Spring Has Arrived!

Since my last post we've had roller coaster weather.  First it would be beautiful and then cold and crappy which made it almost impossible to get out and get any work done.  Oh well, that's late winter, early spring in northern New Mexico.  Then I had to make an unexpected trip back East.  I'm home now, the weather has really warmed up and we've managed to get some work done on the framing. It's going pretty slowly because we're really trying to get this right - neither one of us really has any experience with framing.  Hopefully once we figure these first few steps - such as how high the posts need to be, etc. - it will go faster.

We first had to lay down the tar paper and flashing on the foundation.

Here's a nifty jig that Rick made that sure made bending the flashing a breeze!

All the tar paper and flashing are down.  We've had to put bricks and rocks all around to keep it all from blowing away in our spring winds!

The next thing we had to do is get the bond beam up on the big adobe wall.  We originally planned on putting up 3 - 2" x 10" boards but after some discussion with our adobe friends and realizing that there is a fairly wide span over the center window, we decided to go with 4 of them - giving us, in effect, a 6" by 10" bond beam.

Here's Rick adding mud under the first round of boards.

Second course going on.

Three courses down.

Here's all four courses.  Just adding this bond beam made the wall feel so much more substantial!

Next we decided we needed to get the two big 8 x 8 posts up.  These posts are the ones that will carry the weight of the huge diagonal truss that will span over the living room/dinning room and give us a wonderful open ceiling.

These are the two posts ready for shaping.

Since these are true 8 x 8s we needed to shave off a bit on the bottom so they would fit in the clips.

This post will have the beams from two walls meeting in this notch Rick is cutting out.

One done!

Both posts are shaped and ready for instillation.

Ready to go vertical.

One up!

Both up!  Progress!!

Here you see the section of bond beam that connects the adobe wall to the big corner post.  We had hoped to get more done today but had to stop on account of wind :-(