Hey, Hey!

Lookie!!!! We got power! Well, sort of. This is as far as it goes right now; it's not actually attached to the house yet. The power company ran their poles etc. and we set our pole Thanksgiving morning or Allen did and I chopped a bit of firewood for Mama. We actually took the rest of the day off. Allen got the pole ready last night with the meter and breaker box and now I just have to call and get the power company to come back out and connect us. We should have had our pole set before they left but we had a little trouble finding an 18 ft. pressure treated pole. Ended up having to order one from the lumber company. Our temporary pole we set is about 15 feet from this one and then we will run underground to the house which is about 100 ft.
I would like to have run underground from this pole which is the second one from the house but I estimate it would have been a minimum of about $700.00. Maybe later. We also got a fair amount of this brush cleared up and burned. The weather was beautiful over the holiday weekend.
I didn't get to set any windows like I hoped. I went to see about buying them and they don't keep the ones I want in stock ( big suprise). All they keep in stock are vinyl windows and I don't want those so I will have to order mine and it will take about 3 weeks to get them. I should have investigated this more beforehand. So we put in the blocking that goes between the rafters that the exterior siding and the interior sheetrock or whatever will fasten to. If your rafters don't show you don't have to do this but since I wanted to make my life more difficult whenever possible.........I was suprised to see how baggy my pants look in this photo; looks like a family of raccoons just moved out. I have lost about 15 lbs. since we started building the house. It can be kinda stressful to do everything yourself and I have gotten sick a couple of times. It shows more than I thought.
This is a close up of the blocking that I was talking about. I dreaded doing it but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be and now when the windows and doors are plugged in the house will be pretty much weather tight. This gave us a chance to use up alot of little bitty scrap pieces of 2x4 and plywood that we had been saving.
Since the weather was so nice, we worked after dark a little by lantern light. Allen thought he would get a little creative with the camera. I thought the photo was pretty cool! What is shadow and what is steel??!! Well, that's obvious, but it's still neat that the beam kinda looks like it could be shadows cast by something else. Or that's the way I see it. What do you see?

Working Too Hard

Blogger has gotten me screwed up with the photos here. I started on the second one but had to reload and they are not in the correct order. Anyway, you can get the idea. The Power Company cometh. This is actually on Fred's land coming down to where it connects to us. I hate that so much forest has been cut. Some of the trees were so pretty. I'm in a grumpy mood because of it too and it's my own fault! I asked the power company to come in! Ugh!
They sent their tree cutting subcontractor out to clear the way before they run my lines. I just hate the way they do this but I guess I don't have much choice. At least we convinced them to come in the back way sort of and not start in the front down the driveway. That is a 30 foot wide trail they cut and will have to stay cleared. On the right in the photo is one of the power company's pole markers with the pink flagging on it. This is the pole that will be closest to the house. When the rest of my house is built I will have the power run underground from this pole to the house but right now it's not really in the best place for that. We have kind of gone a little backwards with this part because the power service should really enter the house in the other section but I did not want that section built first due to the fact it is mainly bedrooms. Make sense? It's much easier when you can build your whole house at once but I guess I'm doing the best I can.

Things have not changed a whole lot lately. Stuff has been done but it's in that phase now where most of the work is inside. We have set the main breaker panel inside and done alot of the electrical work and we finished the Tyvek wrap as you can see here. Alot of time has been spent building scaffolding or moving scaffolding etc. But you've got to do it. Some we are going to leave up for awhile 'cause I'll need it again soon for painting and siding etc. I get fairly discouraged sometimes at the rate of progress on the house but there is only so much you can do I guess. We both work 40+ each on regular construction jobs and then both have a 50 minute commute one way. Then we usually have a couple of side projects going on sometimes. Well, I do; Allen has about quit doing side work but I need the money to finance the house. And I sometimes have a project that fufills my half of a barter deal I worked out. Then we have all the regular chores that go with running a house hold like grocery shopping, washing clothes, paying bills etc. and the paper work that goes with running a business if you are self employed. I couldn't imagine if I had kids to go along with all this. We actually went out to a gallery opening on Friday! Haven't been out in a long time. This weekend we did not get alot done. It was cold and gloomy and we sat by a bonfire alot. We did frame a covered walkway section. I hope to set windows over the long Thanksgiving weekend.