Slow Progress

The last month has been dominated by bad weather and has seen very slow progress on the house. We managed to get the floor joists in place what seems like a very long time ago. The crane turned up one afternoon and put them on the walls for us, and we were left to slide them into place and nail them down over the next few evenings. Obviously this coincided with a few days of high winds, so we were permanently worried that they would be blown down during the daywhile we were at work. Luckily this didn't happen, and all the joists fitted into place surprisingly well. We had to enlist the help of Brady and Chantelle to get the post in place in the basement so we could get the joists around the staircase, and luckily they are easy to bribe with beer (and weiners for Brady) so they have continued to put in a weekly appearance to help us get stuff done.














I also left my previous job with Golder, so we decided to have a night away from building to celebrate. We spent the night in Brady's 'Rainbow" Garage and the picture below shows Brady (left) and Rob (right). Rob was my old office buddy at Golder, but he left the week before I did. And in case you were wondering about the rainbow jacket, yes, he does wear it all the time!













When we were lucky enough to get some decent weather we were back out in Grandora. By this point the floor joists were having all the supports put in to place and we started to bury the weeping tile in the basement. We thought we might be done with digging and moving gravel around, but it seems we were wrong. Now that is out of the way, we only have the weeping tile around the exterior of the footing to put into place and then we are done with groundwork (we think).
















The weather had been brutal at this stage, around 30 degrees during the day, but we seemed to be guaranteed a thunderstorm every night. Every night after work we would go out and get as much done as we could, but there is something slightly disturbing about sitting on an open platform with lightning flashing around you. We got chased off site by a huge storm one night, which followed us all the way back to Saskatoon, and battered the city through the night. We were very concerned about what might have happened to the house during the storm but luckily we had no damage (although we did have to trek into the next field to collect some of our bales of insulation). We did hear stories of people building down the road from us who had lost whole walls in the storm so I think we were pretty lucky.













Once things had dried off a bit we started to put the sub flooring onto the floor joists. We had high hopes of getting all this done in a day, which dragged on to two days, and then (when I managed to break the nail gun) went into a third! Luckily we had Brady and Chanty out to help us finish it off. An extra couple of pairs of hands makes everything go much quicker and seem much easier, so hopefully they will continue to enjoy the build!












In other news, my trip to the hospital went well. I am staying on the drugs until September, but after that I will be off them. Apparently I am just as likely to have another clot whether I am on the warfarin or not. It seems that I may be on aspirin for the rest of my life though (so at least I shouldn't suffer from hangovers too much more!!!!

The summer guest season starts pretty soon, with mum and dad arriving next week with Hannah and Andy. They are around for a while and then we have the Tuffs coming in August. I am looking forward to teaching Mollie how to use a nail gun and putting her to good use.

That's pretty much it for now though. It's been raining again today so we aren't building this evening. It gives me a chance to go out and catch up with my football team as they have a game kicking off in 15 minutes.

More soon........