Progress

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted – a little over 3 months.  That’s primarily because there hasn’t been a lot of apparent progress in that time.  Usual summertime vacations for the crew, etc, but also the roof framing is something of a nightmare with over 50 different sections what with all the different roofs, many of them broken up with dormers and other “decorations”.  But the roof is finally coming close to completion, including finally putting the main tower cap in place.  We finally decided that it won’t be too much harder to finish it in place rather than on the ground.  The main thing is we want to get the house dried in.  In the forties this morning – fall, and winter, is a’ comin’ on.

Roof Progress

House Roof

The Sticks and Stones crew have been going full-bore on building the roof for the house the past coupla weeks.  And this is no mean feat.  A couple of months ago I counted up over 50 different roof sections.  And we’ve added a few more since then.  And just Friday, Steve from Streamline and Bruce from S&S tweaked the design again in some fairly major ways.  It’s kinda complicated.

Shown in the pic below is Kenny Huffman, who has definitely received short shrift on this story so far.  Kenny works for Sticks and Stones, and is close to, if not the lead guy behind Bruce.  Kenny used to work with his dad in the family machine shop (Fathers and Sons thread) and is particularly adept at visualizing in 3-D.  This skill has come in particularly handy with the nightmare that is the roof.

Kenny is one of those guys who will do just fine no matter whatever happens with the world because he’s just plain dedicated and capable in making and fixing all kinds of real things.

Roof Framing

Bobcat

Here’s a close-up of the bobcat caught on the game camera.

Bobcat

Recycling

Well, the deer who had been hit by the car didn’t live even 24 hours.  So what to do with him?  We thought about burying him, but decided to deal with it as if we hadn’t intervened.  Brad, one of the lead carpenters on the Sticks and Stones crew is an avid outdoorsman, and he drug the body up into the woods  for it to return to the earth in the way it would if it had died a natural death.  He put a game camera on a nearby tree to record what happens.

The most remarkable picture, perhaps, is of this huge bobcat.  It looks half the size of the deer!

Bobcat

Most all the pictures taken at night were of raccoons.  Several of the pictures had the big cat in them as well.  So for those of you who think that raccoons only eat garbage, bird seed and dog food off your porch, here is documented contrary proof.  The raccoons pretty much only came at night.

Raccoons

And then of course are your usual suspects –

Vulture and Crow

Neighbor's dogs

The dogs drug the carcass out of range of the camera, so we weren’t able to document the rest of the process, where the mice are fed too.

We’ve got several game cameras set up all around the house site to catch 2-legged predators if they just so happen to wander in uninvited when no one else is around.  Just found this week some bear scat near the house – might have to check those cameras to see if we got any pictures of him.  We’ve seen him.

Birds-eye View

Before he left, the crane operator attached a camera to the end of his boom and lifted it up about 90 feet up into the air to take some pictures of the house and garages below.

House from Above

Garage from Above

Even More Timberframe

After the octagon timberframe went up, two more frames went up and in place.  Both of these are heartpine.

First, another level of the tower.

Tower Frame

Tower

Tower in Place

In the front right of the picture above, you can see the pyramid that is to go on top of the tower.  We intended to put it up, but after watching the tower getting taller and taller, we decided the better part of valor was to finish the pyramid and put in place after it’s got roof framing, flared skirt, ox-bow windows, and copper roofing in place, and then lift it up.

Finally, the timberframe roof for the master bedroom went up.

Master Bedroom

Another Octagon Timberframe

Trish and I are still hiding out in the West Indies, waiting for spring to arrive in Floyd, but progress continues. This past week the guys put together another octagon timberframe for the second floor of the “minor tower”. This one, because it is a bit bigger than the ones below, and because the driveway is extremely muddy, had to be put together on site.

Starting Assembly

Finished Assembly

This section is all walnut, cut partly from Crooked River Farm, and partly from neighboring farms. All sustainably harvested, and all produced with local craftsman.  Should be really cool once it’s finished.

In place

From below, the timberframe casts quite an interesting profile on the sky

From Below

Roofing

Vasse just sent me a picture of the copper roofing project.  He says that it’s just him and the roof, and he’s seriously outnumbered.  He’s moving around the corner today, which looks like a bit smoother sailing for a couple of days.

Roof

Power!

Getting the power/phone installed to the house site has been problematic for a whole host of reasons.  But they finally started this week.  Of course we’re going underground with all of it.  Just about exactly a mile.  It’s hard to imagine a worse time of year to be doing this, but the contracting crew was unfazed.  Up on a windy ridge in 20 degree F temps plowing away snow so that you can dig trenches in the frozen ground – just another day on the job.  I love the fine folks in Floyd County.

Putting in Power

Word is we should have power on the site by middle of next week.  That will be a huge relief to the contractor, who has been having to run a really noisy and obnoxious generator for the past year to supply power for tools and lighting.  And one more permanent thing done towards move-in.

Foster Deer

I’ve been meaning to start a wildlife thread on this blog.  We’ve of course got a huge assortment of wildlife at CRF, dozens upon dozens of deer, turkeys all over the place, as well as beavers, bear, racoons, ‘possums, squirrels, chipmonks, mice, coyote, etc.  And the birds are incredible as we are right on that “edge habitat” of woods, pasture and water – herons, ducks, woodpeckers (including pileatted) and dozens of other species abound.  Been snapping pictures every once in a while, just not got around to posting any of them yet.

So will start this section with a young buck we found this morning on the road that was injured and couldn’t stand.  A neighbor, Tammy, and I tried to pick him up and ease him off the road, but his legs just collapsed under him and he could do nothing but  flail around.  So finally picked him up and put him in the truck and took him home and put him in the barn.  He stood for about 30 seconds, took a couple of steps and then collapsed half-way in and halfway out into the feed-trough.  After a couple of hours he managed to climb into it completely and now seems perfectly content.  He’s totally trusting that we are trying to help him – he just sits there calmly while we talk with him and pet him and reassure him.  Put out some water, grain, and alfalfa hay for him, but he seems totally uninterested at this point.  No idea what’s wrong with him yet – perhaps just bruised and banged up a bit?  Time will tell over the next coupla days….

Injured Deer