Started into creating the wall finishes today... exciting stuff. First part of the day was finishing the retaining wall forms and forming the edges of the door openings. There was a lot of precision chainsaw work today... not the most ideal tool for the job, but it's what I have available, so I'm making it work... and it's a good opportunity to gain some new skills!

Ripping to a line with a chainsaw. I wouldn't have thought this was possible if I hadn't watched some crazy-skilled guys in the Philippines (via YouTube) free-hand milling beautiful lumber with a chainsaw like it's no big deal. I copied their technique, and amazingly enough it worked out just fine with a little practice. 

Here's the board from the previous photo installed in the retaining wall form. It's the narrower, slightly wedge-shaped one in the middle of the photo. Fits just fine!

I bought a dutch oven today. I had never actually used one of these before, and was pleasantly surprised at how well it cooked a pot full of food with just a handful of briquettes. 

Chicken, potatoes, and wild onions... this smelled heavenly when I opened the lid to take a look.

I'll definitely have to borrow a generator big-enough to run my air compressor and nail gun. Working around the rebar and finish-nailing these little boards on by hand got very tedious, very quickly.

...but it was well worth the tedious work to get a peek of the finished form pattern. This is going to look awesome when it's cast in concrete!

One interesting side-note: the physical changes from doing this amount of work have been a little startling. I have lost four inches around my waist in four weeks, while eating all I can fit into my stomach... and at the same time I have gained about three pounds of body-weight. I've been lifting weights off and on for the better part of 20 years, and I've never seen these kinds of changes, this quickly, in the gym. Hard, sustained physical work can work wonders if you're getting a little soft around the middle!

ready to get to work...

I've been waiting all week for this...I'm ready to get some work done! Aside from working at my day job, I've spent this week planning the form-work for the concrete walls. I've settled on a form-tie system consisting of all-thread rod, washers, hex-nuts, and tack-welds. I'm going to return the pre-fab Simpson form ties because they just won't work with my construction style. In the spirit of keepin'-it-real... I'm working with base ingredients here... no proprietary crap is going to contaminate my authentic house.

Form trial run:

...this is a negative of the concrete work... I think it's going to be awesome!

End-grain shot of six 10-ounce silver bars... cashing in some precious-metal investments at the wrong time (way, WAY down from where I bought it). I consoled myself with the thought that, if I had kept these in cash form, they would have been spent long before now. Even selling at a loss, I'm ahead of my paycheck-to-paycheck habits... yay! ...but, it was hard to let go of these; precious metals in your hand develop a severe sentimental attachment... but I have more sentimental attachment to our house, so... goodbye and safe travels!!! 

The reality of an artsy-board-form finish... lots and lots of table-saw-time... ripping and ripping and ripping... And this is just scratching the surface. I console myself by saying, "this is one more surface that I won't have to paint." (I absolutely HATE painting!)

HAPPY FRIDAY!!

I got in a nice full day of work at the property today. By the end of the day, I had just about all of the form boards in place for the inside of the concrete stem-walls and the air face of the retaining wall. I would have finished the rest of the retaining wall forms, but... I ran out of nails!

In the process of digging some form boards out of the bottom of the pile, I took a minute to admire this beam. It's a 24-foot 6x12 that's going to support the center of the second floor. It's going to be very visible and a center-piece of the design. I got lucky and was able to pick this one out of a freshly-opened unit at the lumber yard. Straight, tight grain, and as close to clear as lumber gets these days, especially in a longer piece. This was a major score!

About an hour into the work day. Setting these boards got a lot more interesting when the forms got above my head height. 

I came across this gem in my rafter pile. This is supposed to be "#1 and better", and doesn't leave me brimming with confidence in the lumber graders.

I got almost all of the form boards in place for the inside of the stem-walls and air-face of the retaining wall. Also built the scaffold to give a working surface during the concrete pour. The greenery in the foreground is a bit of dinner shrapnel... wild onions to go with steaks on the grill (Thanks Shawna!). 

End-of-the-day progress shot from the usual spot up the hill. I am feeling more and more like I know where every piece of this house goes; it's just a matter of putting each of them in place.

It was a bit of a gloomy day today; it started off with a good rain in the morning, then was threatening to rain for the rest of the day. Between sleeping in, the rain, and Coral's roller skating this evening, I only got in a half-day of work. Good progress despite the short day.

Took a few minutes before starting work to cut a couple of Swedish torches. This day needed an infusion of cheer. Tangent: I am loving using my chainsaw in this building project. ...one of my quirks is that I thrive on doing things that others tell me I can't do. When I say I'm going to rip a 2x4 in half to form the recesses for the garage doors and Danny the slab-finishing-guy says "good luck"... I say "thank you" and get to ripping. (it turned out fine, five minutes before the concrete truck arrived.) ...when I say I'm going to rip some form stakes with my chainsaw, and a buddy says... WTF? ...NO. ...I say "look... it's done!!!" ...and so. it. is. done. The chainsaw is an awesome tool in a steady hand. ...and mine is getting steadier by the day. Booyah!!!

Hey, it worked! A little bit of fire helped dispel the gloom and turned the mood around immediately. The Toadies played a central role in my internal sound-track today: Burn

View from the back side of the retaining wall. I got about half of the form boards for this face of the wall in place today.

I got all of the form boards in place for two of the low walls. I'm saving the front wall for last so I don't have to carry all of the retaining wall form boards over a three-foot obstacle. Wet 24-foot two-by-eights are a bit of a handful even without the obstacle!

Up-the-hill progress shot. I'm already appreciating being out of the dirt and working on a nice level slab!

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Here's a little update on Diablo: Luis is churning out some beautiful lumber... on a roll now! He's into a couple of very solid pieces, and the results are beautiful... eye candy:

...the *awesome* stack is growing rapidly!

...fresh off of the mill. This is good stuff!!!

Luis has a knack for leaving his job-site in a very aesthetically-pleasing condition at the end of the day. I appreciate that, and it brings me more joy than it probably should.

No building this week, just the mundane task of stopping by daily to throw some water on the slab so it cures properly, but here's an update just for funsies!

I have all sorts of awesome ideas floating around in my head, and I'm going to throw them out there just for fun. ...sort of like throwing the gauntlet down on myself... a fight to the death!!! ...two Nathans enter ...one Nathan leaves!!! (...like Thunderdome, but more Gemini).

...anyway, here's my vision for my dream-garage, or at least a rendering of the finish-scheme:

Google Sketchup for the win! This program has been awesome... lets me design and build my project virtually, and make all of my mistakes virtually before they cost me any real money. Good stuff!

The downside of a free blogging platform: you can't rotate a f***ing image! ...I had to re-take this one with it hanging on the wall so my smart-phone would know which way was up. Even rotating and saving the image and re-uploading wouldn't work; blogger.com somehow felt that readers should still have to tilt their heads to the right to view this one. 

Lumber-pile progress... working through the schwag. The good stuff is yet to come!!! (and this stuff is pretty good anyway...)

Lumber package delivered on Friday... a house in compressed form. Now I just have to assemble it. (Just!) I got the 6x8 near the the right of this photo to make the garage door headers, but that is such a nice piece of tight-grain quarter-sawn timber that I'm trying to find an exposed use for it. I can laminate a few 2x8 boards to make headers that are going to be hidden in a wall...

Second stack of lumber. This is the really-good stuff.

Money shot. This is old-growth redwood lumber at $0.50 per board foot... a 90% discount over retail prices for absolutely beautiful finish lumber... finally a win! (getting ready to sell a couple hundred ounces of silver at a 50% loss to cover this, but still ahead even considering the metals-market loss ...got to keep smiling somehow :-)

OK... now it's time to build this!!!

My blisters have blisters on them... even Chuck Norris would be tired after a day like this.

This was an immense day of work, and I'm completely zonked. A flat and smooth slab looks so simple when you walk onto it, but I have a new appreciation for the amount of work that goes into creating that deceptively-simple surface. There turned out to be a lot of action on the property today; in addition to the hectic atmosphere of a concrete pour, the lumber mill guy showed up and started to work on Diablo.

To fill the obligatory last-minute-rush slot, I noticed on Friday that my stem-wall rebar position would force me into an awkward transition at the bottom of the concrete stem-walls, where I would have a thin sliver of concrete over the foundation that would crack and chip off later. So... the solution was to untie all of the stem-wall steel (not the big retaining wall steel), and move it 1.5 inches toward the center of the slab. I started at 5PM, and was tying the last piece in place just as the last rays of daylight surrendered to night.

Screed boards set and leveled, screeds built, and all is ready to go!

The first 9-yard load got us this far. The retaining wall footing ate up a LOT of concrete.

While we were working on the second truck, Luis-the-lumber-mill-guy showed up and started work on Diablo. 

Luis found a really nice 8" bolt inside the first piece of Diablo. The 1x8 boards from this one turned out beautiful!

Some of my future siding boards!

Finished with the pour, and starting to float the rest of the slab. This foundation and slab turned out to be a hair over 20 yards. two 9-yard trucks and a 3-yard cleanup load... if you're paying attention and counting, you know that means we had to dump almost a yard of concrete as waste. ...but Luis noticed what was happening and offered to put the bucket on his tractor and move the pile of concrete to a mud-hole in my driveway. I've lucked out big-time with the contractors I've hired so far: all very honest, fair, hard-working, and talented people.

Veggies and tri-tip: part of my thank-you to the two guys from work who volunteered to help me (the other part of the thank-you is a day of hard labor on a project for each of them). I didn't get a picture of the tri-tip, but just use your imagination: it was awesome.

Finished troweling the slab. Just when I thought the hard work was almost over, Danny-the-slab-guy handed me a trowel and asked "have you ever used one of these?" ...I hadn't, but I learned quickly enough to earn a "looks pretty good" from a guy who takes a lot of pride in his work and doesn't hand out complements lightly.

My family stopped by as I was stripping the forms at the end of the day, to see the progress and play outside... I can't wait to live here... good times! (Thanks to Shawna for help with the cleanup and nail-hazard-removal... you came along just when I wanted to curl up in the fetal position and sleep for a week!)

No photos today... just setting the stage for work to come. My first line of labor for the slab pour fell through, but the backup crew is coming through strong. I have a couple of guys willing to bust ass with me and a hired slab-finisher to get this job done. ...already looking foreword to building the concrete walls!

Tomorrow is a full day of milling Diablo and getting the concrete forms ready for Saturday. Getting a little excited now...!!!