We started by knocking down two-thirds of the old hut—the old dining room and crew room. We left the subfloor and floor framing from the old dining room, but demoed the floor of the old crew room. The old stone bunk rooms and bathroom were spared. All the demoed materials were sorted. Pressure treated and painted wood was flown out; gnarly derbies with too many nails or odd shapes were burnt outside and cleaner materials were cut to size and stacked to be burnt in our wood stove. The old wood flooring makes really good kindling while the rafter timbers function as nice logs.
The old Hut, as of early September.
The new Hut as of late September. Almost all the new walls are up in this shot
except for the new kitchen, which is in the area with the blue tarp.
We've expanded the foot print into the court yard on the Madison side of the hut, setting the additional framing on newly dug sonnet tubes that were set in place by some lunatic members of the Construction Crew (Junior, Stitch, Everett) over the summer. They had a smorgasbord of rocks, boulders and scree to deal with trying to get the 12 inch round holes dug as deep as possible.
We've have all the exterior walls built and stood, with the new kitchen wall facing Madison being the last to go up— the new kitchen is in the old court yard, with one of its walls being the stone wall of the Madison-side bunk room. Most of the exterior walls are sheathed, using 1x12 pine boards.
The new hut has multiple roof lines, valleys and pitches and is so far proving to be the most complicated part of the addition. The dining room roof, from the outside looking almost exactly like the old, is framed and sheathed with 2x6 tongue and grove sheeting, which is extremely beefy considering I've typically used 3/4" plywood on ordinary projects. The new entry way (much like the old) and Adams's side roof are almost completely shingled (thick cedar shakes). The new dining room will be an impressive sit from the inside, stretching the full length of the old dining room and kitchen combined. The ceiling will go all the way to the roof, with the timber rafters and trusses, along with the steel collar ties, exposed. Huge new windows will face North into the valley and West towards John Quincy Adams and the Airline Trail.
Kate and Curtis roofing the dining room. At this point the nail guns were still working— and the sun was still out.
The framing for the roof over the new bathrooms and crew room is done and will get sheathed over the weekend. The new bathrooms are in the area of the old crew room. The bathrooms were moved to accommodate the new direct deposit (waterless) composting toilet system. Yes, I think direct deposit is a weird yet appropriate name for it, I mean, my paychecks are direct deposit. The old bathrooms were on the uphill side of the hut and didn't have the space underneath to fit the large stainless steal bins needed to accommodate all of the
The framed roof of the new bathrooms and crew room.
The north facing side of the new hut, with the composting toilet bins visible on the left.
Considering the location and the weather the building progress has been as smooth as possible. It's a treat to work a full 40-hour week, leave, and have another 40-hour week's worth of work done when you get back— the joy of running two crews. We've had some generator-compressor issues over the last week with neither of our propane generators wanting to power either of our compressors. The majority of this week's work was done hand nailing, including the roof shingles.
A new gas powered compressor (which we will eventually convert to propane) is ready to head up. Unfortunately, we don't have an airlift anytime soon. The compressor will be taken apart and packed into loads (around 50 lbs) which some poor bastards we will carry 4-miles up at the start of our next ship. Even the gasoline.
Not much is slowing us down.
