This was the garage then (Sept 2003)...

Some materials that we needed elsewhere were placed in the garage in the meantime...

Gary working on the pipes leaving the furnace...At the back part is the oil burner. He was preparing for winter then. He was about to build the furnace room.

The furnace room was done in time for winter. It contains now not only the oil burner but also the tank for the firewood (the furnace), plus our upright freezer in which we stock our year-long supply of beefcuts.

When we finally came here, the roof has been installed. In the past days it had been very hot, but the moment we stepped onto this land, it suddenly became very cold! We had to use several sheets of blankets to keep us warm. During those first few days we had no insulation yet. We only had a makeshift bathroom and toilet, no kitchen sink.

from west...

the back of the house. Two French doors facing the same spot where we plan to place a deck and a pool...one opens up to the master bedroom, the other to the living room...

here is the steel roofing going on...now you can see why everyone calls our house the Red Roof Inn!

roofs all sheathed in & rubber membrane laid in the valleys...gettin there!

more roofs.....(I hate hieghts!)

now we start the roofs...

Going good so far...

Here we are raing the I-beam which supports the garage 2nd floor. This weighed about 2000 lbs and had to be hoisted 14 feet into the air. This tested the maximum capacity of my homemade crane. That is my brother, Shannon, welding it to it's support column.

Here is a view of the 2nd floor joists.

Here I am hoisting the main steel I-beam for the kitchen span.

Here is an inside view of the living room.

Here I am raising the living room west wall...this was tricky, as it weighed about 1000 lbs and was quite flimsy until it was nearly vertical. I used 2 whalers which are not visible to stiffen it.

Here is my "baby" ( a 1958 John Deere 630 tractor) with my homemade crane on it, raising the first wall

This is the "guard shack" where I lived while I was working on the house. Behind it you can see some of the other materials....roofing, vinyl siding...about $30,000 worth! ( You can see why I was sleeping close by...a major theft would have broken me.

This is the pile of building materials (lumber & foam insulation)

This is my dad, and his beloved 1948 Ford truck, with 250 sheets of 1/2" OSB to sheathe the house. I paid $6.47 for this stuff in June of 2003. Currently (June 3, 2004) it is going for $17.85 a sheet!

Now the concrete work has been done, it is time to start building!

This is the main house pad ready to be poured.

This is the radiant heating system manifold assembly being pressure tested before pouring the floor.

This shows the main house foundation work...the grade is levelled, poly is applied, & the 2" foam insulation has been laid down.

This is the REAL Inspector, my cat, Casper! You can see he is running behind, working late at night. So much to inspect, so little time!

This is my daughter, Juliana, inspecting the finish of the garage floor...hope it passes!

This is the garage floor poured & finished...waiting for it to dry now.

This the site with all the fill hauled, levelled, and compacted. Now we start the concrete work...yahoo!

With the rocks & filter fabric laid down, we then hauled in about 500 cu. yds of gravel...then I compacted it with a vibratory roller (not shown) until it was very firm

The first 3 feet of fill was rocks (for drainage), then a layer of filter fabric (to prevent finer material from settling around the rocks, preventing drainage)

This was taken in April of 2003, this is the site leveled and the water pipe from the well buried...next step is to start hauling fill.


This was all that was left of my previous house...here I am cleaning up the site about a month after the fire.