We’ve hit our groove. With a steady supply of lumber, a flat plywood subfloor to build on, and two working nail guns (Terry fixed the old Bostich and the new one is running strong), we can make walls pop up like internet ads. As of this writing, the first floor has about three quarters of its exterior walls complete, plus a critical load-bearing interior wall.

Since Colin intends to insulate the house thoroughly, we’re doing things a little different than we did with the Barn. Door and window headers require some sort of filling because otherwise the airspace inside the boxes would provide a weak spot for heat to escape. We fill the largest headers, 6 to 10 feet long, entirely with wood: a 2×10 plus two pieces of half-inch plywood fill the 2½ inch void perfectly. For shorter headers, we cut foam left over from insulating the basement. This treatment makes the header boxes slightly to considerably heavier, a small price to pay for supreme energy efficiency.

The leftover foam has also come in handy for sitework. Pillsbury excavated a trench over 1000 feet long and buried a pipe from the septic system to the mound way back on the property’s highest point. In one location they hit ledge and couldn’t bury the pipe to a preferred four feet of soil, so we insulated it crudely with long pieces of foam instead.

On an unrelated note, we finished the back doors of the Barn! The green paint matches the shingles wonderfully. Eventually we’ll clad the Barn in white siding, and then the doors will look even better.

(I typed this entry with a cat in my lap, while she freaked out about a thunderstorm and crawled all over me. So please forgive any errors.)