I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find the minutes for sharing this building adventure!  We’re still working away, but with the build (and researching and planning it) taking up most moments of our free time between our full-time jobs and fieldwork stints for Eli – okay, and some backpacking and canoeing and wedding trips squeezed in, too! – there’s little time to share the progress with you all here!  Excuses, excuses.  Enough with that.  On to the photos showing all that has been done…

We made some final decisions on how to finish up the wall sheathing and got the final plywood in place – the walls are done!  A few additional connector plates and strips to be sure the rafters and roof weren’t going anywhere and it’s on to building the roof.

Since we’re doing an open rafter design for our roof eaves instead of soffits we had to install blocks between our rafters to seal off the space between the rafters – don’t want any birds or bees making homes in our ceiling! (Hence the term “bird block” for these elements.)  We also finished wrapping our house up like a package to ourselves! – the last layer of housewrap is stapled on and our walls are waterproofed.

Already looking forward to the detail work on the interior of the house, I jumped on painting on the polyurethane protection coat for the interior wood of our bay window to make the wood glow.  I can already picture our kitty basking in the sunbeams and breezes while snoozing in the bay window.

Back from one of his many weeks-long field stints this summer and fall, Eli went hard on the roof sheathing – getting much of it done while I was away at work.  Fantastic to come home and see such progress, though I’m always sad to miss even the smallest bits of the build!  I did get to help some – getting the plywood up onto the roof with two is less harrowing than one.

And, once completed, we couldn’t resist a celebratory brew with an elevated sunset view!

Celebratory brew on the sheathed roof