Joey just flew from Alaska down to Wyoming. He has been working on the house solo for the last three weeks. His greatest accomplishment... the stairs. We have been hauling materials and supplies up a ladder for the last 6 months. You can only imagine my excitement about them. We will be taking a break from house building for the next two months to visit friends and family. We have a number of projects waiting for us when we get back, including plumbing. Yikes.

Enjoy a virtual tour by Joey of our new stairs by clicking play.

Compromised

Well... Joey and I caved in.  After a week of temperatures well below zero (read 20-below) we purchased a Toyo oil stove. I hit my limit when at one point I was sleeping in front of our woodstove in two sleeping bags feeding the stove every three hours and I couldn't keep the house much above freezing. The problem is two fold. Since the house is under construction it is not very tight yet- so we have quite a few air leaks. The second, more concerning problem is that our fancy dancey wood stove is broken and it will take us a while to get it fixed.

Solution: we purchased a oil stove and jerry-rigged a fuel system with some old oil drums, which saved us over a $1,000. We had a few fuel leaks as of last night because of some poorly made copper flares but our good friend Danial helped us fix them and showed us some good tricks for making perfect flares. So our ideals feel slightly compromised but it is pretty nice to set a thermostat and be done. Hopefully we will get our wood stove up and running again so we do not have to rely so heavily on oil.

I leave for Jackson, Wyoming today and won't see Joey for a month- so it is nice to know he will be warm while I am gone.

The Fun Stuff

Suprisingly enough Joey and I are staying warm. Winter is finally here. With snow on the ground and several days now with sub-zero temperatures we are now slaves to our woodstove. Because the house isn't entirely sealed up yet we have to take shifts in the middle of the night re-stoking our stove. But believe it or not we are  now at the fun stuff. 

 

We have been hanging drywall and learning how to perfect the art of concealing our screw holes and seams with varying types of plaster and mud. Many of the materials we use are highly sensitive to temperatures as they dry so it has been a real challenge to monitor the drying process. We are holding ourselves to high standards. Ordinarily people texture their walls to cover flaws in the taping process and we have decided to forgo that step for cleaner look.

  

The finishing details of the house have been fun. We just spent the last couple of days completing our bedroom. It is an exciting stage where we get to be creative and the results are immediately very satisfying. We completed the tongue and groove ceiling and I wired in a ceiling fan to control the light from a switch and the fan from a pull chain. I think we are finally getting the hang of wiring. Now we get to choose wall paints and start cutting our trim. I think we are going to whitewash pine trim to match our white vinyl windows.

Tomorrow we dive into the plumbing. Wish us luck, thanks for your support and enjoy our photos.

The Power!

You'll notice in this photo- we have light which means we have power. Joey and I just finished wiring the house and escaped without a single zap or buzz.

Our first anniversary came and went- our gifts to each other- a new house! We celebrated with friends in our home in front of a raging wood stove fire. It was lots of fun and we have so many good memories from our first year as husband and wife.

Since then we have had a busy couple of weeks. Highlights include:
-Insulated our top floor
-Installed our gray water system
-Finished wiring
-Started plumbing (learned to sweat pipe)
-Purchased our bathroom appliances
-Transferred power and phone to our new house while keeping it at our little cabin.

More stories to come- we are tired and heading in for the night.

Still at work

Sorry for the lag in posts- in fact Joey and I have been busy little beavers. We returned from our last trip in the mountains Sept 18th and since then have completely weathered-in our house. All doors, windows and roofs are in. All of our siding, insulation, and sheetrock arrived on Monday so we will continue working on the house for the next three weeks.

Recent successes include installing a waterline from our well to our house, attaching the service panel for electricity, and buying and installing a wood stove.

We had to custom order our doors because we wanted our porch door to swing outwards and our rear door to include a large clear window. Shortly after they arrived I painted them brick red. It is fairly cold right now in Alaska (dropping into the 20's at night) so it has been difficult for the paint to dry. I had to stand above the wet paint with a blow dryer to get it to stick.

Installing our waterline was stressful. Because frost line is 10-feet deep we had to hire an excavator to dig an enormous trench for us so the walls would not cave in on us during installation. We drilled a hole into our well casing and attached a 1" water line that we installed heat tape and insulation around so hopefully there will be no chance of our pipes freezing during the chilly Alaskan winters.

The electric company is going to install the power and phone lines to our new house in just under three weeks so we are a bit under the wire to install all of our wiring- ha ha ha. We used a gift card from John and Marisa to buy most of our electrical tools and wire at Home Depot. Yipee.

We were happy to finally have purchased a wood stove. I can only relate the process to buying a car. The sales staff have similar strategies and the sticker shock is comparable. After comparing efficiencies and aesthetics we reached a comfortable middle ground by purchasing a DutchWest stove. It is technically a non-catalytic stove, but it has a ceramic chamber to re-combust smoke for high efficiency and low emmissions. The stove pipe installation was confusing. We had to calculate distances of our stove pipes from combustibles (like floor and ceiling joists, and walls) while still trying to have our pipe exit our roof near it's peak so that heavy snow loads will not shear the piping off our roof. We also wanted to install our pipe without any bends because every turn is a potential creosote trap and has the potential for chimney fires down the road.

Joey has been busily collecting firewood and squirreling it away. Hopefully we can season it properly for use mid-winter.

So Joey and I will celebrate our first anniversary this Sunday by firelight in our new house!

Enjoy the photos!

Update

I am out of town again, teaching a Wilderness First Responder course in Juneau. Joey has been installing windows and tinkering with some unglamorous details on the house such as, installing louvres. Yeah- we didn't know what they were either, but they are vents that create airflow in our attic.

We will receive our first visitors on Monday evening. JoAnne, Joey's mom, and Beth, Joey's aunt will be in Talkeetna for a two week visit. Very brave, considering what a construction zone we are living in. On Aug 30th I will be flying back to Anchorage where I will meet my brother Pat and his friend Julian who are coming up for some fall fly fishing. We are excited to share our new home with friends and family.

-Melis

Odds and Ends

I am working in Juneau teaching a wilderness first aid class and Joey is working solo on the house. When I left two days ago we were putting in windows and Joey tiled the hearth for our future wood stove today. Our metal roofing arrives on Thursday, Joey will no doubt be looking for someone to hand him the sheets as he installs the metal on the roof. I wish I could be there. -Melis

Survived the Rain

A mere 12 hours after finishing the roof it started pouring rain. We are very relieved to be "weathered-in" as we continue our long list of chores to complete on this house. On deck are the chores: windows, doors, putting watershield and metal roofing on, wiring, plumbing, insulating, installing the wood stove.......... Still, you have to celebrate the the benchmarks and a roof on is a big one.


The photo above represents our current progress. When the house is finished we will also have one more roof line on the right above the front porch and a small window above that. The porch is the indentation to the right of the ladder.

Okay...It's HUGE!!!!

Well- as you can see we have been busy beavers on the house. We had to attend to lots and lots of tiny building details, but at last- we have completed the roof and frame of our house. We are both extremely excited. It will be sad to be leaving the roof for a while, as you can imagine we are both very fond of heights. In fact, the view from our roof is fantastic, and the current cabin and outhouse are completely dwarfed by our new house.

Raise the Roof

After much frustration Joey and I finally have completed putting in our roof rafters and second story ceiling joists. We each read about four roofing books and worked hard at calculating our roof angles. We tried a couple of test pieces and...failure. Steam was coming out of our ears.


Just when we thought all was lost we called our trusty lifeline engineer- Johnny, Joey's brother. He told us to hold up the rafter to the desired level on the outside of our bulding and trace the angles. Seem too simple- we'll it wasn't. It worked. Hooray.

It has been quite rainy the last few days so we now have the rafters covered by a large brown tarp. The next sunny day will be mayhem- we will try to work very swiftly to get the roof sheathing in place.



We had a lot of debate between ourselves whether to go with shingles or a metal roof. Based on the snow loads, occasional strong winds, and the coolness factor- we have deceided to go with an unpainted metal roof. Rainy days will be awfully cozy with the pitter-patter of rain on the roof as we relax in front of the woodstove......

Today we started framing in the mud room and calculating the second of three roof lines. The final roof line to design will be over the front porch.

Second Floor Here We Come

After 2-weeks in the mountains I came home to quite a surprise- Joey had finished the front porch and finished framing and sheeting all of the walls for the first floor. After a quick shower, hug, and a kiss it was back to work. "Hand me another board, please."

Last night we completed putting in the tongue and groove flooring for the second floor, which will double as a finished ceiling for the first floor. It looks lovely and we will have to work hard to keep it pristine through the construction of the second floor walls. We hope to have the walls for the next floor framed in the next two days so we can begin construction on the roof. It has been raining quite a bit lately- we feel like we are in a race to get all the wood up and the structure protected before it beings to warp.

Our favorite part so far- the view keeps getting better the higher we get.

First Floor

In an action packed four days Joey and I were able to get most of the components of the first floor in. We framed and partially sheeted four walls. Next comes the remaining two walls of the mudroom and the front deck.

Joey just left for 10-days of work on the Matanuska Glacier teaching students to ice climb. I starts work this weekend and will be flying back into the Alaska Range for a 12-day mountaineering course. It is hard to leave our new house for other projects but we will be blissfully reunited at the end of the month and hope to complete the second floor. I took a brake from framing yesterday and went paragliding in Girdwood..... Joey doesn't know yet- ha ha ha.

First Floor In!

Our lumber has finally arrived and we are fast at work getting the frame of the house up. After digging the sewer line by hand, it feels good to be done with dirt and switch to wood.

Joey was excited when our main beams lined up perfectly with our foundation tubes. We framed the floor quickly and spent a day tinkering and making it square. Last night we attached the subfloor and had a few friends over to spill the very first beers on the floor.

Hopefully we will get the walls up today and tomorrow...if the mosquitoes don't get us first.

Breaking Ground in Talkeetna!

Big News... Between mountaineering expeditions we were able to put our own foundation in.

In 5 solid hard days of work we cleared the land, dug twelve 4-foot feet deep holes, engineered them to the right distances, mixed and poured our own concrete....whew. We are tired. We are actually looking forward to our next Denali expedition, it will be less work then building our own house I think.

It is very exciting. We were able to get this project done a month ahead of schedule. Also, we were forced to install our own pump in our well so that we could have running water for mixing concrete...what we failed to realize until later is that we have our own running water now- Yipee.

Here are the results:


Thanks to family and friends for your support. Stay tuned for more updates on our progress. We should get back from Denali June 22- unless we summit early.