A stroke of luck for us!

Despite having just spent a number of days being put to work assisting on a remodel Eli’s brother and sister-in-law are doing on the house they just bought, Eli’s parents were kind enough to stop by our place on their way home and be put to work assisting on our house build, too! (Poor Eli’s parents, they’re serious troopers!)  As Eli’s dad is a professional builder with a ton of construction experience, it was AMAZING having his knowledge and expertise to provide so many helpful insights.  Ironically, it was also the first weekend a friend of ours who had been wanting to help with the build was available to join in the fun. So, all the sudden, we had the assistance of three people! And, what an incredible time it was!

First, it was back to the task of sheathing.  Eli and his dad jumped right on that.  Eli’s mom and I had to make a quick run to the hardware store for some screws and other various materials (a common theme in our days recently).  Upon our return, I got to work cleaning up our redwood ledgers that would support the joists for the bedroom and storage lofts.  And, Eli’s mom volunteered to prep and paint our joist hangers – since we were unable to find the ones we wanted with a black powder coat.

We also used the benefit of additional muscles to lift the framing for the bay window into place (bye-bye foreman desk 🙁 ).  Eli and I were super excited to see that taking shape!  The bay window is definitely one of my favorite elements of the Hygge Hale – and Eli designed it!

With the help of our family and friends, we were also able to accomplish insulating the wheel wells, making wood plugs to hide the screws in our ledgers, cutting and beginning the assembly of the rafters – once we get the rafters and roof up, it will really look like a house!! – and get pretty much the majority of the wall sheathing in place!  It was so crazy for us to see things moving so fast.  What marvelous help!

A long – and so awesomely productive! – weekend of work summarized in visuals!:

Sheathing continues

Router work on the loft ledgers

Pooch snooze during the build

Wheel well insulated

Header hangers in lieu of jack studs

Joist hanger painting

Me drooping a bit from a lot of sanding

So awesome to have helpers!

Last use of the foreman’s desk

Assessing the bay window framing attachment

Bay window framing installed!

Putting Eli’s parents to work! They were troopers!

Cutting the rafters

Assembing the rafters – with a little help from a friend!

Removing adhesive spillover to facilitate a straight sheathing seam

Sheathing team

Another panel of sheathing goes up!

Eli reduces unnecessary weight on our blocking (for the ones we didn’t think to cut in advance)

Getting close on the sheathing

Interior tidied up

Constantly looking more and more like a house!

[A huge and MAJORLY hearty thanks to Paul, Barb, and Elissa!!! ]