Monday, May 12
Remodeling includes a lot of tedious work, which meant that visible progress last week was a little slower than the first couple of weeks. But by the time the A-1 Builders crew went home on Friday afternoon the subfloor was complete and the big glulam beam that supports my second-floor office was in place. Continue reading
Thursday, May 8
We got a new hen last weekend and she’s adopted the construction crew from Aspen Diversified Construction, Inc. Rather than hang out in the yard searching for bugs and worms, Chester likes to hang out in the studio and supervise the construction activity. She doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything, even standing calmly on a piece of framing timber while Dennis cuts it to length with his Skilsaw. Where do we find chicken-size safety glasses for her? And that name, Chester? That’s what Mike started calling her.
Most of the floor joists and some of the sub-floor in the new camera room
Monday, May 5
The crew from A-1 Builders made good progress last week, getting nearly all the new floor joists in place and laying most of the sub-floor. They deliberately left a few joists out where the plumber will install a new sewage grinder pump. It will be a whole lot easier to dig the hole under the crawl space for that without the joists and floor in place. Since the studio is lower than our septic tank and drain field we have to pump our sewage uphill and the old pump was buried outside and not in good shape. Continue reading
Wednesday, April 30
It was a quiet weekend at the studio construction site as the crew from A-1 Builders works four 10-hour days Tuesday through Friday. The weather was good, which allowed the saturated soil to dry out a bit. The excavators dug trenches along the foundation walls to lay perforated drainage pipe. They’ve also painted a waterproofing compound on the foundation walls. This is an extra step to keep the underpinnings of the studio dry when the building is sealed up tight. For now, we’ve got piles of dirt everywhere and quite a mess. But our chickens have been having a great time picking through the dirt for fresh worms and grubs. Continue reading
Saturday, April 26
Yesterday morning it rained pea gravel into the crawl space of our new studio. I was working in my office upstairs when I heard the sound of a big truck pulling up out front. I looked out the window to see a guy maneuvering a long conveyor belt toward the barn door on the front of the building. In a few minutes he powered up the conveyor and gravel started shooting toward the open door. When the truck pulled up I thought they were going to deliver the gravel slowly into a pile in the crawl space. But no, it was a remarkably well controlled high speed operation. In the photo above you can see the gravel raining down into the space. Continue reading
Friday, April 25
Yesterday around noon the A-1 Builders crew had pumped out the water from the previous night’s rain, finished building the forms for new footers, and were ready to pour concrete. Continue reading
Thursday, April 24.
It rained last night. Hard. The beginning of the new driveway and parking area is looking reasonably dry, certainly a lot drier than the soggy grass that was here before. It’s definitely going to be a wet day for the guys working inside. You can see clear through the building right now when both barn doors are open. Continue reading
Tuesday morning, April 23 the crew from A-1 Builders arrived to begin work on renovating the old feed store into my new photo studio. I’d already done a lot of the demolition work to remove wall and ceiling coverings, take out a lot of the old floor, and get rid of the debris. Doing that work myself saved us a fair chunk of change, built muscles in my arms and shoulders, and made it possible for the professionals to get most of the remaining demolition work completed the first day.
