Changing vistas

Back when we built my studio nine years ago we oriented my windows to the east to take advantage of spectacular views of the mountains. We raised the studio floor elevation by four feet so I could see over a fifteen acre hazelnut orchard. The trees were slowly but surely getting taller every year.

Our friends and family love to tease us because we lived next to the nut farm. We didn't have far to go. But last Friday the tree cutting crews rolled in and started cutting. We thought they were merely trimming and thinning as they do every year but this year things would change dramatically. They are in fact removing all the trees. Our vista will change dramatically in the next week or so.

Life is about constant change. Just as we are building a new house and the landscape surrounding it our neighbors have the right to do new things on their property. It will be interesting to see what unfolds.

-grampa dan

Assembling the pieces of the moose sign.

Today I glued up the many pieces of the moose sign in readiness for the final welding that will happen tomorrow. Then we'll be starting the concrete sculpture and the moose will be looking a whole lot more like a moose.

-grampa dan

Doorway to the future

Today we built the first of the window/door bucks that will act as forms for the concrete walls and also permanent attachment points for the doors and windows. The front door in our new house will be eight feet tall with windows on both sides. The whole assembly will be round with decorative glass and a carved panel on the bottom half of the door. The theme for the door is still under discussion.

The door/window buck is built around the plywood forms we cut and assembled last week. We first welded up a heavy duty steel frame. Then we fastened plywood to the frme and inserted the plywood window shapes. Pressure treated plywood strips were then laminated around the outside to form the buck. The LOGIX ICF forms will be built up around this buck and concrete will be poured inside. Once the concrete is cured the plywood window forms will be removed. The bucks will stay in place and be used to fastened the permanant windows in place. 

We moved the buck from the shop out back to the front of the property in readiness to be lifted onto the foam blocks after the first layer of concrete. The front door buck is heavy but not impossible to lift up by hand with enough help. The front and back window are going to be twice as heavy. I think I'll be calling in my friend who owns a crane truck to help out. Janis gave the doorway to the new house a test drive and declared it PERFECT!

Stay tuned for more...

-grampa dan