Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Our Building Story Part 3: Finishing Up Our Second Season

Shortly after our July work trip where we put our house up in just a couple weeks, we discovered that we were expecting our 8th child. By the beginning of August, I was totally bedridden with morning sickness. Our oldest daughter was 17 at the time and she took over the household responsibilities with gusto - and did an excellent job. It was not what we had planned our would have chosen for our lives at the time, but we are so thankful for our youngest little girl who joined our family early the next spring. 
My illness of course effected how much we could work on our house. It ended up that Steve and the boys would make one more trip that fall to side and finish the outside, but we kept dreaming and planning what next year would hold. 

We had ideas of using as many resources on our land as possible in the building of our home. We unfortunately did not have any old stands of timber on our property - it was mostly pasture with some small trees and scrub.
We did discover that some of that willow scrub was diamond willow and could be used to make beautiful furniture and small log projects.

This is what the willow looks like live - and the diamond shaped knots we were looking for. 


And this is a peeled stick with just the dead wood around the know still covered.


And here is a finished stick with the knots cleaned out and a light clear coat put on.

Our goal was to make our stair railings out of the diamond willow as well as some furniture.
This is what our stairs look like. Steve made them in his wood shop over the winter and before our house was even put up! Again his engineering skills are AMAZING. He built these before the house existed and everything fit PERFECTLY!



So Steve and our boys made one more trip up to work in the 2011 season. 
They were able to put the siding on the house as well as all the fascia and soffits. This was a huge morale  boost for us. 




Steve also threw on some temporary OSB skirting around the bottom of the cabin to keep snow from drifting under the building over the winter. We planned on putting some proper treated and insulated skirting on later.




We had colour matched the paint for our outhouse (and other outbuildings) to match the siding. 


That was the end of our 2011 season. 
End of Part 3 of Our Building Story
To be continued....





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