened there.  I made sure I was looking at the right date in the paper.  We enjoy the out of town garage sales because they tend to have more unique items.  But that particular day was just a joy ride, I guess.

Then the animals - the bear visited our back yard again the night before last.  Then the girls were on alert the rest of the night.  We finally fell back to sleep, then about 5am a very loud, very low flock of geese flew overhead -honking and cackling enthusiastically.  Earlier last week I had parked at the bottom of our county road to see if the girls could find a puppy Les thought he saw the previous evening.  They explored quite a bit, then went into a large culvert.  I heard boards banging off the side of the culvert and a loud ruckus.  The girls started barking on the other side of the culvert so I crossed the road to see what was up.  Lucy had her front paws as high up a tree as she could reach.  Mindy was raking her feet in the grass under the tree.  And higher up the tree was a big, black bear.  They treed a bear!  They were so proud of themselves.

Momma doe nursing twins.

Our friend, Chuck, took this picture of the doe nursing her fawn - or is it fawns?  Count the front legs - there are twins!  Chuck saw the other fawn after he passed.

That is the week in review.  It's been busy!

See Mindy at the bottom of this tree?  (You can barely see Lucy's tail)  See the black splotch above?  That's a bear.