First Floor Framing Fini

We're about 95% finished the first floor framing! Things are going really well, except for the weather. The two weeks before Christmas brought -30˚ C with horrendous windchill. We took the better part of that time off. Everything is harder when you are working in the cold and snow. It's a constant battle to keep your materials and the site clear enough to move around. I wish we had been able to start in August, like I originally planned but you can't have everything.

One thing we have to deal with is the snow plows. The keep on plowing up a big snowbank right across our driveway. I made a friendly little sign that seems to have done the trick. One of our future neighbors, Les, has a quad with a blade attachment and he has been kind enough to level the site for us. I think it's about time to buy a snow blower anyway. Our current place gets these cement-like drifts in the lane and it's almost impossible to clear it with a shovel. We're in the mountains now!

You can see the garage now. It was a son-of-a-&%^$# trying to get that beam up. It's about 17' long, 16" tall, 2" thick and weighs about 100lbs. Oh yeah, there are two of them. The garage is a little taller than average, just because of the way the site slopes. More room for bikes and boats. It's going to be a great little workshop area.

The roof trusses are supposed to arrive around January 9th and the metal roofing will be here around the same time. We decided that even though metal is about 50% more, it wasn't astronomical and it should last until long after we are gone. The windows are going to be here around the 21st. I'm a little ticked at Durabuilt because they won't give us an on-site date. They keep saying, "oh, in manufacturing, we can't predict problems that might come up so we can't commit to a date". Working in manufacturing myself, I know that's BS. In fact, they're one of the only manufacturers I know that seems unwilling to give a date. Regardless of all that, we're on track to have the framing completed and inspected by the end of January, I would say. Then we're into electrical and plumbing. Can't wait!

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