3R Home and Barn Project

[sandman2234]

Rob,
An interesting thing about different metals and their reaction to each other, also depends on what is flowing between them. I purchased a house that had no faucets, just push buttons to control water flow and pressure. That was controled by a massive bank of valves, and the valves all worked fine since the house was built in 1964. In 2000, the house was hooked up to city water and by 2001 I got tired of repairing the valves (instead of purchasing new @$100 each) by epoxying a new seat I machined in place of the old one. I had one valve that was never hooked to city water, and when I removed it from the system, it looked like it had just come off the shelf. Not sure what they are putting in the water here, but it has me worried.
David from jax

[hunterridgefarm]

Rob,

Looks like you are making great progress on the home.

And from the pictures looks like your having some great times with friends!!

[3RRL]

It's been some while since I reported on the progress.
I'll tell you, with the rainy weather we've had, and the road almost impassable, not too much got done. But there is a little to show though.

First, the window trimming is done all around the home now. So the outside is starting to look a little more "completed and finished.

[3RRL]

Going inside, we saw there were stacks of drywall sheets laying around. They did not do anything before because the drywall crew couldn't make it up the road, so they just started this weekend while we were there. These pictures are starting in the basement and working upstairs.



Looks like they got most of the insulation in already too. They'll be working on sheet rocking the rest of the interior, where ever the house is framed and not where the logs are. The contractor said we need to think about interior paint for these areas, so I presume it won't take them long to get everything done and taped.

[3RRL]

They will be installing a "whole house fan" and this is the paperwork for the installation. You can see Loretta trying to figure out where that's gonna go. It will be big exhaust fan to cool the house down in the Summer and such. Openings will be about 14" x 24" with very large ducting to the outside.



They also installed a smaller duct to "suck" heated air from the living room and pipe it into the downstairs bedroom. We will have a wood burning stove in the living room. Although we have 2 HVAC units at our disposal with separate controls, we want to use it as little as possible. Also shown is the rough platform where the jacuzzi bath tub will be set in. It will all be tiled when done.

[3RRL]

Finally, they got a lot done on the wrap-around wood deck. It's been stained and sealed and some of it has been cut to the shape of the deck perimeter. Other parts still need to be trimmed off. You can't imagine what it looks like from up here now. We are in hog heaven with this place.



I took lots of pictures to show how they cut an fit the decking boards around the large Lodgeploe Pine trunks too. So good in fact that it looks like the big logs are sitting on top of the deck. But if you look closely, you can see they cut the deck around those logs. As usual, they did a fancy job of fitting it all together. The deck when completed will have a wooden railing going all the way around it. Big wide stairs going down the front of the entrance with handrails and a landing. The decking has a slight radius on the top, so it is smooth and looks good.

[3RRL]

One of the reasons there hasn't been too mush going on is that all the rains we had made a complete mess of our dirt roads. There was one area specifically, where the road made a sharp left turn and then goes up a fairly steep incline.
It was banked the wrong way, so when trucks came up that part they would slide down the right side into the gutter as they were trying to climb up. The fire county inspector went up on the worst possible day and couldn't make it up in his 2 wheel drive vehicle. He wouldn't sign off the barn and garage until the road was fixed, so that's what we did this weekend.

Here is the section I had to cut down about 2 feet to pitch the road correctly. I had to rip through very hard DG and move a bunch of this material to the opposite side of the road.

[3RRL]

Using my trusty boxblade, a lot of "chunks" came up with several good sized boulders as it ripped through the hard ground. I would move the bigger pieces with the fel and grapples and drag the rest with the boxblade. I used the rocks to build a wall on the low side so I could fill up that side with DG and dirt.

Some of the boulders were so big that the boxblade up-rooted them but then skip over. They were just too big to fit in the box. You can see this one barely fit in my bucket and the grapple jaw barely fits around the very top of it.



That one was so big it almost buried the Kama! I couldn't lift it up after I grabbed it, so I dragged it backwards to a spot out of the way. My guess would be it had to weigh nearly 2 tons. It was really huge.

[3RRL]

Loretta help out with her Jinma and dump trailer bringing loads of dirt and DG to the low side. After dumping the loads, she used her bucket to backdrag the piles. Then I would pull the boxblade over the area to smooth it. Then we both would drive over each layer to compact the lifts. Of course I neglected to take photos of the finished area, but it is now pitched correctly and smooth. We have some good weather coming up so we made an appointment for them to come out and inspect. The county is bringing up a fire truck to see if he can get up the road on Wednesday. If he can, the inspector will sign everything off.

The other thing we had to do was trim many trees that hung over the road. There must have been about 10 spots where we had to get a ladder or climb up to cut the branches out of the way. We got all that done too. The last thing we had to do was smooth out all 8 of our turnouts on the road. There needs to be a turnout every 300' so we have 8 of them. No pictures of those either. If I remember, next visit up (in 2 weeks) I'll take some of those photos. But don't hold your breath since I am forgetful about that.

[MtnViewRanch]

"You can't imagine what it looks like from up here now. We are in hog heaven with this place."
Rob, forget about hog heaven, you guys are but one step from God's front yard. Actually that is wrong, you are in God's front yard.