JULY 15 UPDATE: Under the stove

Isn't this a nice photo? A person could get a nice new sunset photo about every other night here. I did miss seeing sunsets when we lived in town.

I call this photo "Cottonwood Moon."

... Again, there's not a whole lot new to report, or at least to take pictures of, as far as house building goes. Dave's working on getting the pad beneath the stove in the right place, so we did some more careful measuring before Dave put down two different kinds of fireproof boards this evening -- a ceramic board and a cement board -- after Sofia and I came in for the evening. Those 4-foot by 4-foot boards will go under the tile, which will be under the woodstove.

... There's an order in at the lumberyard for all sorts of materials for the addition -- work on that should start this weekend, when Dave's dad comes for another working visit.

... And we've contacted the plumber who will come to do all the rough plumbing work for us. He's new to the community (but an experienced plumber) so hopefully we won't have to wait too long for him to come when we're ready for him.

... We're working on getting estimates for the spray foam insulation we want -- hopefully at least one of the companies should come give us an estimate soon.

... We've been debating how to the roof on the addition: When Walt was here, we had discussed doing a gable roof at the same pitch as the overhangs on the rest of the house -- there was no point in doing a roof as steep as the granary itself, which would simply waste lumber and shingles and make it harder to work on the roof, but we figured matching the pitch of the new overhangs would help the addition look like it went with the rest of the house. The granary roof is at about a 45-degree angle, or a nearly 12:12 rise (it goes up 12 inches for every 12 inches of horizontal length). The overhangs are at a 7:12 rise, or about 30 degrees.

Unfortunately, that presented a bit of a problem. Dave had thought about just building rafters, but roof trusses -- or ready-built rafters with webbing -- turned out to be a much faster, cheaper option. They don't come standard with a 7:12 rise, however, and for a while Dave was trying to convince me to do a 4:12 rise. I plugged that into our architecture program and didn't like the look of it at all -- it looked like two different houses being crammed together. Then he checked into it some more and learned that a 6:12 rise also comes standard. That, plugged into the drawing program, looked much better -- I don't think you'll be able to tell that it's not quite the same as the overhangs.

Phew! That was a relief to me. I'm all for faster and cheaper, but I have a hard time compromising on certain aesthetic principles. And it's tough when I can't explain to Dave exactly why matching roof lines would be better -- it's all the same to him, as long as they function as a roof should. And, it is true that I'm not the one who's going to be hoisting roof trusses up a ladder, so I have to keep that in mind, too.

... So I don't have any new photos of the house, but I do have a couple in-the-house dancing photos I thought I'd share:


Sofia has decided that dancing to Daddy's music in the new house should be a nightly tradition, apparently.

... An aside to Dave and Mary: We figured out that if we took out all the furniture, we could just barely squeeze three squares into the house. Of course, if we really wanted to dance, we could just go a mile and a half to Savo Hall, where we could get at least eight squares going comfortably.

... And, in case you haven't all guessed, no baby news yet. I've got another doctor's appointment tomorrow -- I should know more then.