September: Metal, wood, and polycarbonate, oh my!

The kids had a blast making forts in over a dozen places (just counting the outdoor ones) this summer. Here, they've taken the protective black plastic that the ICF blocks were shipped with and created a space right next to the driveway. 


September 4: Our roof metal arrived! It looks like almost nothing here. But it was 32 3'x21' sheets and covered the whole house. "Burnished slate" color.

First we had to finish sheeting the roof with 1/2" OSB, and then apply underlayment.

....AND install drip edge on the eves so the metal roof sheets could overlap and shed water.



Without any machinery to help with this one, we used scaffolding, leather gloves, a fleece blanket and a pool noodle to get each metal sheet on the roof. We would carry it from the pile together and set Randy's end on the second platform of the scaffold. Then I would hold it while Randy climbed onto that platform and lift his end to the highest platform, which had a blanket wrapped around it to protect the metal from scratches while I pushed the whole thing up from the ground to get it on the pool noodle that we had taped to the edge of the roof (also for protection from scratches). While I held it there, Randy would get over to the ladder and onto the roof and grab the end and pull the whole sheet (while I pushed as far as I could reach) and carry it to where it needed to be. Then I would grab a piece of specially-shaped foam with adhesive on it and climb through an upstairs window onto the scaffold and stick my foam piece to the edge of the roof on the drip edge piece, upon which the end of the next metal sheet would rest. Those pieces of foam keep rain from going in those "ribs" of the sheets. I would also put a row of screws in the metal that was on the eve while I stood on the scaffold, so that Randy didn't have to do it from above. :D Each sheet weighed around 50 pounds (total guess) but they were just awkward and the wind liked to manipulate them as we worked. We did choose calm days to do this, but even a 5mph "gust" can throw you off. 

While we roofed, our friend's dump truck and driver kept bringing piles of gravel, and we just had him dump around the pile of roof metal, because... we weren't about to move it out of the way, still having over 1000 pounds left on the pile.

September 6: The sheets are all on the roof, and now it's capping time! There's special open-weave foam that gets squished between the actual ridge cap and the metal sheets, that allows ventilation while not allowing rain.

Metal roof (sort of) done! (Later, it was more edge pieces and even later, soffit and facia. That's still not done.)

September 7: Inside, there was some finalizing of 2x4 bracing in the trusses. Teddy helped.

Also, sheeting the gable ends and applying housewrap, which will protect until siding can be applied. Some friends of ours lived without siding for years and the housewrap does fine. It's just not pretty.

September 11: For our 9th anniversary, we built some interior walls! The one on the floor is the western master bedroom wall, with the main door opening, closet opening, and bathroom door opening, ready to be raised.

September 18: Handsome little dude building his own little house out of scraps again! 

September 19: Our last house was really lacking on storage space, so we put the extra effort into using every bit of "dead" space that we could. This is a space over the stairs. I'm thinking school and craft supplies, maybe. Also great for hide and seek.

September 22: It's funny how last summer, while we built a pole barn, we didn't make it to Crosby for mountain biking the whole season. And this summer we made it 4 times?? Taking those Sundays off of work was a great idea.

September 23: Halfway across that beautiful piece of land next door was a prime viewing spot for the construction project that started up - Essentia Health is building a new clinic on our street. 

September 25: At the same time, we had Daddy using a smaller machine to dig the trench for electric and natural gas from pole barn to house. Andrew liked riding along. 


 September 27: Building what we call "light walls" in the south basement wall. Multiple sheets of corrugated polycarbonate sheets will allow light and heat in, but the R-value is much higher than a standard window (~R12 rather than R3). We also had some small double-hung windows that cleaned up very nicely that we put in here, for viewing and venting. The space inside this area is kind of a shallow room/entry, that will heat up quickly on a sunny winter day, and with large grates in the ceiling, that hot air can flow through the floor trusses and warm the upstairs floor. In theory. If it doesn't work or we don't like it, it's easy to take out and replace with real windows. But I'm optimistically excited for growing edible (and not) things in that warm sunny area!


September 28: Oma and Opa come again to help! Yaaaaay!

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