Drywall, the necessary evil!

Operating crane from 2nd floor window

This is cheating!

 Its begun, the delivery and hanging of the only product that can take a nice clean home and turn it into a white-dust covered mess! I paid for extra labor to help hand up the 4x12 sheets to the second level but they didn't show! Thankfully the truck driver who also operates the crane looked at my loft window and realized they could boom to it and pull the sheets through it. How slick it was! I hired a helper to hang the larger sheets with the understanding I would finish the rest. It proved to be a wise decision. But as with this entire project, nothing was normal, easy or simple. Scribing to the log wall proved to be tedious though I have gotten better at it. My childhood protractor was too small so I made one out of construction pencils. I'd scribe onto a piece of cardboard, cut the pattern, fit it, make adjustments to it then place it on the sheetrock. The Rotozip proved to be a great pattern cutter. We'd clean up the cut with a course radius file then test fit it....sometimes 4 times! Caulking will be key in these areas..ha! I'll admit one error, that is that I hung the doors first. For the life of me I couldn't recall the order of things til one day when I was prepping for drywall. Then it dawned on me that I goofed. Its been only a minor inconvenience though as the rotary cutoff tools makes for quick zipping of the drywall. Other notable accomplishments are: flooring has been selected and ordered, some lighting was purchased and we've decided to install our smaller wood stove currently heating our Yurt. The log home has impressed us with its consistent temperature even without a heat source. We feel this smaller stove will serve our needs til we can afford a nicer one.

Scribing and the tools to do it

Scribed wall

The work zone

Cool lighting effects upstairs

Chinking Complete!

The LAST nail!

Wow, what a time to celebrate! I found myself cleaning up tools in the dark with a headlamp on last night, determined to finish the task. It can be said that one individual can chink an entire 2,100 s.f. home with determination, a strong back and the desire to see it done! Here's some numbers that are both frightening and awesome. Frightening because I mixed all this and awesome because it was inexpensive as compared to synthetic chinking material at $250 a bucket!

Total chinking (inside and outside of home) cost: $400
Bags of Portland Cement = 20
Lime = 6
Sand = Lots of wheelbarrows. About $70 worth which is roughly 5,000 lbs of washed sand.
Each bag of cement makes about 6-7 batches of compound so I hauled 120-140 batches weighing about 80lbs each! If I calculated my time based on yesterdays work, it takes about 7hrs of labor per bag to chink. This is actual chinking, not prep. Prep work ie, insulation, nails and lath takes a LOT longer. I nailed approximately 17,000 nails (I had help on one outside wall) and used 5 sheets of lath. Our logs have character, which also means the gaps can get rather large! Needless to say this was a time consuming part of this log home. Thank God (literally) its done!

Another milestone occurred yesterday, that being our first flushing toilet! I know, to most this isn't reason to celebrate. But when you've lived with a composting toilet for close to 3 years, its a joyous occasion!

Mstr BR corner with gap the size of a CAT

New addition!

Big gap to fill

Rough Electrical and Framing inspections PASSED!

Its been a busy couple of weeks preparing for these inspections and it was worth it. There's an insulation inspection that's required before drywall goes up but it won't be a biggie as only the gable ends get insulation. We now have power and water in to the home. So what am I doing now? CHINKING CHINKING AND MORE CHINKING !! We've had unusually warm weather thats allowing me to continue on the interior chinking. As of today I have the kitchen, master bed and bath left to chink. Maybe 2-3 more days...What a happy moment it'll be when its all done!

Rough plumbing inspection passed!

Pex manifolds in crawlspace

Size 12's plus a shot of the DWV system!

 With a little tenacity and a lot of prayer we passed our rough-in inspection today. I had a lot of fun installing PEX and would highly recommend the manifold system, cinch clamps and pexuniversedotcom!

I've laid what seems like miles of copper in the past, and this pex stuff is slick and fast. Problems? Yep, threaded fittings, almost every one of them. I think the product workmanship is degrading as I've never fought with leaky threaded fittings so much! Most needed both teflon tape and pipe dope in order to seal up. Next time I'd use sweat fittings instead. I admitted to the inspector that though the DWV pipe was holding 5psi just fine, the water side of things was a problem. I was losing a couple pounds in ten minutes...he said "well I know you won't seal up the walls without finding that so good luck" and passed me! He's right, I spent all afternoon spraying fittings, hose and more and finally came to airing up the system to 80psi so I could here the leak. Soapy water wouldn't find it! The faulty fitting was already treated with pipe joint compound but that wasn't enough.
So I'm moving on to the electrical side of things now and leaving the plumbing til final. The master bath custom shower will wait til we're moved in as it'll need tile, glass blocks and other fun things. The upstairs tub with surround will be just fine for a while. Now, just call me Sparky!

Custom shower with remoted valve.

A little of this, a little of that

Chinking operation

Knotty Alder front door with Clavos (nails)

This Pinon had to go!

That's the way it seems to be going as of late. Though I did lose sleep over it, I gave in and let a plumber install the DWV (drain) piping in the home. I've done it all before but decided all the head scratching and numerous trips for supplies coupled with an inspector that will want it to "flow", made for an easier decision. I'm still installing the water side of things and am waiting for PEX supplies to arrive. I admit I'm not the best at multi-tasking when it comes to large projects like this so I put electrical on the back burner until plumbing is completed. Besides, plumbing gets the "right of way" when it comes to piping, walls, crawl space, etc. So what have I been doing? CHINKING! Yep, not what I planned on but the weather has been awesome and we decided it needed to get done before, not after the drywall goes up. It'll be easier to scribe the drywall to the finished wall vs. guessing or chinking up to the drywall. So back to insulation stuffing and nail pounding. Thank you palm nailer! I've been on the chinking kick for 4 days now and have the upstairs completed and am working on the large open living area. I enjoy the chinking but the prep takes a while. And yes, I'm the only one chinking, mixing, climbing scaffolding, etc. but I asked for it to be that way. That way I can only blame myself it it cracks, crumbles or looks like bird poop! Just a note, the interior chinking has yet to show any hairline cracks, unlike the outside. This is awesome as I have no intention of going over it again. Must be because the temperature has maintained at around 50' inside. Oh, but I did have to do some electrical in the log walls. Installed some gray plastic boxes and ran UFB wire. Fortunately the electrical inspector allowed Romex (barely) but was happy to hear I upgraded to direct burial wire. He wants to see 1 1/4" of mortar over the wire. Got it covered!

Upstairs chinking begins

My "flame thrower" heat source at work

Bonus and progress

I failed to update the blog as to what my "bonus" was for getting the outside chinking done by the end of September. Some of my guy friends had their idea of what my "bonus" would be....but they were wrong. Being a dirt bike guy I bought a 2003 Honda CR250 two stroke project bike. Its under a sheet waiting til we move before the project of turning it into a woods racer begins!

Progress has been both slow and fast. When I'm not working I make great strides. We moved from "I'll build our exterior doors" to lets buy them! We have a great supplier in New Mexico that we orderd both a knotty Alder and knotty Pine exterior door. We finished them and will place the hardware today! Next we've been framing up the interior partitions. This is an exciting phase as the large dance floors of each level become rooms! First the main level then upstairs, well, no stairs yet, but up! This hasn't been traditional framing as I know it thanks to the beams downstairs. I've chosen to run some walls up to the base of the 2nd floor and some just to the base of the 6x12 beams. Upstairs we've chosen to have nearly standard 8' walls except above the bathroom which will have 10' walls. We're creating a ceiling over the bathroom and storage above it with short knee walls surrounding it. The closet ceilings will be T&G and the other walls will be capped with some left over spruce. Confusing? You'll get the picture once its done. It'll look awesome.

Doors being finished

Chief Director

Progress!

Upstairs framing

The only hallway type area in the home!

Open loft is my working area

Looking from dining into Mstr BR

Tricky angles and framing

The framing is about complete with one more wall and some drywall nailers to go. Stay tuned!

Exterior chinking completed!

Oh glory day, its done! And I'm a few days ahead of schedule so you know what that means.....Contractor bonus! Yes! But what is it? We'll find out soon.
Meanwhile the last wall was chinked a few days ago and the cleanup was completed today. My next step is the build the exterior door that will be our laundry room door. If it passes the spouses approval then I'll build the front door too. Our third exterior door is a nice full lite door that'll open to the screen porch. So on we go!

East wall done!

Now thats a gap!

Large gap chinked