Garage progress

We have framed in the walls at the back of the garage: foyer to main dome entry, powder room, stairs to upper room. No stairs yet, because no upper room yet, because no second floor yet. But things are coming along.

Sir Berry

I want to thank you so much for putting this strawberry out in the yard. I see it has a little spot on it, but I don't mind a bit.

 

Wait. It was for me, wasn't it?

 

I mean, you put it right out here where I'm foraging. Look at my classy etiquette, eating with my little finger extended. I wasn't raised in a  barn.

 

Is there a problem? 

 

Mine now. It's delicious. Thanks again.

 

Cupola walls

Some last shots of the cupola for now. These shots, looking up from below, show the construction of the cupola's bottom walls. Nice as it is to look all the way to the top of the dome from the living room, it feels safer to know nothing can drop on you from that height. In the last photo, note the rectangular cut-out in the cupola floor where the ship's ladder will enter.

And this shot is not of the cupola at all! These are the interior walls at the back of the garage, where there will be a staircase to the second floor, a powder room, and the entrance to the connector.

The view from the cupola

The cupola windows have screens. This is the view east, over our bedroom. I love the way the setting sun is throwing shadows of the evergreens to the west of the house, showing that they are even taller than the dome. Our land extends into those trees in the distance.

This is the view to the northeast. Hard to see the fine stand of tamaracks (larches) that lie just behind those trees. The field in view beyond is also ours.

 

The view west - this is my favorite shot, the dome looking down on its little sibling, the garage. The roof of the connector looks a bit like a (very short) toboggan run.

 

A floor for the cupola

If you have ever worked on new construction inside a house, you probably know that from day to day not much seems to change. Well, now I have something to show: the third floor; the floor to the cupola! At this point I was in the process of hanging the joists:

 

Nothing too exciting there, joists look the same no matter which floor one is working on. However, here you can see one of the five windows in the cupola through the joists:

And from this vantage point, the very center of the roof comes into view:

This is looking down through the last bit of floor to complete. You can see the upstairs hallway and below that, the living room.

 

Next up, the view from the cupola windows, now that we can stand on a floor and look out!

Amazing

These photos are amazing.

Amazing because, for a meteorological phenomenon, rainbows are breathtakingly beautiful.

  Amazing because the rainbow frames the garage so nicely.

 And amazing because they were taken at freaking 8:42 p.m. in May, when it is simply too dark to see a rainbow down south, but not up in the north!

Level Two

As I get set to work this year, I noticed that I had not yet published this post from the end of last season. So, I will do that now as I get ready to start the new season.

Unlike last year when I worked outside and seldom had anything to show, this year I can stand back at the end of the day and see progress. An insurance agent once told my uncle and me, as we were taking a break from adding on to his house, that he was envious that we could do that.

So, looking up from the kitchen and the downstairs bedrooms, one sees joists.

And, if one climbs the stairs and looks down, the view of the kitchen is slightly blocked by...joists.

Then, after a few days work, the joists are covered

with the subfloor--4x8 sheets of tongue-and-groove plywood.

Notice the cool Xs. Bridging. Those little pieces of wood are nailed at the top and will be nailed at the bottom before the sheet rock in installed. The add a tremendous amount of stability to the floor.

Standing at the top of the stairs, almost from the
same spot as the second joist picture
was taken.

I still have some smaller pieces to put in, then I need to build the wall and rail so people don't fall off to the floor below. Then, I will build the rest of the interior walls up there. Time permitting, I will get the third floor built, or at least get the rim joists in place.

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