NEW DUNBURY

The delays are over and the roof is going on. The bio foam guys were in yesterday to spray the insulation. I got to watch a little. It’s really kind of strange to see the stuff expand the way it does. I got a little cheesy video of it, but it is really too small to get the effect.

As the guy was spraying the back, the regular crew was starting in on laying plywood and roofing felt. Today (about noon) they’ve got most of the north side in wood and are following up with the felt. There’s a good chance the whole roof will be done by close of play tomorrow. We may then get the shinglers out on Tuesday next (skipping Monday for the holiday). It’s time to make the final decision on the gutters and downspouts.

One thing that got changed is that the plan to use the ceiling boards to be the under-soffit is in the trash can. The boards took some wet in last week’s and weekend’s storms, and warped more than anybody was comfortable with. So that time and materials savings is history. We’ll be going with a more standard soffiting.

While the regular crew was waiting for the first half of the roof to set, they apparently filled their idle hours with doing a bit more of the interior wall framing and starting the caulking of the studs as well as the window and door framing.

Inside it’s really starting to look like a house. The sense of space with the roof on is really different, even more of a jump than having the tarp stretched over the whole thing. Exciting!

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New postings in the “filling the frame” (including the promised load lifter in action) and “wildlife” galleries.

Some of the wildlife shots aren’t the best, but they do document the species.

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Figures, doesn’t it? We get to roofing and need clear weather, and we get the rainest, most overcast, dreariest week of the summer.

Oh, and a tree branch fell on the van during a thunderstorm and cracked the windshield.

Anyway, all the precip means the guys are working a little extra this week and the electricians and insulators are rescheduled for Monday and Tuesday next week, respectively. While waiting for it to clear yesterday, the guys started on an interior wall. Most of the wall between the master bath and the powder room & “closet” is up.

Most of the ceiling boards are up as well. Looking good. It gives a quite different feel to the place with a “roof” on the timbers.

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Last week, on exiting the driveway, I spotted an all-black critter down the road a piece. It was just a black, moving blob headed away from me until it left the road and headed into the brush. It was bigger than a house cat, with slightly different proportions and a long, full tail.

My first thought was a fisher, a member of the marten family. Think weasel on steroids. They range south down to North Carolina, have long, full tails, are bigger than house cats, and can be all black.

This morning I saw some deer at almost the same spot and realized the critter was even larger than I had thought.

This afternoon, Liz spoke with our mail delivery person who said that she has seen a “panther” in the area. All black.

Perhaps we dismissed the mountain lion reports too quickly.

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Yes, indeed it is. Today the first of the ceiling boards went up. They’ll be the most interior layer of the roof. The north half of the westernmost bay is covered. The boys have a new gizmo on site to help: a platform lifter. I’ll try to catch it in action in the next day or so.

These boards will also make the underside of the roof extension (over the sides of the house). Inside they’ll be oiled. Outside they’ll be polyurethaned to seal them from moisture and such.

The window situation on the other end of the house was corrected last Thursday. Gotta love same day service.

Today Michael and I discussed placement of various holes in the house, such as range hood vents, dryer vents, boiler vents, fireplace flues, and kitchen vent pipes. The last is the one that will call for some tweaks. We’ll be adding a pair of stem walls to the loft, flanking the ones for the window seat. This will give the vent pipe a wall to climb to reach the roof without going through the timbers. Always good to keep a plumber away from your timbers, I say.

In the future, we’ll be fretting about just how sanded we want the edges of the timbers. JUst one more among the billions and billions of decisions to make.

The bid on revising the HVAC system is theoretically in, but we haven’t seen it yet. We have learned than it takes a minimum of 10 gallons per minute form a well to make vertical pipes reasonable. Horozontal pipes would necessitate more clearing, maybe a lot. Lucky our well came in at 10, isn’t it? It may not matter, of course, as the bid might be too high anyway.

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