The Yooper Schooner (Part 4)

Summer has come to the UP, but it doesn't last long! Up here there are nine months of winter and three months of rough sledding--we need to get a building permit!

 

Chapter 7: “The Sacred Document of Home Building”

Build it sound; build it straight, level, and strong

 

Our bodies had never experienced labor like the sort we had endured up to this point before driving a single nail or mortaring a solitary block!  Muscles and joints ached that we never knew we possessed.

Now in mid-June, the hot dry weather returned soon after Dan, the well driller man, departed. I averted my eyes when walking in the future septic field area�"I didn’t want to look at those green dots on the trees. After Big Bob, the excavator, departed, there was still much to do in the hole where the house would one day be built. Big Bob’s mantra apparently was one common among Yoopers�"something along the line of “I’ll get this job done in a hurry, and I’m outa’ here.”

The house site appeared like a shaped explosive charge blew the hole in the ground. The hole more or less was within the stakes I placed but more in the shape of an  oval, the bottom was extremely uneven, and the sides were crooked and sloped. Using a level, a long two by four, and the transit, I checked the overall site. It was grossly uneven and not very square.

Firing up the yellow monstrosity, I blasted a hole through the high piled bank surrounding the hole Bob had left behind and made a ramp to the hole’s bottom. Slowly and carefully, I peeled a few layers from the bottom with a flat loader blade to level it in four to five inch intervals. With every pass, I ran the load out and into a pile a distance from the hole. I somehow knew that the piles around the perimeter would plague us later on. Just a feeling I had. I squared up the sides with straight edges and ends. Finally, after several hours I was satisfied with the looks and level of the hole. I enjoyed that kind of fine tractorship work. Now, the site looked like a house could grow there.

Shutting off the tractor in its usual place now near the huge pile of dirt, I saw the neighbor farmer drive up in a rush. “What’cha doin’ over here” was his usual greeting. Not that he really wanted to know because I had tried to explain before. He told me that he had twenty acres of hay ready to bale. I visibly cringed. He had helped me with the logging, and we felt indebted. He told us he readied to bale tomorrow, and asked if we could help. I agreed, but Karen didn’t look so good. I asked him if we’d ride with him to his fifteen-mile distant hayfield. He didn’t hesitate in saying he needed us to haul the hay with our truck and trailer. Oooohhhh yeah!

The next day proved hot and sweaty even before picking up a bale of hay. Karen and I were in pretty good physical shape, but the sight of all those bales laying the field was daunting. Karen and I commenced to load our trailer while he and his wife loaded their stock trailer. One of the neighbor children drove our truck while we ran here and there with bales to keep up. The trailer holds a hundred and twenty bales relatively easy. We hauled the two loads back to their barn, unloaded, and headed back for another pair of loads�"and repeated that, twice. Luckily, we finished up as the sun was heading down, and in the UP the sun goes down late in the summer�"about eleven o’clock. We noticed that the farmer had more grass cut down. Karen and I groaned in unison.

Karen, the more logical of us two, suggested that if we had a building permit in hand, we could dodge the summons to haul more hay for the farmer. I hardily agreed.  That night we began an intensely focused effort to fine-tune our house plans. After the next day of hauling hay again, I intensified my diagramming effort twice fold. Some of the problems proved to be just a neatness and detail issue, but one item, the stairs, especially remained daunting. In our floor plans, all the rooms worked out size wise, but the stairs just wouldn’t fit anywhere. Paging through an alternate building book, I revisited the section on stairs. They suggested spiral stairs in tight installations in cabins and chalets. A spiral would work in ours. I carefully added a compact set with protractor and rulers on the east side of the Great Room all cozied up to the loft. Of course, that’s where the stairs led.        

One of the other persistent and main sticking points for the code-inspectors was our proposed log joists. Volunteering to help the farmer’s brother with a big logging job, he gave me a couple loads of logs for the joists and roof rafters. Karen went right to work in peeling off the bark with a drawknife. This work was brutally tedious and sappy, messy. We had proposed the log joists from the very beginning, but the hand cut, hand peeled, and chainsaw trimmed log joists were deemed unacceptable by the code inspectors because the logs were not measured, inspected, and spec’ed for construction loads. I pleaded for approval with an agreement to over-engineer them with larger diameter logs, closer spacing, and shorter length, but they wouldn’t hear it�"yet. We were not deterred.

I straightened my aching back and drew up my courage. I did more homework�"sorry for the pun�"to find out how log home builders got away with building with logs. We scouted the couple log home contractors in the UP and found out what we could about their logs and building plans under the guise of a very expensive log construction purchases. Yes, they inspected every log for soundness, milled them to a common size, and briefly kiln dried them. All of these were beyond our capability, but we didn’t give in to build with common lumber. Armed with new log knowledge and log brochures with log specifications on them to incorporate into our log plans, I updated my already detailed diagrams, and we went back to the courthouse.

When the code inspectors compared my improved in depth plans to the handily attached commercial homebuilders’ plans, blueprints, and supporting documentation along with my additional promise of over engineering our own log construction, the inspectors appeared unconvinced. But were wearing them down; we just sensed it. They ended the visit saying that they wouldn’t accept my log roof rafters. Get out of their hair, it was closing time, and the next day was the Fourth of July, they more or less told us.

 

***

We returned July 5^th with yet more changes. My log joists remained, but I gave in and added trusses to support the roof. I didn’t know a thing about roofs and snow loads and such so that’s maybe why they didn’t like logs for roof rafters. To tell you the truth, I had no idea how I’d get them up there. I noted in my newest diagrams that we would buy engineered trusses.

We must have finally got it right, maybe it was my singing patriotic songs on the day before�"maybe it was the lunar phase, the sun angle, or the summer heat�"we finally got the go ahead from the code office to build. The code inspectors finally caved in and acquiesced to approve our building permit. Maybe we did finally wear them down, maybe we finally correctly filled in the critical information they required on their forms like our full name and address. With signed building permit in hand, the precious document, the holy grail of home building we had worked so hard for, we could now start building our dream home. We floated home to our little room in the polebarn and celebrated.

From here, we worked frantically, but at the same time attempted to remain attentive and work smart. We tediously hand-dug and carefully leveled the house site’s perimeter for the foundation footers. Then, I took a concrete block lifted it and vigorously dropped it flat in the footer trench; then I lifted it again, and dropped it and dropped it about a couple hundred additional times. This acted as my homemade, backbreaking ground compactor.

 One of the on the spot modifications I had made at the court house was to add support beams in two rows down the center of the house to hold up those log joists the inspectors didn’t care for but irrevocably approved. These posts would sit on six parallel 15 by 15-inch concrete pads that we dug at the same time as the footer. The perimeter footers and pads were deeper and wider than required by code and the extra sizing would cost more in concrete, but I felt footers, if nothing else, were most important because everything sat on the footers from the concrete block walls, exterior wood walls, and roof�"a whole lot of weight when considered en masse. We built the footer forms out of rough-cut lumber we cut from our neighbor’s sawmill. By the way, we spent our spare evening time running the sawmill ourselves, cutting our own aspen logs into various board sizes, and then cleaned, lubricated, gassed, and maintained the machine’s engine and cutting blades for the privilege.

All the while working on our own stuff, we helped the farmer out with building projects he had, made more multiple trips to and from his distant leased hayfields with more heavy loads of hay on our trailer or hauling his skid-steer to jobs he wrangled that had nothing to do with us. About this time, he opened up and disclosed that he didn’t get along with some of the neighbors. Oh-oh!

One family had opposed his intense farming permit, so he spread manure nice and thick when the wind shifted the right direction so the fresh country aroma drifted their way. Another neighbor who the farmer had “built a barn for” wasn’t speaking to him because the neighbor’s horse got loose, scared the farmer’s cows, and they knocked down his own cobbled together lean-to. He admitted to all this. Why didn’t we see the obvious?

 

You grow thick-skinned or ignore minor irritations to attain a major goal

 

Back to the house building project. The code inspector came to do the first pre-pour footer inspection, our first inspection and first failure. He pointed out an obvious (when pointed out) footer shortfall that had slipped by me. Apparently, in my rush to get on with it, I wasn’t paying close enough attention, not attentive enough as I mentioned above, to remember how frost can find its way under footers. The whole house was going to be dirt-bermed up against the concrete walls except the patio area that overlooked the ravine to the west. In this area, the footer would only be inches below the surface instead of the four and half feet elsewhere. Frost would quickly form under the footer, heave it and break it into pieces. To remedy the shortfall, I pulled out the forms and hand dug a five-foot deep trench, three-quarters of the house’s western length, 25-feet long in total.

So admittedly, the code inspectors helped resolve my oversight. After the permit was approved, they seemed increasingly amiable. After a week of waiting for the next appointment and the inspector taking a second look at the footer trench, he passed the footer forms noting positively the over-engineered thickness, depth and optional rebar. After the inspector passed it, the farmer ran over to suggest filling that deep section at the patio with stone to save money on concrete. Where was he when I was digging? Hiding in the hedge line, I presume.

“The inspectors would never know what’s in there,” he said, and he had after all, “built his whole house.”

I threw a few stones in along the trench’s bottom, but in reality, that area became a solid underground concrete wall. I calculated the amount of concrete and consistency required from my trusty DIY Housebuilding book. I wrote a check in full up front at Fraco Concrete products. The day of pouring, Mr. Thomas came over to help, even though he had severely damaged knees and grossly overweight. The farmer came to watch, I supposed. Pouring the footer went smoothly with the concrete truck’s chute reaching around three-quarters of the perimeter. The far, northeast corner was the only area we had to wheelbarrow concrete. Leveling the wet concrete was a cinch, level with the tops of the forms, and then I finished them off with a quick swipe of a broom for a friction bond to the blocks going on top. Easy stuff this house building.

With one minor success under our belts, we now wanted to push hard on said house building, but we felt that we were torn away from it in different directions. We seemed to be always helping the farmer make hay and haul things, and additionally, as a break, I continued to help on another logging project with the farmer’s brother to acquire more pine floor joist and roof rafter logs.

 Meanwhile, Karen worked night and humid ninety-plus degree-days de-barking the logs, out pacing the sudden and plague-like influx of slimy, grubby bark beetles and woodborers. She got grossed out everyday, desperately needing a trip to the old airbase’s fitness center for a shower. Despite her hard work, many of the logs were lost to the over-zealous gross wood eaters. At night, when the temperature remained over eighty-degrees, we could hear the slimy grubs crunching, snacking on the inside of our logs lying in a pile next to the driveway�"disheartening and GROSS!

Finally, the day came to begin the concrete block laying. After calculating my needs and again paying up front at Fraco Concrete Products again, the concrete delivery truck showed up and hoisted several pallets of block, cement and sand inside the freshly poured footer. It was very intimidating when we saw all those blocks piled up. We were not deterred with any of this; we just got on with it.

I placed guide strings on my corner stakes for the rear block wall. Our farmer friend came over to help get us started, showing us the finer points of applying mortar mud to blocks, ho-hum and duh. I had studied up the past few nights for this event. A concrete wall? It must be straight, level, and plumb. The farmer left with a knowing smirk on his face, expecting us to take weeks to get the wall built or do a messy, shoddy job, like his work on his barn�"yeah, I saw it.

Well, we were highly motivated at this point, but undoubtedly, concrete block laying is hard, ponderous labor. Mixologist Karen blended multitudes of perfect-ratio of mortar mud in the wheelbarrow and hauled blocks to where we put them into place�"tough chick, Karen. With the string from corner to corner, a new bubble level, and a four-foot straightedge, I painstakingly checked each block’s position in relation to the others after setting it into place. As we finished the back wall and began around the corners of the foundation, my forearms seized up like the steel cables stretched across Mackinac Bridge from the lifting up, positioning, and repositioning the heavy blocks. I learned to become ambidextrous and this proved the first instance I needed the ability.

 

 Be flexible in body and mind.

 

There is a minor miracle to point out here in this block-laying process. When I planned the “V” of the prow front in the footer, now cured, solid concrete, I assumed we’d break blocks and slobber mortar in the gaps to fabricate the three front odd-angle corners. Recall the point and five corners? Actually, the book didn’t cover this architectural feature and the only example I had seen was completed by the block-breaking, piecing, and filling procedure. Somehow, someway, I picked lengths and angles that Fraco Concrete manufactured�"the only angled blocks they manufactured. When we finally made our way around there, after days of work in the hot blistering sun, the angle blocks fit right in, making nice, clean corners, and a perfect prow point. Sometimes we had assistance in solving awkward problems that went beyond simple coincidences.

Our son Ben showed up to help at the final corner and boy, I was appreciative of any real help. In the block laying process, I wore through two pairs of leather gloves and I could rob a bank because my fingertips no longer had prints. The blocks and mortar is extremely abrasive. Karen performed a majority of the pointing (grooving between the blocks) so she wore out her gloves and fingertips as much as I did.  

 

Count your blessings, no matter how small.

 

Meanwhile, Karen and I slowly became local sensations, but we were never quite sure what the neighbors really thought of us taking on this unwieldy project. Maybe they laughed because we lived in a barn and things weren’t happening very quickly at the house site. Overall, the neighbors seemed friendly, but they did not go out their way to help the strange couple we had become. Nevertheless, our unique situation and ceaseless effort made us notable. Our property was on a dead end road and people would come around and stop out front to catch a glimpse of us working through gaps in the foliage. You know you are a Yooper when you look up whenever a car goes by your house�"even at 3 AM! I’d look back at them, the gawkers, wondering what they thought of us. Skeptism? Comic relief? Anticipation? A shining example of American freedom?  Whatever they thought, we knew we were adventurous, motivated, and exceptional.

We finished our entire block wall building in a week. The speed and meticulousness surprised the farmer. I hesitated, timorous of what it would reveal, but I finally had to check the foundation’s diagonal measurements. I think I shouted in triumph when we found the two measurements were within five-sixteenths of an inch!  This meant that the block wall was very close to perfect dimensions. The farmer was not impressed with the measurement, but it demonstrated to ourselves that we were serious in our work and attention to detail. It was a very impressive effort for never, ever doing it before.

Out in the hot sun, working hard each and everyday found us both tanned, getting slim and sinewy all the while living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Ramen noodles chased down with mass quantities of coffee.

The block work was followed by filling the blocks with shredded styrene to provide insulation. This stuff looked like miniature Styrofoam noodles sold in huge clear plastic bags. One of those little touches I read about in my book. After that, we concreted more than the required number of sill plate bolts into place on top and in the center of the block voids and after curing, bolted on the pressure treated sill plates over a foam condensation barrier. The walls would be nailed on top of these sill boards. Along the outside bottom of the concrete wall, I carefully mortared the right angle gap between the block and footer to deflect water away that ran down the wall from seeping through. Karen then used a cheap broom to thoroughly spread tar across the blocks’ exterior for waterproofing. The inspector showed up as scheduled and passed our work easily, saying it was the best waterproofing he had ever seen. It was a pleasantly long time before we saw him again for another inspection.

Our first load of insulation from Menards proved exciting. We needed quite the pile of rigid pink insulation to wrap the foundation’s perimeter and to lay under the slab, and so, we bought two pallets worth that stood about eight feet tall on the trailer. There isn’t much weight to the insulation, and the first time we went over thirty miles an hour the wind caught the pile and sent it sailing. Luckily, only half a pallet of the four by eight sheets flew off the load and onto the road and shoulder. Dodging traffic, I saved them from being destroyed. We learned to tie our loads more securely after that.

At about this time, Karen’s parents arrived for a visit and wanted to help on our project. Who in our tired, frazzled condition could refuse? Ron and Shirley weren’t all that able-bodied, but we had easy jobs like having them cut and glue the two-inch pink insulation board to the outside of the concrete blocks. This process insulated the concrete walls additionally providing an exterior thermal break, and the rigid, though bright pink insulation board would be covered up forever when we back-filled with dirt. That would have to happen before freezing temperatures arrived.  

A note to provide an answer to a question that may have arisen. The reason we were going to put the insulation under the slab is that we were going to install a radiant in floor heating system. Basically, this system has a grid of plastic tubing that is embedded in the concrete and hot water is circulated through the tubing effectively heating the concrete for toasty toes on frigid days. We learned about this when we attended the Marquette building show back in May. At the time, this was a very new concept or just hitting mainstream construction. Most people paying contractors did not ante up the extra cost to install it, but the thought of a nice warm concrete slab had convinced us.

We painstakingly laid the two-inch pink insulation board down after leveling and tamping the entire inside floor area by soaking the ground and manhandling a concrete block up and down by hand and sore back again, my extremely low-tech compactor. After putting a layer of re-mesh (wire mesh like heavy fencing) down, Karen and I then bent and secured four loops of 976 feet of plastic “pex” tubing to the re-mesh. We went through hundreds of little wire twisty ties to keep the pex from shifting around when the concrete was poured over the top. The eight tubing ends pointed skyward in the area that would one day be the utility room.

A few days later, we poured the slab over the tubing on a prayer that we would not damage the plastic tubing. We had purchased the tubing and ties from the local plumbing shop and asked them what to do if we punctured the tubing. The simple answer made me sick: jackhammer it apart and add a coupler. Well, let’s not puncture the tubing. The other issue was that we had to hand finish the slab fast enough and well enough before the concrete set up, knowing darn well that if we didn’t we’d have to walk on it and look at the mess forever!

Mr. Thomas showed up again, but he wasn’t so able bodied and the farmer showed, but we were never sure how’d he react to our work ethics. With our two wheelbarrows and a borrowed roller/screeder, the farmer and I wheeled the concrete to the back as the truck operator dumped concrete in the front. The farmer and I screeded with a two by four and then the roller, but it was obvious that that was going to be the extent of the farmer’s help. I began to sweat with fright and not all the work we had already accomplished. The concrete began to set up, and it looked really bumpy, relatively level but bumpy.

 I frantically began to hand trowel from the back forward. It became obvious I couldn’t finish the whole floor in time. As the concrete continued to cure much faster than expected, my new acquaintance a distant neighbor/part time contractor showed up at the last minute. His work involved some concrete work, and he happened to have a power trowel on the back of his pick up�"heaven sent! We immediately unloaded it, fired it up, and he put a perfectly smooth flat surface on the concrete floor. That’s right, no longer a slab, it was now a floor! The power trowel could smooth much faster and smoother than by hand, and it could handle the fast curing, meaning hard, concrete. Another minor miracle, we were saved from ourselves.

Note that I didn’t mention plumbing to trowel around except for those eight in floor radiant heat tubes (four loops) exiting vertically in the back of the house. Unbelievably, this proved a good decision. Normally, all the water feeds and drains go under the concrete slab with stubs sticking up through the concrete slab. We hadn’t planned for any of that under-slab plumbing system stuff because we were in a rush, inexperienced and naïve�"what excuses are those? Actually, I had no idea of how the plumbing would function without pipes under the slab and had no approved sewer to send them to anyway. Remember those green dots? Oh well, we pressed on regardless and somehow we would make it work. Sponge bathing in a basin forever instead of running water crossed my mind again because that is how we cleaned up everyday after a hard day’s work and pouring concrete is very hard work. We were not deterred by these minor oversights.

 

Rub a dub, dub, a couple in a tub�"we wish! Ah, taking turns in the basin! 

 

Chapter 8 Climbin’ the Walls

 

Our life was manual labor, day in and out. Work on the house, work on clearing brush, and work on the farmer’s “farm” to help him for all the “help” he provided us.

 

Physical labor and mental exercise makes one healthy through and through.

 

For pastimes, we shopped at Menards for not only required building supplies but also to scope out future project needs and scope out ideas. We also occasionally went to the once KI Sawyer Air Force Base Fitness Center, now YMCA, to shower after especially hot or dirty jobs�"sometimes twice a week. We’d work out on the weight machines or run the indoor track too, how absurd! A big night out was when we went out to eat at Godfathers Pizza or the Big Boy Restaurant, at least until the Big Boy burned down. We considered pulling the surviving Big Boy statue down from the pedestal and putting him on a float on Lake Superior. That would be a sight for a cross-lake iron ore or coal freighter�"shades of Austin Powers! Once in a great while for a pastime, we’d drive our hot Datsun 260Z sports car, but I’ll cover more of that and our other pastime diversions later.

To get down to the newly poured concrete floor, I built a temporary five-step staircase to drop down from higher ground outside. Think of our first floor being a little over four feet below the perimeter ground level like a few steps down into a shallow dry pool.

The walls could go up. Now late July, we had a huge load of various lengths two by sixes delivered. Up to this point, we had hauled lumber from Menards on our trailer. Now that we were approved to build, the concrete walls and floor were cured, we had the sill plates installed, and summer was passing much, much too quickly, we caved in to pay the extra delivery charge for the big pile of wood. Rough wall stud framing is fun compared to what we’ve done up to this point. It is fast, easy, and shows real progress.  

The two by six framing for the first floor wall in the back of the house was generally straightforward. We had decided on two by six versus the more common two by four construction so we could stuff more insulation inside the walls. The hardest part was deciding on where and what size the windows were going in the walls. This made the hand-drawn floor plans on college-lined paper we gave the code inspectors very important, though none of the windows in our plans matched what we would actually install! Hint: Once approved for building you can deviate from your plans unless it is one of those stipulated safety concerns. Believe me you know what these concerns are.

When building walls you have to know your window’s rough openings. We researched all the available window manufacturers, but we were impressed with Crestline. They had multiple insulation value options and different casements such as wood, vinyl, or painted aluminum. Aluminum was most expensive, but we thought it was well worth it for durability, strength, and ease of maintenance. We picked a dark pewter color. Of course, Crestline windows came from Menards, so we used one of their catalogs for all our rough opening sizes. Hint: When buying windows for installations in a new construction, select standard sizes because special order windows are sometimes twice the cost of standard sizes.

On the front prow walls, we designed eight big windows to give us maximum sunlight, but still allowing plenty of continuous-length lumber for strength up along the walls that were to become seventeen-feet high according to our plans. We didn’t know what size these windows were at this point because we started in the back of the house. My brain could just handle so much. We rough-framed the small back windows according to the catalog but didn’t order any at this point. Maybe this was pushing our luck. The farmer helped intermittently with the wall construction because admittedly, it was fun and fast.

“Quick! Let’s get these walls up.” He’d say, “I have to go milk.” (His five cows)

Recall him helping us log? He came over when he could soon rush to get away, which eventually set off alarms too late for us, unfortunately. I precut a pile of two by sixes beforehand and just the top and bottom plates had to be measured and cut. I told him how I wanted the walls built. For example, he built two back walls in impressive speed while I still worked on one. He called me over to help set them up on the sill plate. There were only two nails in the top or bottom, and then some of the studs weren’t even positioned square and flush. I didn’t see this until he and I nailed it into the sill and he departed.

After I spotted the trouble, I took the wall sections down, pulled some of the nails and carefully realigned the studs that needed it. I carefully drove three nails in each end of the studs like I told him I wanted at the get go. Our faith in him was waning fast when Karen saw him drop a hammer held shoulder high onto the fresh concrete floor on purpose; he watched it hit to see what kind of gouge it’ll make, and he made a few until I caught him doing it and told him to stop. That ruffled feathers and any amity and goodwill in the relationship began seeping away. We didn’t see him so often after my raised-voice admonishment. Our work continued unabated.  

As the title of this book states, this house of ours was unconventional in many ways besides the fact that Karen and I were the brains and brawn of the project. The framing was unconventional as well. The back and two-thirds of the sidewalls toward the rear were platform-framed meaning the walls were built only one story in height with the second story floor and wall resting on top of the first floor framing. It didn’t help partway through the first floor wall construction that I came to the realization that our farmer friend’s radial arm saw that he happily loaned us was permanently misadjusted�"or bent and broken. It cut everything at an angle. I began using a Handy Square and cutting them by hand which didn’t do much for my aching body and seizing joints.

We would balloon-framed the front prow and front corner walls, all seventeen feet worth, but we didn’t yet. From the floor, the wall would measure twenty-one feet high and promised to be one glorious Great Room. I continued with balloon framing over the back entry door, and the front sides of the Great Room.

The farmer had been scarce for the next couple weeks allowing me to work on the walls the way I wanted them. The front wall remained the final stud wall obstacle. To make this wall happen I made a special trip to Menards to buy eighteen and twenty-foot lengths that are much more expensive than two shorter lengths measuring the same. The long lengths were crucial to provide continuous lumber and assured strength on these walls. The long lengths would also have to be cut to the required length. By the way, because everything in this house was a little different size than standard such as the back walls being seven foot six, so these had to be cut off from eight-foot lengths for short wasted pieces of lumber�"kindling wood. Figure that loss into our dwindling bank account.

One cool night after a long day of driving nails and erecting walls, Karen and I sat down on a log alongside the driveway dirt pile to relax. I noticed the pile of odd pieces of lumber from all those ends I had cut off. I gathered them up and started a fire while Karen got hot dogs and chips. Using some fresh cut maple saplings, we roasted hot dogs out there in the dusk as the salt sprinkling of stars appeared above our rectangular hole in the woods. It was a quiet evening in the outdoors versus the usual meal in our humble polebarn abode.

It is important to enjoy the simple joys of life!

 

The next day Karen’s parents showed up again. Her father had a new video camera that mother said would capture some of our work in progress. Fine. Actually, we didn’t do a whole lot that day, but for some reason, the farmer showed up with an entourage in tow. Maybe we weren’t making enough noise to suit him. I hate spectators to watch me work, and here they were. He told us he brought all the help for that big wall I was working on, though I hadn’t started it. Come on, let’s get ‘er done! He yelled his battle cry, grabbing a hammer and nails. What size are these windows going to be, he asked with a blatant stare. I gazed back with my signature blank stare and shrug. I go brain dead when put on the spot and even though I knew approximately how big the windows would be, under this  pressure I could not remember if they were six inches or six feet wide. I told him I hadn’t finalized the decision on sizes yet, but would appreciate if they’d come back and help me erect the wall tomorrow.

Karen and I, once again perused the Crestline catalog’s rough opening charts. We wanted lots of glass, but also wanted plenty of lumber around them to make a sturdy wall because the two wall halves to make the prow front would be expansive. We decided on the standard size of four by five foot windows. These would cost a chunk of change when we bought the eight big windows.

It was a Saturday and Ben was there to visit with his grandmother and grandfather and help with this momentous wall. He brought his skiing pal Chris with him. We went to work on the big walls. Actually, these walls weren’t all that difficult to frame up because the windows lined up horizontally and vertically. Once I marked the bottom and top plates with a marker and the Handy Square, we could go ahead and put in the corners, jacks, spacers, and headers. With four of us hammering, the two halves went together fast. I thought grandpa was going to video, but he didn’t, they just hung out watching us work. As I worked, I pondered on how to lift these walls into place without killing us or dropping these huge, heavy walls. 

Undoubtedly, we needed help to erect the two halves of the prow wall. I decided to avoid the farmer’s help and determined that if I got Randy the part time handy/fixit neighbor, Ben, Chris, and I could handle the job. The farmer found out through another neighbor that Randy had told. The trouble with the farmer and spectators is that he always seemed to command attention. I briefed my crew that I wanted to attach a rope to a tree to steady the rising wall as we lifted.

The farmer showed with his entourage. I don’t have much time, let’s do this, he cried. Despite my urging and effort to attach the safety rope to prevent the huge seventeen by twelve-foot wall from falling, he urged the neighbors helping to rush like always and push the precarious tall wall up with poles. I had the rope attached and ladder leaned against the tree ready to tie it off, but the farmer pressed everyone to begin too quickly. Pushed up at a forty-five degree angle the wall was at a dangerous position.

Suddenly, one pole slipped and they all slipped, and it crashed down ground thumping hard on the concrete floor. Everyone jumped out of the way, but Ben nearly got clobbered by the huge crushing wall. My father in law had impulsively decided to video this operation, and this remains the only video we have of the entire house project, unfortunately filmed and kept for posterity.

After an inspection of the wall’s integrity and with my safety rope now attached to the tree with my added adamant insistence of prudence, we slowly and safely stood the first half of wall up. I had raised my voice again to the irritation of the farmer. I set a ladder up at the corner, not so safety-like and quickly nailed a temporary board across the top of the corner. After lifting the other half, I nailed another board between the two wall halves at the prow and other corner.

With the front walls up in place, all the farmer man could only say as he walked home was that the house looked “humongous” without any apology for nearly killing Ben and not listening to me. Patience and hides were wearing very thin, and I should have told him to stay permanently away, but I was nice and he wanted to help and spy so he could discuss and laugh about us in our absence.

Lifting spirits after the near accident, I have some UP news to pass on. I relate that a Yooper family had recently moved two miles from their home because they heard that most accidents occur within a mile of home. It was a relatively easy move for them because they didn’t have to change their address�"they took their mailbox with them and kept their old address!

The house construction now appeared to be progressing at a clip. To get an idea of what the house framing looked like, I’ll explain. Remember that the back wall and most of the side walls were platform framed so, the stud walls were relatively short, about ten foot from the concrete floor. The back corner that was framed for the door was balloon framed, and it stuck up seventeen feet. There would be a problem to solve in flooring later on in this corner, but I’ll explain later. Toward the front, the sidewalls rose up the twenty-one feet with a large four by four window on one corner and on the other, a big square hole for a sliding patio door overlooking the ravine. Of course, these front sides were the same height as the prow front. Now we come to the loft floor and those log joists, but the rainy season had begun.

Setting up the vertical twelve-inch diameter log posts to support the second floor sounds easier than practice proved. These six posts paralleled the house’s length in two rows, spaced 9 foot 4 inches apart for the 28-foot house width. These sat on the footer pads we poured with the footer, but now lie buried under a couple inches of concrete floor slab. One post had a slight bow in it and took nearly all day to stand up level�"many, many attempts with cutting and shaving the bottom and re-hoisting it erect by hand�"a good anaerobic workout, not that I needed to lift more weights. Luckily, all six posts were well over ten feet long providing a few inches to spare for trimming to size.

 

One note I’d like to point out after considering the neighbor problems, the hard unending work, and the weather turning sour, meaning showers were moving in and staying, along with the fact that I was losing it�"that is, the ability to reason clearly. There were too many things to ensure worked out in the end result of the project�"unanswered questions like the septic, the plumbing, the roof design, the spiral stairs to the loft, and a multitude other things. I felt overwhelmed under the pressure. For a few days, I could not figure out for the life of me on how long these vertical log posts really needed to be. As I said, they were all a little longer than required, but they needed to be trimmed and saddle cut to hold the horizontal logs�"at the perfect height. It was simply, complicated. Let me explain.

 The 86-inch sidewalls sat on the concrete block walls 46 inches high after the slab was poured. These walls were framed in two by sixes, seven-foot six-inches long.  The center posts rose from the slab’s surface to the floor joists, BUT these posts in the center were notched�"saddle cut to make a joint for the horizontal beam logs to lie in. The other ends of the horizontal log joists rested on top of the framed stud wall, but these were NOT notched. Understand? I sat and looked and sketched and scribbled. I pulled strings and hung levels; I desperately needed a break because I could not think straight, and the damn rain didn’t help!

 

All the logs were now debarked by Karen and kept dry in our polebarn, but left unscathed by notching, drilling, cutting, or bugs as the code guys adamantly reminded us. Two hefty horizontal beams ran the length of the house, each section ten foot long except the front two which were sixteen-foot long running to and tying the front prow to the loft. I bolted these together and the upright posts by drilling and screwing in from above one and half foot lag screws�"very hefty and strong indeed. The front two remaining logs were going to be very impressive in the future after staining and varnishing, just hanging out there in the Great Room with nothing else in the twenty-one feet of open air. Well, that is yet to come in the telling.

In the meantime, we were getting wet so we went to Menards and bought the largest tarp they had�"a green one, forty by fifty feet. It weighed a ton but by pulling it out flat along side the house, attaching cord through the grommets we dragged and wiggled and poked it along until it covered our precious assembled lumber that was getting waterlogged in the daily rain.

After two days of not doing a single thing constructive other than getting the tarp in place, I figured out what the vertical posts lengths needed to be to support the horizontal beams. One hundred thirty-six inches was the baseline taken from the outside wall, simply enough. The log ends would be flattened two inches on the wall equaling one hundred thirty-four. This would be the length of the support logs if not saddle cut, but to tie everything together they had to be cut in a tedious chainsaw way. In the end, I guessed at a good saddle depth of four to five inches, which makes it one hundred thirty one inches. The only problem remained is that the logs all varied in thickness, so in the end they couldn’t be measured and cut ahead of time! In the very end, I threw out all my scribbles and calculations with an empirical method winning out once again. Originally, the name of this story was to be the Empirical House, because empirical means to do it experimentally or in a trial and error manner.   

Flattening the log end that would set in the wall, I heaved the other end up to suspend on top of the stepladder. Holding it next to the hefty beam log, I perched my level on top of the log joist. When it was level, I awkwardly scribed a mark with a Sharpie. I could not cut beyond this mark. Anyway, it was now up to me and my little old chainsaw working precariously under the tarp in a blue haze. Tedious, noisy, smelly, and dangerous�"artistic, crafty, or hack job? You be the judge of this so-called empirical construction work.

For me then, this singular memorable scene from our building process came months into the house building process. As gray, showery skies shrouded the UP woods, the huge pea-green tarp shrouded the skeleton of our framed up, roofless house to protect Karen and me working beneath. We needed the tarp to cover our work in progress for only three months, but working underneath as it billowed and snapped in the rainy blusters provided one unforgettable experience. Unfortunately, with stud walls around and no roof, the tarp acted as a huge funnel catching all the rain that fell. Karen had a full time job flipping the water out of the pockets that hung around as the rain collected. This green tarp period began in September, and we found ourselves experiencing the worse Upper Peninsula weather so far in our very unconventional house-building project.

 

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. If you read something that doesn't make sense or needs more explanation, let me know!