Last week we were back to work and we got a lot done. The three second floor walls are pretty much all cut and the west gable wall is almost ready to be raised.

(Above) Eric is the latest member of the “team”. John D put me in touch with him. Eric is a landscaper and has dumped off several truck loads of leaves to get our compost pile started. Now that it is winter he has been making time to help out with construction as well. Coincidentally, he also built his own house without having previous experience! Eric’s help couldn’t have come at a better time. Thom and John S. have both finally found jobs (yay!) and John D has moved to Florida. In this picture you can see the diagonal floor T&G spruce boards that will be our finish floor. Also, in the lower right hand corner is the west gable wall ready to be assembled.

The south side of the house where most of the wall cutting has been occuring. You can see the East gable wall pile in the lower right corner of the picture.

We were able to cut the 22' long top plates for the north side of the gable walls out of one of the 25' long concrete form boards. Cutting such a long board made me somewhat nervous. No room for error here; all of the other 25 footers had been cut into smaller pieces.