Framing the walls

The challenge of the week has been putting my odd windows that I found in various shops into my existing plans.  While I really like many of them, some of them have to be left out due to overenthusiastic procurement.  Sigh. 

Last week I laid out my walls, and this weekend my friend Wendy, an experienced builder, and Max, a young friend willing to try anything, helped me put up my frame.  With rain in the forecast for tomorrow, I will be working on getting the house covered tonight.  I should be sheathed in by next week, and water-resistant, but until then, it's a little stressful.

Trailer with sub floor down under the tent

moved outside to build the walls, since the tent was too short 

first wall framed up

bracing the first long wall

building the second long wall

tada!

Logging and milling wood for the house

I had a bit of a break during the holidays while I searched for windows and doors, so we did some logging and milled wood for the house. 

the details

My dad’s home is on an old cattle and sheep ranch in Northern California.  When the land was occupied by native Californians, they managed their land for oak abundance, and acorns were a staple food.  The Masut, Yuki and Pomo tribes in the region burned the land regularly to prevent the Douglas firs from dominating the forests, to reduce the risk of larger fires, and to promote native bunch grasses and other useful plant abundance.  In the mid 1800’s settlers from the US came in and began logging, and grazing cattle and sheep.  At first, some of the new settlers continued the controlled burn tradition, but as the native population was increasingly pushed off of the land (euphemistically put), more large ranches were established, and the tradition was abandoned.  The 20th century practice of intensive fire suppression decreased fire frequency in the region considerably, as Americans came to view fire as an enemy of forests.  For a good read on how fire suppression really came into play in our forests, check out Timothy Egan's book, the Big Burn.

In the 1960s, shortly before the ranch was subdivided into smaller properties, my father's property was logged extensively.  When we arrived in 1976, the large firs had been largely removed, and young ones were sprouting up everywhere. The big old oaks still dominated our north slope home, but in the last 40 years, the Doug firs have taken over the forest.  My father has been thinning them for firewood, milling, and just taking out the little ones, but it’s a large task.    There are thousands of fir saplings, and hundreds upon hundreds of 30-60 year old trees where there used to be widely spaced large firs.

Small preventative fires for the last 100 years would have been more effective at killing the small trees before they were established.  Now, the forest is thick with small firs, and there are large thickets of saplings that will act as a fuel ladder to the upper canopy in a fire, risking a much larger conflagration.  It’s not easy to manage with fire anymore. 

The long and short of it (for this story) is that there’re plenty of small fir trees for me cut down for wood.  A couple of weeks ago we went and took a few down, and I peeled the bark from the logs, and we milled up half rounds for my loft rafter

This tree is a bit bigger than most of the ones you would want to thin out, but was damaged a few years ago by bulldozers cutting a fire line around the house (the fires came within 1/2 miles from the door)

Using the "mule" to drag logs to the mill site

Since I want to use these logs as half rounds for my loft rafters, I peeled them before milling them to size.

Rafter logs peeled and ready to mill

Dad getting the log set to mill

Milling up a 4 by 4 with extra logs

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Unfortunately, I can’t mill all of my wood for the house this way, much as I’d like to, because the wood would require time in a kiln, or time to dry and season so it wouldn’t twist as it dried in my house, warping my frame.    Next time!