The Continuing Story of the Shack

What a life... I woke up from a half-hour nap yesterday afternoon to my dad saying, "Hey Jonas, want to come help move a bathtub?" Only at the Shack.

Of course, I did go help move the bathtub, and then a whole bunch of pipes.

The next morning, as I'm eating breakfast, Dad walks by the kitchen counter carrying a toilet bowl (new, in a box). On his next trip by he's got a toilet tank with him! This, of course, can only mean one thing: Phase One is arriving at the plumbing stage.

The last few days have been all about bathtubs, showers, etc. Which to buy? Where to put them? Where to make them drain since apparently the floor joists are all exactly where Dad wanted to put the drains! Oh no! An exciting development from today was the news that we can apparently afford a fancy steam-shower type thing for the upstairs bathroom. I'm sure this will do wonders for our health, or something.

In other news, the Dank remains dank. The Shack remains on the brink of imploding. The Shack Nights tally is ever increasing. The only difference is it seems that all these things may be gone within a few months... what a weird thought.

Mid-May Update

This is a seemingly momentous occasion... the first blog entry from the new non-Shack!

All right, we haven't moved in or anything. I'm just sitting on some scaffolding with a laptop, enjoying a wonderful, warm evening. I could get used to this being a deck... too bad it's only temporary.

What the scaffolding is for - that is decidedly un-temporary - is the large windows that were put in today! We've probably gotten very far since my last entry. Ironically, now that things have started changing rapidly, I find I don't have much time or energy for writing. As it stands, much of the interior framing of phase one is finished - I could give you a house tour right now. You would just have to imagine things like finished walls, flooring, ceilings, doors, etcetera. Those are just details anyway. There is also, as promised, a hole in the ceiling of the main floor, leading into the second floor. A ladder may become a semi-permanent fixture in the middle of our living space when we move in so that I may access my room... it'll be kind of a warehouse feel. The reason the hole had to be cut so soon was so that we could transport both windows and drywall upstairs.

Indeed, much of the focus of the last couple of days has been drywall. We had a delivery of it come in this Wednesday - three huge piles of drywall, a hundred and some sheets in total. It was the job of the indentured servants (Raya and me) to carry all this into the house, and to pass much of it up through the hole in the ceiling to Dad's awaiting hands on the second floor. Though it is annoying work, it is pretty repetitive, and because of this, we became quite adept at both hauling and lifting drywall - important life skills! A particularly good memory in this process was when Raya became slightly over-zealous, and managed to rip a pretty large chunk off the corner of a sheet. I was amused, and after I teased her about it for awhile, Raya was not.

Another noteworthy episode has been our continuing battle with mother nature. There have been some robins around, that seem to think a house full of studs is an absolutely ideal place to build a nest. To be fair, it really is, but it is not ideal for us to be rooming with robins. So, almost every day, Dad destroys their nest-progress, and the next day, it is almost always back, and sometimes even further along. You've got to admire their resilience.

The way the new house has taken shape so quickly is pretty incredible... almost every time I come home there's something new to see. For a few days I didn't go up to the second floor, and when I did today I was surprised to find the framing for a whole bunch of rooms, including a very large closet in the master bedroom - I guess building for yourself can have its perks!

Rain Does Not Stop Us!

I had an interesting experience the other day: I walked out of the door of a room before I had ever walked in. If that's not a sure sign of interior framing, this definitely is: we've been doing interior framing! It's quite exciting, walls have been going up on the inside of the house, and we're beginning to be able to see where rooms will be, and what the spaces will look like. Now that we've lost Paul (he's all right, it's just that he's no longer working for us), I've gotta step it up a bit. For the last couple days I have been doing some work that, while not glamorous, is pretty important. I've been stuffing insulation into cracks (in metal studs/window frames on our very fancy and possibly fireproof east wall). This ensures that the area around the windows won't get cold. Or hot. So like I said, quite important.

In the next couple weeks, aside from doing whatever else Dad tells me to, I will be working on expanding the sump pit in the crawlspace! Hmm...digging in the dark and mud, in a space in which I cannot even stand up...another top-notch job for the lackey! Oh well, it's how I pay my debts.