Re: Halfmoon's journal
Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2016 3:18 pm
THE HOMESTEAD/ACCUMULATION YEARS
BUILDING PROJECTS
We had our matching work schedules, but we were still working 5 nights/week and I was still going to school full time. DH did all of the cooking (he always had and does to this day), took care of the animals, cut firewood and maintained the garden and greenhouse. Of course he was still bored , so he started building stone walls.
Flashback: before we moved into the house, we had it jacked up about 10 feet into the air and braced with wood cribbing. A fearless excavator then drove underneath and pushed out the dirt so we could form and pour a basement. After the house was lowered onto the foundation walls, the excavated dirt was piled up against three sides of the basement. The fourth side was left open so an attached greenhouse could be built. The end result was a house on top of a big pile of dirt and rocks.
We didn’t do most of the skilled labor on this stage of the house. DH helped the carpenter we hired while I dug drainage ditches and laid pipe. I prefer the unexciting, structured tasks like “dig a perfectly straight ditch” to the traumatic ones like “climb across these rafters and lay down glass greenhouse panes without breaking them or yourself.” DH always wants to be working with and learning from any skilled person he can find. He likes to say that he only wants to pay people to do something once, after which he can do it. It’s usually true.
Some photos below (as usual, these are scans of blurry old film photos). We moved in after the basement was poured and before most of the other work was done.
Stone walls DH built while I went to school. He used a tractor for the large ones.
At some point (brain gets fuzzy on timelines), we also had a barn built. Again: DH helped with construction while I did grunt work. DH designed it with Styrofoam insulation between the metal roof and the plywood ceiling to minimize condensation. Like the house, it has a full basement that’s exposed in the back. The upstairs floor is 2x6 car decking on top of 8x12 beams because we wanted to drive our tractor into the top and fill it up with hay bales (still in farmer mode at that point). We intended to keep sheep in the bottom and never did that either. After seeing the finished product, I thought maybe we should move in there and put the animals in the house.
*Note: I could use some advice about the photos. They look (too) huge on my 17" laptop screen but tiny of course on my phone. Should they be smaller?
BUILDING PROJECTS
We had our matching work schedules, but we were still working 5 nights/week and I was still going to school full time. DH did all of the cooking (he always had and does to this day), took care of the animals, cut firewood and maintained the garden and greenhouse. Of course he was still bored , so he started building stone walls.
Flashback: before we moved into the house, we had it jacked up about 10 feet into the air and braced with wood cribbing. A fearless excavator then drove underneath and pushed out the dirt so we could form and pour a basement. After the house was lowered onto the foundation walls, the excavated dirt was piled up against three sides of the basement. The fourth side was left open so an attached greenhouse could be built. The end result was a house on top of a big pile of dirt and rocks.
We didn’t do most of the skilled labor on this stage of the house. DH helped the carpenter we hired while I dug drainage ditches and laid pipe. I prefer the unexciting, structured tasks like “dig a perfectly straight ditch” to the traumatic ones like “climb across these rafters and lay down glass greenhouse panes without breaking them or yourself.” DH always wants to be working with and learning from any skilled person he can find. He likes to say that he only wants to pay people to do something once, after which he can do it. It’s usually true.
Some photos below (as usual, these are scans of blurry old film photos). We moved in after the basement was poured and before most of the other work was done.
Stone walls DH built while I went to school. He used a tractor for the large ones.
At some point (brain gets fuzzy on timelines), we also had a barn built. Again: DH helped with construction while I did grunt work. DH designed it with Styrofoam insulation between the metal roof and the plywood ceiling to minimize condensation. Like the house, it has a full basement that’s exposed in the back. The upstairs floor is 2x6 car decking on top of 8x12 beams because we wanted to drive our tractor into the top and fill it up with hay bales (still in farmer mode at that point). We intended to keep sheep in the bottom and never did that either. After seeing the finished product, I thought maybe we should move in there and put the animals in the house.
*Note: I could use some advice about the photos. They look (too) huge on my 17" laptop screen but tiny of course on my phone. Should they be smaller?