Slabs are tricky. Because you don’t have the usual points of reference, it’s difficult to tell how big (or small) the rooms are.
But by the time the daffodils peeked out of the ground at the end of January 2013, our builder Callon provided those points of reference by framing most of the interior walls of the house.
I wandered around the place, gazing up at the tall walls and feeling that we might someday be able to live in this house.
As you can see in this photo, we moved our breakroom (meaning we moved the lawn chairs) into the library, one of the most eagerly anticipated rooms in the house. The wall in the foreground is one of the two short lengths of exterior wood framed wall. This one joins the library corner of a previous post with the front door corner, which had yet to be finished.
Ceilings appeared over our heads, like this one in the master bedroom. The loblolly pine beams and planks were rough-sawn at a sawmill nearby. We were happy to find out that a 1 x 6″ plank is really one inch by six inches, which is not the case with lumber you buy at the regular lumberyard.
The beams really appeal to the German half of my soul—the part with thick forests, mountain Gasthauses, and Grimms’ legends and fairy tales. I love how the curved edge of the trees shows on the lower side of each beam.
With Callon on the job, events moved quickly. Rachel and I realized we wouldn’t be able to finish building the northeastern walls in time to keep Callon and his crew busy. Did Callon know anyone who could help us? He did, and soon “mud daubers” Fred and Art started working. Rachel and I stayed busy sifting dirt and sand, mixing slurry, and ferrying bricks to the two men. We only worked part time, but Fred and Art worked full time. Those walls got tall in a hurry. Callon even built some earthen wall himself.