Back steps

So last winter, after we moved into The Log House in December, the Hubs had to use the rickety temporary construction steps out the back door to feed the boiler.   In advance of the heating season this year, the menfolk decided to build a nice new sturdy set of steps.  I was expecting just simple little stairs, but I returned from work to this:

A wee little deck!   I *may* have squealed a little with joy.  

Over the following week, Bob - and an assortment of friends and family - completed the decking and the steps.  

No, the cat didn't help much.

Now I can grill on the deck like a real 'Merican and not in the woodshed.   And the Hubs won't fall to his death in a snowbank this winter.

Which would put a real damper in my plans for a new back door.  Heh.

*Sigh* At Long Last

I have been a blissfully contented woman this week.  Because?  I have come home to a crackling, flickering, toe-warming fire in the fireplace each day!   It is soul-soothingly lovely.


We waited until both sets of parents could be present for the first fire, since they have been such a big part of the building of this house.  So, since Bob's folks FINALLY returned home from that wicked parent-stealing Florida last week, we all gathered 'round on Easter Sunday to ceremonially light the lights, so to speak.

 

If you'll recall, we have not yet faced the chimney... or laid a properly pretty hearth... or purchased an adequately-sized screen.  But, who needs 'em?!

  
*Sigh*  A thing of beauty.  

Roasty toasty 2

Long-time log devotees will remember that we are heating The Log House with wood in a gassification wood boiler.  Which, if you allow it to get cold, needs some coaxing to be roasty-toasty again.   Fortunately, The Husband loves this kind of nonsense   -- er...   necessary work.

Theeeere she goes

I love radiant floor heat.  It is SO! WARM!   Except, I have a sneaking suspicion that The Hubs will make me learn how to feed the boiler soon.  Ugh.  Sounds like work.  

Old Mother Hubbard ...

... went to her cupboard to fetch her poor boiler some wood.   But when she got there....

... her cupboard was bare, and so her poor boiler got none.


But then her husband fetched some wood from the big woodshed and made her help unload and stack it.

And this old mother remembered why there were no treadmills necessary 100 years ago.  And that she hates manual labor.  And is lazy.

The end.

H'mm. I'm NOT Constructionally Useless!

What do you know?  I found a way I can contribute to the house build -- besides sweeping up the sawdust and bringing up picnic lunches...   SANDING!   Yes, that most mind-numbingly basic of tasks in the installation of drywall is within my budding construction-y skillset.  

Let's set the stage, shall we? 

The master bathroom is coming along nicely, with only one thing left to wire, and then we'll finish up the walls, do the plumbing and voy-lah:   a bathroom.  It's enough to make me squeal a little with delight!  

Here's the west end of the bathroom, where our tub will be:

And here's me, mid-sanding!

Sexeh!

And here's the photographic genius of The Girl (the artist formerly known as BabyM):

And a demonstration of my drywall sanding prowess:

Sanding GENIUS!  I know.   I may abandon librarianship in favor of my new-found talents. 


Speaking of libraries,  I was in the Paul Smiths College library yesterday, and was continually distracted from my research by the view over the lake!  How do students there get any work done?  And I went to a college on a gorgeous campus, so I know from beauteous academia.  The sun was shining (at last!), the temp was cold, keeping the snow crunchy, and some hardy souls were ice-fishing on St. Regis Lake.   Sometimes the Route 30 drive is downright hellish, but yesterday it was a positive delight to travel.   Plus, how can a trip bookended by Paul Smiths library and my mother-in-law's woodstove be bad?

Phil

Meet Phil:

You don't know him?  Let me back up:

No?  Still not ringing a bell?  How'bout now?

See our half-a-heating-shed out back of the house?    We finally got the fill in there to the left of the shed that already contains the gassification wood boiler.  Now it's all level and ready for Bob to build the other half of the woodshed.  

Blah blah blah --  all I know is that this side of the house is all cleaned up and fine lookin' now.  Er -- well it will be once it's no longer an active construction site and I can convince my green-thumb father to help us landscape. 

From heat to HEAT!

The new heating system (outdoor gassification wood boiler and radiant floor heating system) is nearly complete.   All winter, The Husband and Father-in-law have been keeping warm-ish with an old wood stove stuck in a corner of the basement with jury-rigged stovepipe.  Remember my consternation over their plan to use the virgin fireplace to keep warm?  It didn't happen.  The Husband decided a woodstove in the basement would be more practical.  It ain't pretty, but it is better than freezing:

Much like the door, they just happened to have an extra stove lying around. 

Bob says I've already shown you the control center for the radiant heat, but I think the other pictures didn't do it justice.   So, you gotta look at it again:

Part of me wants to live in the woods with just a wood stove and an open fireplace for heat.  And part of me likes regular, even heat throughout the whole house.  The latter me won.  It's the same me that likes non-rustic kitchens and bathrooms.  And DOESN'T WANT BEES, CHICKENS OR A GOAT.    But that's for another post.

Radiant Floor Heat

Plumbing-loving Bob has been fooling around with this nonsense lately:

I wish he'd get to work on something tricky.  This easy stuff is beneath him. 

HA!   I mean, do you get this craziness?  What is it?  The Hubs will only say: "radiant floor heat plumbing."   Gee.  Thanks.  Helpful, that.   Taciturn husband and vociferous wife are at an impasse.  Bloggy me wants DETAILS, baby!    Bottled-up-in-his-head Hubs finds:  "radiant floor heat plumbing" to be a sufficient explanation for this elaborate snaking of pipes in the basement of the log house.  

So, that's all you get for now, oh legion of readers.  Unless you rise up in protest and insist on a thorough explanation.  

Hello? 

*crickets*

Okay, maybe it's just me.   In any case, I'm thrilled to think that we're close to a functioning radiant heat system!   WOO-HOO!

Soldering

In today's installment of bad pics taken with camera phones:  The Husband and Father-in-law soldering brass fittings together for the cold return of the radiant heat system.  

The Hubs likes plumbing the best of all the trades that are encompassed in building a house.  In his words: "What could be better than blue flame and molten metal?"  Of course, there is the downside of plumbing...     Bob says people throw all sorts of wierd things down drains and toilets and the plumber's rule is:  If you didn't eat it first, it shouldn't be flushed.  (With the obvious exception, of course of toilet paper.)

Today's post is really just an excuse for me to type "soldering."  Because I can't write it without pronouncing it wrong.  (SOL-during vs. SAH-during)   Soldering soldering soldering. 

Take that.

Hot Header

Bob the Log Builder installed this pipe in the basement today, which will carry hot water to the radiant floor tubing from the boiler.   Apparently it's called a "hot header."   

There's also another squatter in our house.  A vole has taken up confused residency in the basement.  He waddled up and started chewing on Bob's boot today....

Sub-flooring and Friends

Except for the two places that the flooring is purposefully absent (in order to allow heat from the makeshift woodstove in the basement to warm the upper floors), the new sub-floor is done!  

In my opinion, there is one good by-product of having the floor ripped up and re-done....   all the tools and scrap materials that had accumulated in the house had to be moved, which means they were cleaned up.  My house doesn't look like the marina shop anymore.

What's next, you ask?  (You did ask, right?)  Well, to be honest, probably nothin' for a week.  The Hubs has been working elsewhere this week (those paying gigs really get in the way of him building me a house!) and then is taking the weekend off.  Friend Craig is taking a job out of state and so Bob and the boys are having a weekend-long huddle in Craig's wee cabin. 

Boys in 2001.  How young they look!  Bob the not-yet-log-builder is at right, sans beard.

I haven't yet forgiven Craig for taking a job in Maine, but if he lets me visit and learns to talk like Bert & I, maybe I'll consider it.

Of floors and fatherhood

Work is progressing on the new sub-floor. (click here for explanation, if you missed it the first time around).  It's nearly done now -- all that is left to do is the exposed area you can see in the pictures.   It's been so cold out the past week that, even with the makeshift wood stove in the basement, Bob and his father are working in their coats and hats.  At least there's no snow in the house this winter, though, eh?

I picked up Little G from school today and drove him out to The Lake so he could help Bob pound in nails and stack up wood scraps. I hear he's not actually that much real help, but it surely builds character to have a boy work with his Daddy.

Backward

Yes, gentle readers, that is the sub-floor coming OUT.  Being exposed to two wet summers made it swell and buck and - although it looks just fine to me - The Husband wants to prevent floor issues once we lay down the top flooring.  So, it's coming out.  As we speak. 

On the upside, you can now peek at the radiant floor heat tubing that's exposed. 

That's the only upside. 

Thanks

Yeah yeah yeah...   great family, handsome husband, bountiful blessings, blah, blah, blah....     Wanna know what I'm REALLY thankful for this year?   This: 

Because once the boiler's hooked up, The Husband will be roasty toasty all winter long, as he builds the inside of the house.  

Yes, I know that the boiler house/woodshed is a little... er... rough looking right now.  It ain't gotta be pretty just yet.  Pretty can come later.  I need function.

Roasty toasty

The boiler is now in its happy, happy home! 

Fireplace poll

I'm taking a poll.  The Husband wants to use the fireplace this winter while he's working inside the house.  Something about it being cold in the North Country six months of the year and efficiently disposing of scrap bits of wood.   I want to have an inaugural fire once the house is complete and we're moved in, and the kids are at their grandparents' house and Norah Jones is on the stereo....    oh, hey.  Are you still there?  *ahem*   Sorry. 

Anyway.

I think it'll be all black soot and ugly in my beautiful new house.  He thinks that it's a matter of practicality. 

What say you?

A home.... for the boiler

Well someone's home is almost done!   And that someone is our gassification wood boiler.  All that remains to be done, The Husband tells me, is to put an interior wall in the empty space and put a ceiling in.  Oh, and extend the whole area with some fill and put down more concrete and build the other half of the shed for the wood storage...  but that can wait.  The half that the boiler will live in is done.  ish. 

Whaddya think?