All house soffits complete August 24, 2011

Today we finished the last of the soffits on the house. This is the west side of the house. No more places for birds to roost over the deck. I hired a temp guy today and installation went a lot smoother. It was less work to move scaffolding and much easier handling of the 16' boards. I actually had more than enough boards to finish. The rest will be used for the garage.

Tomorrow morning I will begin installing the trim on the dormers preparing for the siding, which I will pick up tomorrow afternoon. My cousin Jim delivered the first 10 yards of 2" stone to go under the deck and the deck eaves. We planned out where the deck step pads and sidewalk will go, and the placement of the culvert that will handle all the water runoff from the west side of the roof. No more erosion!

Deck soffit progress, August 23, 2011

Today I finished the soffits over the deck on the east side. Working with 16 foot tongue and groove boards alone is proving to be quite a challenge. The straight ones are a challenge, the ones that are severely bowed are impossible to do alone. Tomorrow I will have an assistant to help me out for the day. Did I mention that my other assistant, Jimmy took up Varsity golf while I was away? I already miss him!

The shower is close to completion. A couple more hours when the last bull nose tiles come in will wrap it up. The ceiling is installed and finished in the shower; it will be painted the next day I get Tony back. Tony is ready to complete the final sanding on the bathroom interior and exterior walls. He will then prime the walls and paint them. When he has this completed I will install the mirror over the vanity and install the vanity lights and towel racks.

I have the bathroom and the mechanical room doors in the basement. I will install them when Tony has completed the painting.

This is the west side of the deck. I have installed the soffits around all the lights. Tomorrow we will install all the tongue and groove boards I have left. At this point I will get an exact count of what I need to finish and hand select the boards so I don't have to return any.

This week I also ran a water line to the back of the house. It comes out by the east corner of the walkout basement wall. I probably should have done this sooner, but.......

The next project will be to install siding on the dormers. I have the trim for the dormer corners and windows ready to go. I purchased them last week and they have already been stained.

Return to Montana

I just returned to Montana after spending 3 weeks in Minnesota. My younger sister has been fighting cancer for quite some time and they finally had to stop all treatments as nothing was working. She passed away last Thursday and the funeral was this Tuesday. She will be missed by all of us. She was only 42. She left behind 4 wonderful children ages 15 to 25.

I have rescheduled the electrical inspection for tomorrow the 18th. Then I will finish the soffits and begin the siding. Hopefully I will get my cousin in next week to do the pads for the deck stairs. He will do some leveling with the Bobcat and we will put down plastic and then rock over it to prevent any further erosion from water coming off the roof.

Soffits over deck close to 50% complete July 23, 2011

On the 22nd we finished about 50% of the soffits over the west side deck up to the light cans. I'll check Monday to see if I have to have the wiring inspected before I cover the can wiring up.

Below is the east side soffit progress. It is about 45% completed. I ran out of tongue and groove boards today. I have an order being delivered on Monday the 25th. We will stain them on Monday and continue installing them on Tuesday. My plan is to complete all soffits by Thursday of next week. I will be taking some time off to go back to New Hampshire and spend time with my wife, Betsy the following week. Tony has been on site quite a bit in the last few weeks caulking the seams between the logs with the Log Jam. He should have the outside 100% in another few days of work (when I can get him).

Decking completed July 20, 2011

Today I finished laying down the deck boards. What a relief! I went through 60 pounds of screws in the process. I'll probably build the railing next year. I will have to get a permit and cut some green poles to build it.

I finished wiring in all the lights over the deck today and started installing the soffits. Below is a picture of what we finished today.

This process goes pretty fast. I expect to have the outside portions completed on both

sides of the house by tomorrow night. We have to use the forklift for these portions of the deck soffits. The rest of the soffits will be completed off ladders or scaffolding.

I can see some difficulties scribing and cutting the holes for the can lights.

Decking progress July 18, 2011

Here is the completed east side deck. I finished this before I went into the mountains on the 15th. I started the front deck on the afternoon of the 17th. It looked like I would run out of 2 X 6's. I pulled the extra 16 ft 2 X 6's from the loft that were left over from last year. I purchased 18 more 12 ft 2 X 6's this morning. This should complete the decking.

As I was putting down the decking today I realized I was going to run out of deck screws again. I will need to purchase at least 8 more pounds of screws in the morning if I want to complete the decking tomorrow.

The front deck is coming along very well. Once we are done with the decking, I will install the light cans over the deck and then install the soffits over the deck on both sides.

I should have enough tongue and groove (T&G) boards to complete the soffits. About a third of the T&G I have on hand have been stained and are ready to be installed. Other than a slight problem with the east side TGI's, the soffits should go very fast.

I still have not made up my mind on the color of the siding for the end gables and the dormers. Help!

Recharging in the mountains July 16, 2011

I took a few days off for research. We went into the mountains above Sheridan, MT and saw quite a few different log cabins. Some, like the one I am sitting in front of here were probably built in the late 1800's. Some were built in the early to mid 1900's. A couple were less that 20 years old.

It's interesting to see the different ways they were built. Some have weathered better than others.

We were above the tree lines several times. Here is a picture I took looking across from one mountain to another. We hit a lot of snow in some places. Jim and I tried going across a pass only to be stopped by a field of snow a quarter of a mile wide by at least three miles long. Jim thought it had to be at least 80 feet deep in places.

Time to get back to work!