Michele does some grunt work

Happy after a hard day's work

Ok, so maybe nail guns aren't so bad

This one was a God-send (apologies to Dad for not getting one before asking him to nail up so much of the particle board!), and a testament to how much I am relying on the kindness of others -- this time from someone I haven't even met yet. One of Peter's friends let me borrow the nail gun, and I am using Dan's air compressor -- one of many, many of Dan's tools that are helping to build my little tower.

RIP

Artwork by Michele

Chimney!

Not that I'll even need heat by the time I finally move in, but I love the way the chimney looks. Good thing, too, since it cost a fortune. I was counting on maybe $100. Wrong!

Who doesn't want a green roof?

Lauren and Kai came out to paint the roof (before it went on). Lauren got a small spot of paint on her forehead and Kai made the mistake of teasing her just a little too much. Before the job was done, poor Kai had an even bigger spot to match. (Pics to come. I'm currently between digital cameras and these pics are on the old school camera and waiting to be developed).

Painting the roof proved to be yet another learning opportunity for me. I bought the wrong paint, and some of it didn't dry correctly. Michele and I tried scraping some of the worst places, but I finally decided to go ahead with the second coat and see what happens. I fully expect to be cussing myself in a few years when the paint is all peeling off.

Donovan and Jan come to the rescue

More views (getting tired of waiting for the pics to upload!)

More tomorrow. I'm off to bed.

Trudging on with the osb

knee walls

Framing the roof

Here come the photos

I should never have waited this long to upload the pictures since the last post. Progress had slowed to a glacial pace, and I was losing my enthusiasm. More than once I found myself regretting not buying a house instead of land. But, here I am with my first real inspection virtually under my belt, and I'm ready to go again. To celebrate, I'm going to start wading through all of the great photos that have been sent to me over the past month and a half (I'm currently between digital cameras).

A perfect Mardi Gras!

I passed my framing inspection! Well, "conditionally" passed until I fix a few very, very minor things like adding strap ties to tie the front gable wall to the 2nd floor wall, adding some corner bracing, and putting in a few nails missing from the particle board, and digging 3 of my footers deeper so I hit more solid soil. It was all I could do to stop myself from laughing and asking Stan (the inspector) whether he was serious. I was ready for him to tell me that I had to completely redo a wall or something.

He looked around, prodded a few places, checked some engineering sheets, then gave me the ok.

Happy Mardi Gras!