The north side is shingled to up past the north gable and the north gable itself is shingled, including the top peak venting. The staging and anchor lines are in place for Don's crew to to the top section.
At mid September Angara has roof trusses in place. Holy moly that's a long way up there with all those openings. Maybe this 12-12 pitch roof idea was not such a good one (for snow shedding maybe but challenging to work on).
August 22 and reassembly is done. This includes Ronn's final lag bolting and adjustments for the ridgepole alignment, which he did on August 21 after the crew and crane had left. The house, Angara, is far more majestic and grand than I had planned (solid and practical was my objective). Somehow she took on a life of her own and with Ronn's artistic hand, she has emerged rather like a phoenix rising. Thank you to everyone who has helped so far.
Looking out over Lake Duborne before the crane brings us down. This is the end of reassembly on day three, just as sunset approaches. The view from the loft will not look out quite this far, so this is the time to savour the moment.
Here is a special arch shaped log to form the eyebrow for the south side porch roof. This proved to be challenging to incorporate into the roof but is a good idea to ensure that rain and snow are shed away from the door and so that snow does not accumulate there between the two south facing gables. This was Ronn's design concept and it really adds to the character of the house.
The column is carefully aligned for support for the king truss which will be set in place, centered above this column.
The king truss support column is flown in with "arms" intact. We all resisted the engineer's view that this column was required, but having to keep moving with the schedule we accepted the idea. In order to make it more palatable, Ronn selected a log with lots of character (the arms). This way we could all live with the requirement. Note from Catherine - the answer is NO, the arms will not be used to hang moose and deer carcasses in hunting season....
The eighth round is done and now we are starting to position summer beams and other floor beams for the loft.
Catherine having coffee on the porch, first time of many. This is how we started day two, another excellent weather day.
Pretty good progress for day one. We were able to get the seventh round in place to lock in the island walls between windows. A pretty full day considering we did not start until noon when the crane and logs arrived and were ready to go.
Ken's done unloading trucks for now and is working with Ronn on positioning logs. Ken is a very talented logbuilder and has a terrific ability to work out problems and calculations in his head, plus he's really good at working in high spots. Ken was also very patient about explaining the process when I badgered him with questions all day long.
Frank has to be the most talented crane operator that I've seen. When he says that you are as safe in his hands as being in your mother's arms - he's absolutely correct. Frank seems to know where you want a log positioned even before you know AND even if he is out of direct visual contact with you. Frank has other talents too which you'll see as the project continues.
Bob taking a break on the north side in what will be the kitchen window. Beautiful sunny day, we were blessed with clear weather for all three days of reassembly.
Ronn and Scott are positioning the east wall and you can see the grey foam on the curved joint at the bottom of the log in the air. The scribed groove at the bottom of each log is also packed with borated sheep's wool (harken's back to my sheep farming and hand spinning days in the 80's and 90's.
Here is Scott positioning logs on the first day. He was there for the two and a half days of site reassembly and he sure worked hard. Scott is a student who spent the summer doing quite a bit of work on the log building at Ronn's log yard. Great work Scott.
We continue to unload - here is the second Reghold truck. Note the detailed paint job on the tractor, this required attention on our part to brush our our long private lane to be sure it was not scratched.
Hug and smooch your log builder often to keep spirits up, resolve issues and maintain harmony. Make sure you don't catch your log builder off guard or this formula could backfire! Note that the white Stetson is an ANSI rated completely legitimate hard hat.
Ronn and Scott are in the background of the initial rounds, the house starts to take shape. The first rounds were a little slow going up in order to be perfectly squared and so that the holes for wiring could be drilled through to the basement and the electrical fish wire could be pulled down. Not the coded markers on each log and the nice shaping on every joint.
Here is Bob using the "wicked witch of the west" mirror to line up the first round log position under Ronn's watchful eye.
One log house loaded all on to two trucks, here we are starting the unloading. All of the logs are letter-number coded for reassembly.
We start by flying out the gable ends that Don's crew have assembled in advance on the subfloor surface.
Now it is mid August and we have the logs disassembled at Ronn's log yard and put on to two trucks - but to start the operation we need a crane. Ace crane operator Frank Smith from Sterling Crane arrived on August 18 at the Blind River site with a 30 ton rough terrain Tadano. We learn as the reassembly goes on that we could not have found a more talented crane operator than Frank when it comes to log house construction (or likely just about any other crane manouver).
We're up to July at site prep and now the subfloor is in. Terry, Jim and Chris are "testing" it. Jim is sitting about where the front door will be facing south. At Robin and Don's suggestion, we go with subfloor sitting on top of the foundation wall and we're using the OSB type "silent" trusses. Floor is topped with plywood sheeting painted by Dick Horton's Painting. This painted floor could be with us for a number of years yet and it will see lots of rain before it gets closed in with a roof in the fall....meaning November....but hold on as there is lots more before we get to that point.
Here is the concrete for the floor coming in by bucket load from the concrete truck. Note the insulated floor, should help with those winters that ignore global warming effects.
Here's the long reach to get concrete into those tricky spots inside....
