6.16.2015

Jim's cellphone rang at 7:00 this morning...it was the cold-formed steel place saying that they would be delivering the steel between 8:00 and 8:30.  So Jim got ready quickly, grabbed coffee and an energy bar, and headed out the door.  He kept busy but they didn't come until after 9:30! 

Here's some of our new steel...he got some more studs and then these are more tracks.

While he was waiting and after the steel came, he finished up the shoring posts. 

Because of the rain and the fact that it drips from the beams right to this area, he made really sturdy bases for all of these posts.

 

He also was doing some fine-tuning on the Pex manifold - he added the 5th circuit.

This afternoon, Jim went to Lowe's to talk to his rep and put in a list to get a corporate quote.  This is for our sheathing for the walls and the roof, as well as for the carriage house appliances.  So we'll see what kind of price she comes back with for all that.

It kind of drizzled on and off this afternoon but I went up late in the afternoon and Jim and I worked on staking out the driveway to go to the house.  It's hard to see in this picture, but there is a line of 4 stakes just kind of marking a general area.  Right now, the driveway splits at the top of what we call the mezzanine area - the original driveway continues up to the top of the hill and then there is the driveway to the carriage house.  Our plan is to not use the original driveway up to the top but to cut in a new driveway so that it goes past the side doors of the carriage house (for easy delivery/access) and then continues on up the hill to the back of the house.  We're still thinking of having the garage underneath the house and this would work out.  So obviously just in the planning stages, but by starting to cut the driveway back to the side of the carriage house now, it allows us to use that dirt to finish backfilling the septic system and to be able to grade things better so that we avoid some of the washouts when it rains.  We can use some of the topsoil that we have saved as well as from the new cut to grade over the old original driveway.  At least this gives us something else to work on while we continue to wait for concrete!

The last job of the day was to start fixing the underneath of the Bobcat bucket.  You can see above the black line Jim drew that this area has totally worn away.

Jim ordered a 1/2" thick by 6" wide piece of solid flat steel to replace this area.  So the first step was to cut the old area out.

Continuing to cut....

 

All cut out...he's just scraping some of the edges here.

The new piece fits perfectly!

But still some work to be done...he grinded all the edges to get them ready for welding.

Then power sprayed it all off to get all the dirt off.  By then it was kind of late so he'll leave welding for tomorrow but it's all ready to go!

 

This picture definitely didn't do the scene justice, but we had a couple drizzles and then the skies cleared and the sun came out.  If you look in front of the trees, you can see that we had our own little foggy cloud system on Angel!

 

 

High 76/Low 54