It's Not Thanksgiving, but it's Ready for Trussing

Thursday and Friday's weather smiled on Ruth's Ridge... no rain and moderate temperatures created good conditions for great progress.

On Thursday, while the Brothers Rempel continued with wall construction for the loft, Davis and I stripped the garage forms. As boss and chief schlepper, I took on the additional job of stripping the 45 lovely patio blocks that were the result of a surfeit of concrete ordered for the garage pad. This particular task required some 8 hours of right-angled bending to: strip the forms, remove the nails, stack the wood. A task that managed to drag its sorry self into a bit of Friday morning as well. By end of Thursday, the first garage wall was raised.

By 3 p.m. Friday, all but one of the garage walls was up, and the mudroom is still awaiting a couple of walls on Monday. That means we should be ready to start hoisting roof trusses almost as soon as they arrive on Monday.

We spent a bit of time reviewing our "Smooth Sailing" timeline and were chuffed to learn that we are still effectively on schedule, despite the unknowns we encountered along the way. Ruth and I are most pleased, and DND should be very proud of the results they've achieved with this very demanding build.

Time to raise the roof.

NOTE: For those who don't know, you can click on the images to see and/or save them full-size.

A Garage Pad, Followed by a Changing Pad

Okay, just a quick update. The day was sunny, breezy, then quite warm. The first concrete truck was 40 minutes late, the second wonderfully timed, and the third arrived an hour after the second left. Not at all good for an optimal pour.

Delaeno put on his best "I just love concrete work" smile.

Then there was the issue of a temperamental converting calculator. Well, we learned in retrospect that the calculator was correct. When asked to convert 16 yards to meters, it came up with 14.5. Small problem; that's linear, and we were looking for cubic. Result, gobs more concrete than was needed. We now have a fine selection of individually hand-crafted 2'x2'x5.5" patio blocks ready to be appropriately arrayed and on which to situate our new patio furniture. There's a story here. Don't ask.

You can see from the following image that D 'n D could make quite a fine synchronized concrete dance duo.

Finally, I got to meet my first granddaughter this evening. Kate was born at the end of June, and this house project has prevented me heading up to Riding Mountain Nat'l Park where her parents live. Happily, Pete & Allison came into Winnipeg today, as they are flying to Nova Scotia tomorrow. True to form, Kate needed a
short stay on a changing pad very soon after meeting me. Night night, sweetums.

A Great Start on a Short Week

Yesterday was cancelled as a work day given the arrival of the rain that had been touted since last Wednesday. True, some places got rain, lightning and hail but, when I arrived at the site shortly after lunch, we'd had little rain and very little more followed. This despite the radar tracking I watched before and after my trip up there to take delivery of another load of material from Parkside. The rain seems to have veered north just before our property, deciding instead to dump over 40 mm on Gimli.

Since it wasn't raining yesterday, it relieved me of any excuse for not rearranging existing on-the-ground materials, and then restacking the OSB sheathing when the four lifts all broke their strapping upon being offloaded. If my arms weren't already tired from having helped Claire move to her apartment, they were by the time I finished the restacking, then the shuffling through our storage locker to help Ruth & Claire find a number of buried treasures.

Today, while Davis sheathed the main floor and Delaeno & Nathan worked on the loft walls, I sorted the stick material delivered on Monday, passed 40 2x6 studs up to Nathan, then proceeded to load and move over 30 wheelbarrows of 3/4 down material about 120 yards from beside the garage pad to the driveway approach. Now my arms are pretty much leaden. Too much for my creaking bones.

Tomorrow puts Davis in the spotlight, as the first of three truckloads of concrete arrives for the garage pad at 9 a.m. We'll all be assisting him and, by 6 p.m., maybe we can all go home to another fine Ruth-made supper.

Out, and out.

A Good Week, but Facing Stormy Monday

With apologies to T-Bone Walker, it looks like a stormy Monday, which makes Tuesday just as bad, and a no-go for concrete. That said, this past week saw big changes on the vertical front of our housebuilding adventure.

Deryl Brook had already finished his inspection of the garage pad when I arrived with Nathan a few minutes after 8 a.m. on Friday morning. I really appreciate his enthusiasm for this project, because I am continuously impressed with the fact that Ruth & I allowed our inexperience to drop us in the the deep end of the housebuilding pool. From the site conditions, to the excavation, to the walls and on up to the roof trusses, this is a complicated house plan and project.

Thus far, that fact has manifested only one notable variance our budget, that being the excavation and back-fill. In hindsight, I should have recognized the challenges presented by both the 6' of sand and the constraints of the tree-stand around our build site. It was clearly a case of "don't admit to the logistical costs and they won't materialize." Still and all, we have no complaints – other than the incredibly substandard summer weather Manitoba has been awarded this year.

Sometime during the process of assisting with bracing the main-floor walls on Friday morning, I happened to glance out of the master bedroom doorway. It was one of those crystallizing moments. Suddenly, I could 'see' my new home. I was standing in our bedroom, able to take in the entire front yard and the driveway approach. I walked to the kitchen window opening and visualized the seasons flowing by down over the Jackfish Creek a mile away as I made lattes each morning, the oak tree waxing and waning just outside the window. I threaded my way around the sheathing and cut-offs into the great room and time-lapsed the sun's various angles and paths sweeping repeatedly across the floor.

I have become entirely enraptured by this little place on earth. The silence, the Pileated and Redheaded Woodpeckers, the Sandhill Cranes, Don & Diane Larson's cattle roaming the adjacent fields, Rebus looking so happy and content, the changing colours all around.

After Thursday night's dinner, Delaeno and I had prepared and emailed another material order to Parkside. I phoned Joe Klassen, our contractor sales rep, during Friday morning to ensure we had everything covered off and that we would receive the shipment on Monday.

Jim Rodger stopped by mid-morning with a bounding Freya, their high-energy Border Collie cross. Given that I'd been threatened with dismissal or pay-cuts by the rest of the crew for my three visits on Tuesday, I didn't descend from the loft floor to chat, but Jim was enthusiastic in his surprise at the progress over the past three days. Davis had finished up the bracing on the garage forms early that morning, and was now on the roof with his purpose-specific screw gun, reefing the sheathing down to the joists.

Davis had showed off his brute strength earlier, by single-handedly heaving the 3/4" 4x8 sheets of sheathing from the main floor up onto the loft floor joists. While Delaeno cut the sheets to size (interspersing this activity with prepping wall plates for the mudroom), Nathan, Davis & I positioned and secured them.

Shortly after noon, Davis screwed down the last sheet and we decided to call it a day. I know how tired I am most evenings, and I could see how drained the fellows were from the intense physical effort they'd put out over the week. With the temperatures more conducive to construction and the rain – in the words of Burl Ives – having mostly "gone around," we had had a great productive week. I called it a week, with express wishes that we all get some rest and refreshment over the next couple of days.

That said, we may be getting the long weekend we didn't take around August 1st; with over an inch of rain forecast for Monday, we may get to catch up on non-Ruth's Ridge activities tomorrow.

Taking it Topside / Checkers in the Garage, anyone?

Main Floor Walled, Garage Pad Nearing Concrete-Readiness

News Flash! Ribald Metaphors Repulsed on Ruth's Ridge

The juvenile in me has been sent to bed, albeit after a large and delicious supper, for threatening to regale the readership of this blog with inappropriate references to the work done on site today. So, the stuffy adult in me is thrilled to report that we raised walls today... four of them.

And Davis has the forms ready for the garage pad.

I got to dig another hole and make a lot of headers, none of which involved a black & white sphere – headers being the pieces of 2x10 fir that are placed in the framing above doors and windows.

To backtrack a bit, we arrived on site Monday morning under relatively dire weather predictions. While the cooler temperatures were welcome, they also enfolded rain, a lot of which had already fallen over the weekend. The basement again had quite a lot of water and, with floor joists strung over the sump pit area by morning coffee break, I stepped into my rubber boots and headed down to get the tank back in the sump hole I'd dug about a week before. After running the trash pump for almost an hour (nominally 8,000 gallons) I was finally able to get the 3/4" limestone rock cleaned out. While waiting for the trash pump to do its job, I'd drilled hundreds of 1/2" holes in the tank. Once back in place (which was easy, even with about 18" of water again in the hole – the water quickly filling the tank), we checked for level and positioning relative to the eventual level of the concrete floor then, just to be sure, wedged it in place with a 2/6 brace from the joists.

Meanwhile, Davis & Delaeno continued to finish up the installation of sub-flooring while Nathan installed insulation around the perimeter of the floor trusses.

We did have to take a longer lunch as the drizzle became rain, but we decided to carry on after lunch. Nathan & I secured a large tarp between some trees to protect the table and mitre saws, then we all got to work. I cut footing stakes for Davis to use in setting up the garage footings.

With heavy equipment no longer on site, Rebus was happy (insofar as a citified dog can be content in a wet, chilly treeline) to be back in the pack.

Back to today.

The weather was cool and blustery until shortly after lunch, when the sun came out. It may have been my parents' arrival for their first visit to the project they've heard so much about. It may have been Jim & Johanna showing up for a quick visit, but the sun was fully out by the time Dave Matthews, a neighbour, showed up for his first on-site inspection.

I've known Dave's wife, Carmen, long before she met and married him. She worked for The Lab Works for many years, but recently opened her own photo studio in Stonewall. When I stopped in at her studio to say "Hi" a few weeks ago, she said she'd been wondering which refugee from the flood plain was building on the ridge.

Back to the return of the sun. It seemed to light a fire under DND (I was doing too much visiting) such that, shortly after 4 p.m., the Bros. Rempel hoisted the east main entry wall into position. It was shortly followed by the south main entry wall, after which Davis & I joined to help them position the east great room wall and the west MBR wall.

Tomorrow, Matt Taplin returns with the skid steer loader and 24 cubic yards of 3/4 down limestone for the garage under-floor. We'll be seeing fairly dramatic changes to the structure over the next week or so. Then we hit another slower segment – the building of the jigsaw puzzle known as the roof.

But, for now, we get to bathe in the thrill of rapid change and the increasing definition of our future home.

Wrapping Up a Blistering Week

This fourth week of construction was been many things, exhilarating and torturously infernal to name two.

After nearly two months of non-summer, temperatures soared into the mid 30s the first four days of the week. None of us was conditioned to the heat and we moved accordingly. Then, as has been the pattern, Friday brought much cooler temperatures, then rain. Despite the heat exhaustion, we made good progess on the first floor.

With the concrete walls poured, the perimeter wall measurements needed to be re-established. The 2x6 wall plates were positioned and bolted to the concrete, then 64 engineering floor trusses and ten laminated beams – some as long as 42' – were strung over the basement, positioned, tacked down and leveled after the rim joists were cut to size and nailed to the trusses. By Thursday evening, four sheets of sub-floor were screwed down, with the sub-floor virtually done by Friday afternoon.

As the four of us left the site on Friday, Matt Taplin was still busy spreading the crushed limestone rock for the driveway base. Unfortunately, their backhoe had developed a transmission shifting problem during the afternoon, so we passed George who was already on the 35-minute drive back to Stonewall.

The site changed dramatically over this week. With the hole backfilled and the garage area now ready for pad-forming construction, we are able to move around so much more freely. The drag on that freedom, however, has been the crushing effect of the heat and humidity. I am grateful for what DND were able to achieve under the circumstances. If the weather holds as forecasted for the coming week (low 20s and sunny), we should have near perfect working conditions and great progress.

With eight weeks to closing on our Winnipeg home, it's hard not to be panicky about where we'll be at on Ruth's Ridge by that time. Over and above the transfer of our household effects, there is the pressing issue of our living circumstance. We're still likely five-to-six weeks away from lock-up stage, at which time we can get our stuff moved into the garage. That's fine, but we won't have the house live-in ready before Oct. 15th. Happily, we have a couple of extremely gracious offers, but I'm doing my best not to think about those logistics; I need to stay focused on tomorrow and the coming week.

The next two-three weeks will mark the greatest change in appearance, with the garage pad, walls and roof trusses going up. One more sleep and back to work. Happy Sunday.

Toe-Taplin Thursday

Okay, so my literary wit ain't worth a whit tonight. It's not right for a man of my immature-mature years to be so whipped.

Anyway, I couldn't get rid of the Taplin Trio today. In fact, they'll be back tomorrow and, maybe, Monday. Happily the backfill is complete. The perimeter of the basement now hugs the grade level and I'm thrilled to see that the house will look like it's sitting in the land, not like a flood-plain home jacked way out of the terrain. The Hydro line is trenched in and, while I was away first thing this morning getting four wonky rim joists replacements, they ripped out another four trees to create a somewhat less long and winding road that leads to our eventual door. It also happens to accommodate the width of various essential service trucks, like the septic pumper.

Tomorrow, Taplin Earthworks will lay the geo-fabric along our driveway and build the bed on top of that. Then, of course, the clouds will descend again and give us gobs of rain for the weekend and into next week. I hear the responsive Gov't of MB will be resurrecting and modifying the old license slogan: One-Week Sunny Manitoba.

Tired. Must do some research for a Foundation of which I'm a board member; hit Canadian Tire to pick a few electrical bits; see my brother who flew in from China today.

More to follow.

Tapping the Bank for Taplin Earthworks

Now I want to be clear; this is meant with the best intentions and good humour, but I see a nice, leisurely tropical holiday in the Taplin family's future this winter. Unfortunately, I see Ruth's Ridge funding a lot of it. Man, the fun I have paying these guys to mess up my yard.

They showed up this morning tout en force: tandem truck, trackhoe, skid steer loader, Evan, Matt & George. And they'll be on-site again tomorrow for awhile. Then there's the septic system and the driveway yet to come. Maybe I'll have to actually finish the basement and set up the "Taplin Tomb" so they can stay over for all the other geo-mulching schemes I come up with.

Kidding aside, thanks to George, we now have a Snappy on our well, a water line connecting it to the basement, and conduit laid in for the power supply. Also, the Taplins collectively worked to backfill "the ugliest hole they ever dug" and, tomorrow, will trench in the Hydro line from the pole to where it will enter the house, complete the backfill of the garage pad area and the house perimeter. But they really do good work, and they consider the best interests of their customers.

And, of course, they'll leave it to me figure out what to do with the 70 or so truckloads of sand they'll leave out in the field.

I've really enjoyed getting to know George. We share similar views on the intrusion of government into all aspects of citizens' lives, on the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that ongoing legislation tends to convey the message that we are incapable of minding our own affairs without the omnipresence and enforcement of Big-Brother.



On other fronts, while I played gopher today, the Brothers Rempel continued to truss up the main floor. By week's end, we'll likely have some sheeting down as well.

Before heading out to the site this morning, I picked up a packer at Moxley's, a Winnipeg rental institution. I've been a customer there since the early '70s. Mr. Moxley, the founder, is still in occasionally, but his son, David. is the face of the place now. Then on to Prime Fasteners to drop Davis' Paslode Impulse Nailer off for repair. Then next door to Nedco to pick up the 43 meters of SE 2/0 cable for our underground Hydro supply. Finally, to Emco to pick up the pipe and Snappy for the well.

Unfortunately, we discovered that the shipper had loaded the wrong water pipe in my trailer despite having notated the information before heading to the warehouse. So, back to Winnipeg to drop off the pipe and on to pick up somemore Platon waterproof wrapping for the basement.

I returned just before 1 p.m. and just as the temperatures began to soar and the wind dropped. Everyone continued to work, but the pace was moderated by the heat By 6, we'd had enough. More backfilling and trussing tomorrow.

Thanks for lending me your fellas, Marie.