In just two quick weeks, all timbers and exterior walls have been installed. We can now walk through every room of the house!

The last sections of the house to be established were the kitchen and pantry/laundry/mudroom area. The picture above shows one of the last timbers being placed – this is one of three that lie horizontally as part of our mudroom ceiling.

There’s so much to admire and be grateful for within these walls. It’s quite surreal that we will one day live among these timbers and pegs and big windows, and in this setting.

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I wish I could have spent a second full day in a row watching the action at our build. By the time I got there today it was cloudy, the sun was tired, and everyone had packed up. The result: I was jaw-droppingly wowed by the outcome of another productive day, but the light was not the best for photos.

Fortunately, Patrick got the incredible shot above of Kevin removing the straps used to raise a great room purlin (see yesterday’s post for an explanation of purlins and other fancy timber framing lingo).

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Not only does timber framing have a distinct look, it has a unique language.

The bent was installed today, and I am proud to tell you I now know that word – the bent is the main supporting structure of our house and it defines our great room. (Click here for a real lesson on the bent and how it got its name). Many stunning northeastern white pine trees gave their lives to hold up our home, and John and Patrick estimate that together they weigh about 3000 pounds.

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It seems there’s some competition for leader of the crew.

Day 4 brought the critical eyes of not just our seven-year-old pup Molly, but also those of two bald eagles who watched the day’s progress for hours from a nearby tree.

While their help is appreciated, we’ve decided to stick with Patrick. We might consider their applications if they had a little more experience and we didn’t like our current foreman so much.

Molly was more than a little excited to be lifted onto the deck for her first time. She instantly ran around the space in circles, then checked out the views she’ll have. We haven’t yet broken it to her that there’s a door going where she rests in this photo.

The eagles were there for about three hours – I’ll take that as a good omen.

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Our crew is doing such a fine job! Today was another smooth day of assembling and raising walls, including the front section of our great room – which I’ve only seen in these pictures:

For the third day in a row, John came home beaming. He can’t say enough about how efficiently our crew is working, and how happy he is with the quality of everyone’s workmanship. Alfie, he says, fusses over 1/16 of an inch. He gets the perfectionist’s stamp of approval for certain.

“My only worry,” John told me, “is whether Safeway will run out of Frank’s Red Hot.” Patrick puts it on everything.

We are not so naïve to think we won’t have (more than) a few more bad days before this project is complete, particularly now that I’ve made a point of saying how well things are going. But we sure appreciate every good one.

So far, so great!

In a mere two days of work by John, Patrick, and a crew of three hardworking guys from Don Hager Contracting (Kevin, Larry, and Alfie), walls are popping up and our house is appearing before our eyes. Patrick says things are moving along faster than he expected.

By the end of today, we were able to see what our views will look like from the dining room and our bedroom. All I can say is it’s a good thing our ensuite window has a lot of trees in front of it… (more…)

(I wrote this Sunday, but since then there have been technical difficulties related to posting I may never understand…).

It may be the first day of spring, but it’s been feeling a lot like Christmas around here.

John and I have looked forward to tomorrow, the official Day 1 of our build, with an anticipation I have not felt since I was a kid waiting for the holiday season.

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The next time I need an example for my students of what it means to be resilient, I will tell them about a little company in North Collins, NY…

Despite their incredible loss Thursday, Timberbuilt wasted no time finding a place to set up and get back to work. By Friday morning – less than 24 hours after they shared the news about the fire that destroyed their shop and office – they announced they had already relocated nearby:

Saturday morning brought a call from Adam L. telling us they expect to receive new timbers for our project this Wednesday or Thursday and they’ll begin cutting them right away. (more…)

Of all the things we might have anticipated going wrong with our build, I suspect the news we received this morning would not be on the list.

Our timbers are ashes.

A massive fire at Timberbuilt’s shop in North Collins, NY early this morning destroyed the entire building. Inside was a lot of wood, including the timbers for our home that were to be shipped in time to begin our main structure on March 1.

The poor folks at Timberbuilt also lost their very nifty and green office, which George took pride in showing us last summer.

According to news reports, the fire was called in just after 3 a.m. Less than six hours later, Adam Lincoln, the company’s “logistics guy,” was on the phone with John to deliver the news. He told John he’d already made calls to their timber supplier to confirm wood was available to begin again on our project, and he’d contacted another company to put a hold on delivering the structural insulated panels that will comprise our roof and exterior walls.

As soon as they find an alternate location to work, Timberbuilt will be back on the job and we’ll be able to revise our building schedule.

Those guys are amazing to begin with. In a crisis? Wow. (more…)

It’s no surprise there are heaps of decisions to make about our house. At the moment, it seems most of them involve wood.

A big pile of it arrived at our site this week: roof trusses and other bits to build our stick frame garage. The snowy show goes on, and John says it will likely be finished within a couple of weeks. It’s amazing to me that an entire structure (minus windows, doors, and siding) can exist out of nothing in such a short time.

I’m strangely comforted thinking about having a building to call our own again, no matter how uninhabitable it will be. It will give us a place to keep our snowshoes between treks around the point and we’ll be able to store a lot of materials there. This means we can start shopping!

And we have…

With timber samples, some pine we were considering for the ceiling, and plans in tow, we met Blayne from Prairie Barnwood on Saturday at his Winnipeg condo/showroom.

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