Finishing the Garage Doors

Hal decided to pause on the electrical and finish up the garage doors. Though we put them up last fall they were not operational as the upper tracks weren't installed. He's been working on that for the last few days and has the tracks for the wide door leveled and secured. This afternoon our friend John will show up to help install the tension spring. Those are tricky and possibly dangerous should they come loose. They're under tension, after all. 

My ankle is better so I'm wearing hiking boots today rather than this monstrous boot which mostly immobilized my ankle and it's tendons. I had to water some of my flowers at the Palace yesterday so I aggravated things a bit and used ice when I got home. I hope I can do more today, I must seriously water the flower and veggie gardens. 

Boot leftover from a broken metatarsal

There is still no rain so all my little trees are dying. It's a really lousy situation, I can't water the ones along the road at all unless I want to transport water in buckets and it mostly sloshes out driving over that terrain. Plus I'd need about 100 buckets! And then I'd have to do it again every other day. Droughts in spring suck.

Assuming my ankle survives its workout today, I should be able to get back to ladder climbing and furring strips soon.

House Build Update

 Well, better late than never.

We haven't been totally negligent in the house build since my last post, though we did take off 3 weeks for the holidays while my younger sister visited. 

First thing we did after the concrete garage floor went in was to install the garage doors so that we are really closed in. No more wind or weather blowing in. We haven't installed the ceiling tracks as there isn't a ceiling to attach them to so they don't operate yet, but it's a start.

First door installed in November 2020.

The garage door for Hal's truck

Then Hal added temporary lighting in the garage so we can work then started putting up the walls in the garage for the utility room and his workshop. 

Above is the workshop.

These walls also have wiring in them for outlets and ceiling lights.

The stairs into the kitchen. All the above photos were taken before Christmas. In January, Hal cut up some 3/8 sheets of plywood into pieces to fit between the purlins (rafters) at the 3 gable walls to block wind and, of course, weather, like blowing snow. It was a suggestion made by our building inspector. We figured, besides being a good idea, anything that pleases our inspector could help us along.

Yesterday we got back to installing OSB subfloor in the house. Today we added two more sheets. We will finish the row tomorrow and then have to add more bracing between the joists in the next section before we can start the next 3 rows. This photo was taken yesterday.

Next week it's doubtful much will be done, the temps are dropping dramatically and it will be too cold to get very much done at all.