JUNE 19 UPDATE: Working late

When Dave was working on the outside of the house, sunset -- or at least full-on dark -- ended the work day. Not so when he's working inside, he says! With these new-fangled electric lights, he could work all night if he wanted to.

Not that he did tonight. But he did get to play with Sofia a bit while she was up in the evening, then get a fair amount of work done after she had gone to sleep.

He was working on installing the first floor. Paavo, Walt and Dave had gotten quite a few of the joists for the first floor down when they were waiting for the weather to be favorable for roof work, so after some clean-up work in the building, Dave was able to progress fairly quickly. First he put down some heavy duty plastic sheeting (to serve as a vapor barrier between the uninsulated concrete slab and the insulation), then batts of insulation, then the plywood subfloor, which may or may not serve as the final floor for a while, depending on the time, money and energy we have left at that point.

I was nervous about having enough insulation below the floor. One of the features of the house that I had to give up in the planning process was radiant floor heating -- oh, the idea of having warm toes all winter long was so appealing. But the more we looked into that option, the more we realized how much it would complicate all sorts of other aspects of housebuilding. We were able to think around a few of the challenges, but even I, with my heart set on warm toes, lost my enthusiasm for the plan after more and more problems came up.

Ah, well, it was not to be. But I did want to make sure the floor was as warm as it could possibly be -- but Dave assures me it should be fine. The recommended R-value for floors is 19, and the insulation we're putting in is R-30. He also hopes to add some insulation on the outside, around the foundation, which should help quite a bit as well.

Dave was able to get four sheets of plywood down before calling it a night.

As I mentioned, we're not sure yet what we're putting on top of that subfloor, if anything. Hardwood is my favorite kind of flooring material, but that will take a good deal of time and money to install. Recycled or salvaged flooring is the most appealing to me, as it would fit with the character of the whole building, but that would, again, take a whole lot of money, or time, or both. So in the meantime, we're toying with the idea of just leaving the subfloor as it is and painting it, or putting a cheap covering over it.

I saw in one of the "Not So Big House" books by Sarah Susanka (very fun books to look through, if you have the chance) that someone had put wallpaper down on the floor when they were in a similar situation. The floor looked cool, and no one was in danger of getting slivers from the subfloor, and there was nothing to take up when they were ready to put in nicer flooring.

We'll see what we can figure out when we get to that point. For now, Dave's goal is to get the floor in enough that he can go get the woodstove from Mandan, where it's waiting for us to pick it up, and install it where it needs to go instead of having to move it twice (it's not very big but fairly heavy -- 475 pounds). The area under the woodstove will be tile, so we won't have to decide about the rest of the floor until later.


This is a great moonrise, isn't it? I strolled down to the end of the lane and took this picture with my camera on the night setting, which created a long exposure and made this look a lot more like a sunrise.

It was really nice being outside this evening. After being too hot for much of the day (I even had the air conditioning on at one point -- being pregnant sure makes me a wimp when it comes to heat), the evening air was pleasantly cool. It was quiet, except for Dave pounding nails in the distance and the cottonwood trees rustling at the occasional passing breeze. A few thunderstorms flashed to the south and east, but they were too far away for me to even hear the thunder. I just got to enjoy the light show and the lovely moon rising between them.

It's always nice to be reminded every now and then of why I thought it was a good idea to move back to the farm in the first place.